Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 341, March, 1844 by Various
page 61 of 303 (20%)
page 61 of 303 (20%)
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The reign of Madame de Maintenon (_la raison même_) over his affections, declared itself by the sudden transfer of a ballet-opera, expressly composed by Rameau and Quinault for the beauties of the court, to the public theatre of the Palais Royal. No more noble figurantes at Versailles! Louis le Pirouettiste's occupation was gone; and the _maître des ballets du roi_ arrayed himself in sackcloth and ashes. But, lo! the glories of his throne took wing with the loves and graces; ballets and victories being effaced on the same page from the annals of his reign. During the minority of Louis XV., the same royal dansomania was renewed. The regent, Duke of Orleans, entertained the same notions of kingly education, on this head, as his predecessor the cardinal; and Louis _le Bien-aimé_, like his great-grandfather before him, was the best dancer of his realm. Such dancing as it was! such exquisite footing! In the upper story of the grand gallery at Versailles, hang several pictures representing these court ballets; Cupids in coatees of pink lustring, with silver lace and tinsel wings, wearing full-bottomed wigs and the riband of the St Esprit; or Venuses in hoops and powder, whose _minauderies_ might afford a lesson to the divinities of our own day for the benefit of the omnibus box. Some of these groups, by Mignard, Boucher, and their imitators, are charming studies as _tableaux de genre_. But in nothing, by the way, are they more remarkable than in their _decency_. The nudities of the present times appear to have been undreamed of in the philosophy of Versailles. That simple-hearted, though strong-minded American writer, Miss Sedgwick, who has published an account of her consternation as she sat with Mrs Jameson in the stalls of our Italian opera, might have witnessed the royal performance unabashed. On being told, as she gazed upon the intrepid |
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