social stage? WHAT NEXT? as the pamphlets say--"What will the lords
do?"--what the ladies?

Thus much in proof, that the boss of pirouettiveness is strangely wanting
in human conformation, and that there is consequently all the excuse of
ignorance for the wild enthusiasm lavished by London on the operative
class. Ten guineas per night--five hundred for the season--is the price
exacted for a first-rate opera-box; and as the exclusives usually arrive
at the close of the opera, or, if earlier, keep up a perpetual babble
during its performance, they clearly come for the dancing.--"_On voit
l'opéra, et l'on écoute le ballet_," used to be said of the Académie de
Musique. But it might be asserted now, with fully as much truth, of the
Queen's Theatre, where the evolutions of Carlotta Grisi, Elssler, and
Cerito, keep the audience in a state of breathless attention denied to
Shakspeare.

In two out of these instances, it may be advanced that they are consummate
actresses as well as graceful and active dancers. Elssler's comedy is
almost as piquant as that of Mademoiselle Mars. Nor is the ballet
unsusceptible of a still higher order of histrionic display. We never
remember to have seen a stronger _levée en masse_ of cambric handkerchiefs
in honour of O'Neill's _Mrs Haller_, or Siddons's _Isabella_, than of the
ballet of "Nina;" while the affecting death-dance in "Masaniello" is still
fresh in the memory of the admirers of Pauline Leroux. We have heard of
swoons and hysterics along the more impressionable audiences of La Scala,
during the performance of the ballet of "La Vestale;" and have witnessed
with admiration the striking effect of the fascinative scene in "Faust."

Of late years, the union of Italian blood and a French education has been
found indispensable to create a _danseuse_--"Sangue Napolitano in scuola