For the subjects of these poetical dances, the composer will undoubtedly find those which are the most likely to please, in fabulous history, especially for the serious, or pathetic stile. This we find was the great resource of the antients, who had, in that point, a considerable advantage, from which the moderns are excluded, by the antient mithology having lost that effect, and warmth of interest, which accompanied all transactions taken from it by their poets, and brought upon the theatre. The heroes of antiquity, the marvellous of their deities, and the histories of their amours, or of their exploits, can never make the same impression on the moderns so thoroughly differing in manners and ways of thinking, from those, to whom such exhibitions were a kind of domestic, and even religious remembrancers. The spectators of those times were more at home to what they saw represented upon their theatres; the ground-work of the fable represented to the audience being generally foreknown, contributed greatly to the quickness of their apprehension; and its being part of their received theology, and often of the history of their own country, procured it the more favorable attention. The greatest part of these advantages are wanting in the employment of these fictions among the moderns; and to which however they are, in some measure, compelled to have recourse, for want of theatrical subjects striking enough to be agreeably thrown into a dance; by which I do not mean to exclude all subjects that have not those poetical fictions of Greek and Roman antiquity for a basis; on the contrary, it might justly pass for a barrenness of invention, the being reduced constantly to borrow from them, but purely to point out a treasure, ever open to the artist who shall know how to make a selection with judgment and taste: always remembering, that the more universally the fable is foreknown, the more easy will the task be of rendering it intelligible in the execution. There are, doubtless, some parts of the antient mithology so obscure, and so little known, that any plan taken from them, would, to the generality of the spectators, be as great a novelty, as if the composer had himself invented the subject. There are others again of which all the interest is entirely antiquated and exploded. As to the pieces of composition in the comic vein, there is nothing like taking the subject of them from the most agreeable and the most marking occurrences in real, current life; and the stronger they are of the manners and practice of the times, the nearer they will seem to the truth of nature, and the surer at once to be understood, and to have a pleasing effect. And here I shall take the liberty of concluding with offering two instances of poetic dances; the one in the serious, the other in the comic vein, which are furnished rather as hints of the improvable nature of such compositions, than in the least meant for models of them. The first has for title,