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 Parigiana;"--and Vesuvius is the Olympus of all our recent divinities. Formerly, a Spanish origin was the most successful. The first dancer who possessed herself of European notoriety was La Camargo, whose portraits, at the close of a century, are still popular in France, where she has been made the heroine of several recent dramas. To her reign, succeeded that of the Gruinards and Duthés--in honour of whose bright eyes, a variety of noblemen saw the inside both of Fort St Evêque and St Pelagie; the opera being at that time a fertile source of _lettres de cachet_. To obtain admittance to the private theatricals of the former dancer, in her magnificent hotel in the Chaussée d'Antin, the ladies of fashion and of the court had recourse to the meanest artifices; while the latter has obtained historical renown, by having excited the jealousy, or rather envy, of Marie Antoinette. Mademoiselle Duthé appeared at the fêtes of Longchamps, in the Bois de Boulogne, in a gorgeous chariot drawn by six milk-white steeds, with red morocco harness, richly ornamented with cut steel; and thus accomplished the object of incurring the resentment of the court, from the prodigality of one of whose married princes these splendours were supposed to emanate--splendours exceeding those of the Rhodopes of old. But the greatest triumph ever achieved by _danseuse_, was that of Bigottini! The Allied sovereigns, after vanquishing the victor of modern Europe, were by _her_ vanquished in their turn. At her feet, fresh trembling from an _entre-chat_, did "Fiery French and furious Hun" lay down their arms! The Allied armies appeared to have entered Paris only to become the slaves of Bigottini! In our own country, devotees of the _danseuse_ have done more, by promoting her to the decencies of the domestic fireside. In our own country, also, even Punch was once purchased by an eccentric nobleman for the diversion of his private life. But as Demosthenes observed of the cost of such a pleasure, "that is buying repentance too dear!"