Be that as it may, the scholar and classical commentator will every moment quote Martial, &c., when he beholds the unchanged balancing of hands, raised as if to catch showers of roses, the tapping of the feet, and the serpentine, quivering movements. A contagious excitement seizes the spectators, who, like Orientals, beat time with their hands in measured cadence, and at every pause applaud with cries and clappings. The damsels, thus encouraged, continue in violent action until nature is all but exhausted; then aniseed brandy, wine, and _alpisteras_ are handed about, and the fête, carried on to early dawn, often concludes in broken heads, which here are called “gipsy’s fare.” These dances appear to a stranger from the chilly north, to be more marked by energy than by grace, nor have the legs less to do than the body, hips, and arms. The sight of this unchanged pastime of antiquity, which excites the Spaniards to frenzy, rather disgusts an English spectator, possibly from some national malorganization, for, as Molière says, “l’Angleterre a produit des grands hommes dans les sciences et les beaux arts, mais pas un grand danseur--allez lire l’histoire.” However indecent these dances may be, yet the performers are inviolably chaste, and as far at least as ungipsy guests are concerned, may be compared to iced punch at a rout; young girls go through them before the applauding eyes of their parents and brothers, who would resent to the death any attempt on their sisters’ virtue. During the lucid intervals between the ballet and the brandy, _La caña_, the true Arabic _gaunia_, song, is administered as a soother by some hirsute artiste, without frills, studs, diamonds, or kid gloves, whose staves, sad and melancholy, always begin and end with an _ay!_ a high-pitched sigh, or cry. These Moorish melodies, relics of auld lang syne, are best preserved in the hill-built villages near Ronda, where there are no roads for the members of Queen Christina’s _Conservatorio Napolitano_; wherever l’académie tyrannizes, and the Italian opera prevails, adieu, alas! to the tropes and tunes of the people: and now-a-days the opera exotic is cultivated in Spain by the higher classes, because, being fashionable at London and Paris, it is an exponent of the civilization of 1846. Although the audience in their honest hearts are as much bored there as elsewhere, yet the affair is pronounced by them to be charming, because it is so expensive, so select, and so far above the comprehension of the vulgar. Avoid it, however, in Spain, ye our fair readers, for the second-rate singers are not fit to hold the score to those of thy own dear Haymarket. [Sidenote: MUSIC IN VENTAS.]