"We have seen how the union of the three arts we have mentioned constitute the lyric scene. Some have been tempted to introduce a fourth, of which I have now to speak. "The question is to know whether dancing, being a language, and consequently capable of becoming an imitative art, should not enter with the other three into the action of the lyrical drama, or whether it would not rather interrupt and suspend this action and spoil the effect and the unity of the whole piece. "But here, I think, there can be no question at all. For every one feels that the interest of a successive action depends upon the continuance and growing increase of the impression its representation makes on us. But by breaking off a spectacle and introducing other spectacles which have nothing to do with it, the principal subject is divided into independent parts, with no link of connection between them; and the more agreeable the inserted spectacles are, the greater must be the deformity produced by the mutilation of the whole.... It is for this reason that the Italians have at last banished these interludes from their operas. They are, separately considered, a species of spectacle very pleasing, very piquante, and quite natural, but so misplaced in the midst of a tragic action, that the two exhibitions injure each other mutually, and the one can never interest but at the expense of the other." * * * * * [Sidenote: THE BALLET.] Rousseau then suggests that the ballet should come after the opera, which, as every one knows, is the rule at the Italian Opera houses of London, and which appears to me a far preferable arrangement to that of the French Académie, where no lyrical work is considered complete without a _divertissement_ introduced anyhow into the middle of it, or of the Italian theatres where it is still the custom to perform short ballets or _divertissements_ between the acts of the opera. Italy, the country of the Vestrises, of the Taglionis, and in the present day I may add of Rosati, has always bestowed much care on the production of its _ballets_. I have mentioned (Chapter I.), that the opera in its infancy owed much to the protection of the Popes. The Papal Government in the present day is said to pay special attention to the _ballet_, and to watch with paternal solicitude the _pirouettes_ and _jetés battus_ of the _danseuses_. At least I find a passage to that effect in a work entitled "La Rome des Papes,"[47] the writer declaring that cardinals and bishops attend the Operas of Italy to see that the _ballerine_ swing their legs within certain limits. * * * * * Having seen Rousseau's views of the Opera as it might be, let us now turn to his description of the Opera of Paris as it actually was; a description put into the mouth of St. Preux, the hero of his _Nouvelle Héloise_. * * * * *