skilful in these matters. The Spanish Ambassador reports how "The Prince
of Wales was desired by his royal parents to open the ball with a
Spanish gallarda: he acquitted himself with much grace and delicacy,
introducing some occasional leaps."[232] Prince Charles and Buckingham,
during their stay in Spain, are earnestly implored by their "deare Dad
and Gossip" not to forget their dancing. "I praye you, my babie, take
heade of being hurt if ye runne at tilte, ... I praye you in the
meantyme keep your selfis in use of dawncing privatlie, thogh ye showlde
quhissell and sing one to another like Jakke and Tom for faulte of
better musike." [233]

However, Dallington is very much against the saltations of elderly
persons. "I remember a countriman of ours, well seene in artes and
language, well stricken in yeares, a mourner for his second wife, a
father of mariageable children, who with his other booke studies
abroade, joyned also the exercise of dancing: it was his hap in an
honourable _Bal_ (as they call it) to take a fall, which in mine opinion
was not so disgracefull as the dancing it selfe, to a man of his
stuffe."[234]

Dallington would have criticized Frenchmen more severely than ever had
he known that even Sully gave way in private to a passion for dancing.
At least Tallemant des Réaux says that "every evening a valet de chambre
of the King played on the lute the dances of the day, and M. de Sully
danced all alone, in some sort of extraordinary hat--such as he always
wore in his cabinet--while his cronies applauded him, although he was
the most awkward man in the world."[235]

Tennis is another courtly exercise in which Dallington urges moderation.
"This is dangerous, (if used with too much violence) for the body; and