The dramatic ballet or _ballet d'action_ lasted until the end of the fifties in London, and then ceased almost suddenly to occupy the leading position which it once held at the Opera House. In London, as in Paris and Vienna, it was transformed into a mere spectacular display of costume and meaningless rhythmic drill. The dramatic ballet ceased to exist. The great tradition of fine stage-dancing and ballet-drama was, however, preserved in Russia. It is not easy to explain, but the fact is that two peoples so far apart as the Russians and the Spaniards are more devoted to dancing than any other European nationalities. Successive Tsars have spent large sums in maintaining colleges in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, where boys and girls are lodged and carefully educated whilst they are trained from the age of ten years in the art of stage-dancing. The greatest musical composers have been encouraged to write "ballets," and the ablest designers and "producers" have been secured by large salaries. Something like £80,000 a year is spent by the Tsar on the maintenance and development of this beautiful art, which is dead elsewhere, but seems to fit the genius of the Russian people. A new respect for Russia, a profound admiration for the Russian artists, has been the result of the revelation of the Russian ballet by the recent visits of its members to this country. During the last thirty years of its period of nurture and development in Russia the ballet has developed in two directions. Neither of these are popular and successful in Russia, where the old traditional and established ballet of the early nineteenth century--what may be called "academic" dancing--is alone in demand. What we call "the Russian ballet" is dramatic in nature, and includes such wonderful combinations of music, scenery, costume, and perfect artistic expression by dancing and gesture as we have seen in Scheherazade, Cleopatra, Prince Igorre, Tamar, and Petrouschka. It promises in its latest development to supplant the musical drama known as "opera," in which the human voice is used. But the most striking development is that in which dancing appears as the exponent of lyrical poetry. It is to the teaching of Isadora Duncan that the Russian dancers admit their indebtedness for this new departure. When undertaken by untrained dancers and amateurs (even by the innovator herself) the attempt to interpret lyrical subjects showed some ingenuity in conception, but failed to command general appreciation, as the efforts of a painter or an actor, who has not acquired command of the material of his art, also fail. But when Anna Pavlova brought her lifelong training as a dancer and her poetic imagination to the interpretation of masterpieces of music inspired by such subjects as "Night," "The Dying Rose," "The Wounded Swan," and the moonlight mystery of "Les Sylphides," a new and most poignant form of emotional expression became apparent. A single figure moving over