But lest we should wrap ourselves too closely in our self-complacency we should recollect that, at all events so far as the more popular style of dancing is concerned, we have possibly only exchanged vulgarity for banality. The popular taste is a little more queasy than formerly; it demands not lustiness, but prettiness. Prettiness, insignificant but cheerful, is the peculiar note of the _école anglaise_, if such a thing may be said to exist. Lottie Collins left a legacy of style behind her which her successors possibly found to be a _damnosa hereditas_. But they have prudently selected the prettier features and rejected the rest. The most famous exponents of the English method are the girls who have been trained at the well-known schools of Mr John Tiller, in Manchester, London and Paris. So apt was this training to meet the popular taste that the demand for pupils by theatrical and music-hall managers, not only in England but on the Continent, grew with amazing rapidity. The cry in the world of amusement was for Tiller girls and yet more Tiller girls. It is impossible to mistake a Tiller girl. She is invariably young, invariably pretty, and invariably cheerful, if with a somewhat infantine gaiety; and, while she is free from the affected mannerisms of an inferior ballerina, she is a conscientious performer, with a thorough knowledge of her special though limited technique. She usually appears in troupes of eight or ten. The most famous of these are the Palace Girls, chiefly to be seen at the popular theatre of varieties in Shaftesbury Avenue, London. Others with a marked family likeness, better known perhaps on the Continent than in England, are the Houp-La Girls, the Casino Girls, the Ohio Girls, the Snow Drops, the Cocktails, Les Ping Pongs. No provincial pantomime is quite complete without [Illustration: REGINA BADET PREMIÈRE DANSEUSE OF THE PARIS OPERA _Photograph: Central Illustrations_] one or other of them. They are to be found in the Parisian Revues, and on the stages of America, Germany, Austria and even Spain, where they are welcomed as the typical representatives of the English school of dancing. Their charm is of the surface, depending a little upon their science and a great deal upon their maturely immature graces. They go through the same movements in the same manner, at exactly the same time, and with the same unwearying smile. Occasionally they vary the performance with a little singing--simple melodious ditties dealing with bees and honeysuckle, nightingales and the moon, love and the Swiss mountains. But vocal accomplishment is not their strong point. It is not the accent of London or Manchester, but the freshness, the buoyancy, the cheerful innocence, the absence of all excess, the easy execution of simple movements, above all the unimpeachable prettiness, that constitute the chief characteristic of this peculiarly English contribution to the art of the dance.