_Le Corsair_ may be considered as the last of the cycle of the grand ballets. Rosati, the last of the great _danseuses_, took the part of Medora. An immense sum was expended upon it, but in spite of the splendour of the production it was a failure. The tide had already turned. Only twice after the fifties did London see anything like a revival of the former splendours of the ballet. The dancing of Madame Dore in _Babil and Bijou_ at Covent Garden in 1872 achieved the distinction of calling forth an enthusiastic article in _The Spectator_, but the unusualness of such a notice only served to show how completely the ballet had ceased to be regarded as a serious art-form. Shortly afterwards, Marenco, the Italian _maître de ballet_, produced _Excelsior_. After having been played with enormous success in Italy, it was seen in Paris and New York, and finally appeared in England at Her Majesty’s in 1885. It had an allegorical meaning agreeable to the spirit of the time, representing the conflict between progress and superstition, invention and reaction. It took a place apart from all contemporary ballets, not so much because of the dancing of individuals--Adelina Rossi was the _prima ballerina_--as on account of the artistry of its design, the beauty of the general movement, the ingenious handling of crowds. In the seventies the ballet entered into a new phase of life, or, as some would say, decline. Ejected from the opera house, it found a refuge in the theatres of varieties that were then coming into existence. Naturally it changed its character not a little when it left Covent Garden and entered Leicester Square. Twenty-five or thirty years ago, if one went to the Empire or the Alhambra, the Oxford or the Pavilion, one did not choose to have it known. The music-hall was not a proper subject of conversation at the dinner-table or the tea-party. No respectable British matron would have dreamed of being seen within its walls, much less of taking her daughters there. The most expensive seats in the Alhambra in those days, it should be remembered, were three shillings. It was largely owing to the ballet, however, that these houses were lifted into another atmosphere and began to attract a class of audience that would never have entered Leicester Square to see a variety show.