As an exercise, the virtue of dancing was well known to the antients, for its keeping up the strength and agility of the human body. There is a remark which I submit to the consideration of the reader, that it is not impossible but that the antient Romans, who were, generally speaking, low in stature, and yet were eminently strong, owed that advantage to their cultivation of bodily exercise. This kept their limbs supple, and rendered their constitution stout and hardy. Now, very laborious exercises would rather wear out the machine than they would invigorate it, if there was not a due relaxation, which should not, however, be too abrupt a transition from the most fatiguing exercises to a state of absolute rest. Whereas that dancing, of which they were so fond, afforded them, not only a pleasing employ of vacant hours, but, withall, in its keeping up the pliability of their limbs, made them find more ease in the application of themselves to more athletic, or to more violent exercises, either of war or of the chace: while all together bred that firmness of their muscles, that robust compactness and vigor of body, which enabled them to atchieve that military valor, to which they owed all their conquests and their glory. Certain it is then, that among the Romans, even in the most martial days of that republic, the art of dancing was taught, as one of the points of accomplishment necessary to the education of youth; and was even practised among the exercises of the Circus. I need not observe, that there were also various abuses of dancing, which they very justly accounted dishonorable to those who practised them, whether in public or private. These, in the degenerate days of Rome, grew to an enormous excess. But I presume no one will judge of an art by the abuse that may be made of it. Of DANCING In General. This is one of the arts, in which, as in all the rest, the study of nature is especially to be recommended. She is an unerring guide. She gives that harmony, that power of pleasing to the productions of those who consult her, which such as neglect her must never expect. They will furnish nothing but monsters and discordances; or, at the best, but sometimes lucky hits, without meaning or connexion. All the imitative arts acknowledge this principle. In Poetry, a happy choice of the most proper words for expressing the sentiments and images drawn from the observation of nature, constitutes the principal object of the poet. In Painting, the disposition of the subject, the resemblance of the coloring to that of the original, in short the greatest possible adherence to nature, is the merit of that art. In Music, that expression of the passions which should raise the same in the hearer, whether of joy, affliction, tenderness, or pity, can never have its effect without marking and adopting the respective sounds of each passion as they are furnished by nature.