Probably those who are trying to revive the Classical Dance would succeed in getting closer to its spirit if they were to add to their study of the figures on ancient vases and frescoes an observation of the living Spanish dance of to-day. The gesture of a people has a more ancient and unchanging history than its speech, and it is unquestionable that much of the gesture of the ancient world has been preserved among the Spanish people, who still retain something of the inner spirit as well as of the outward circumstances of the ancient civilisation. Many of the poses found in the Greek figurines are essentially those of Spanish women; the play of the arms and hands, the sideward movement, the extreme backward extension of the head and body, are movements common both to the Greek and the Spanish dance. The castanet, which is invariably associated with Spanish dancing, was also used in Greece. The dancing that persists in Spain is almost certainly of a kind that was once common all round the shores of the Mediterranean. It has of course been modified by an Oriental influence, but it possessed its special characteristics long before the coming of the Moors. In the early days of the Roman Empire the dancers of Cadiz created a furore in Rome comparable to that which the Russians have aroused in the Paris and London of to-day. Spanish dancing has been made familiar to French and English audiences by several dancers of repute, of whom the best known are Carmencita, Otero, Guerrero and Tortajada. There are some kinds of dancing, however, which are untranslatable into the terms of the art of other countries. The Spanish dance is intensely national. The snapping of the castanets, the short and insolent skirt, the exciting rhythm of the music, do not alone suffice for the performance of the _jota_ or the _fandango_, as some foreign artists would appear to suppose; nor even when the dancer has caught the trick of the swaying of the hips, the lightning of the eyes, the arched back and provocative gestures, has she caught the spirit of the dance. She must first transform herself into a Spaniard. The Spanish dance depends almost wholly on personality; and not on the personality of the dancer alone, for it is one of those dances which seem to require an indefinable “rapport” between the dancer and the spectator. Mr Havelock Ellis has drawn attention to this feature in an interesting passage in “The Soul of Spain.” One of the characteristics of Spanish dancing, he says, “lies in its accompaniments, and particularly in the fact that under proper conditions all the spectators are themselves performers. In flamenco dancing, among an audience of the people, every one takes a part by rhythmic clapping and stamping, and by the occasional prolonged ‘olés’ and other cries by which the dancer is encouraged or applauded. Thus the dance is not the spectacle for the amusement of a languid and passive public, as with us. It is rather the