As England never produced a great school of dancing, the vicissitudes of the ballet in this country fluctuated with its fortunes abroad. The French Revolution brought about the break-up, in 1789, of the _Communeauté des Maîtres à danser_ founded by Louis XIV. Whenever the spirit of a people has been caught up in the great winds of emotion which sweep over the world with an invariable periodicity, the dance has always been the most immediate expression of the popular excitement. Perhaps France never danced so madly as during the Revolution. Paris danced between the massacres. The revolutionary spirit embodied itself in the Carmagnole. But it was the dance of the people, not the dance of art, that flourished during the Revolution. The _grand ballet_, in spite of an attempt to make it a vehicle for political ideas, languished. Among his multitudinous interests, however, Napoleon appears to have included a concern for the art of dancing, and in his enumeration of the requisites of his Egyptian expedition “a troupe of ballet girls” figures among the quota of cannon and ammunition. A consequence of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which does not usually figure in the pages of the historian, was that the supply of Parisian _danseuses_ for the English stage was cut off for a generation or more. Even for some years after the peace, the French were inclined to keep their best performers for themselves and sent over to England only their discarded favourites. The golden period of the ballet in England began in the twenties of the nineteenth century and lasted until the fifties. In 1821 a determined effort was made to secure some of the most dazzling stars of the Parisian ballet. The difficulties to be overcome were not light, for, as the Parisian dancers were trained in an academy maintained by the state, none could leave the country without the permission of the Government. The British ambassador was himself charged with the negotiations. After many pourparlers, a treaty was drawn up, signed and sealed, by which one of the two high-contracting parties agreed to loan to the other two first and two second dancers from the Academy, while the other in return was to pledge itself not to attempt to import any other dancer without the Academy’s consent.