In London Ballet was in almost the same state as in Paris, but not quite, possibly because having been always imported at its best, it had had less opportunity of becoming hide-bound by tradition at its worst, as in the case of an old-established continental school. For the continued production of soundly artistic ballet the existence of a good school is a necessity, a school founded and sustained on right principles. But in its continued existence there is inevitably danger of ultimate stultification from the “setting” of the very tradition it has created, unless there is a perpetual infusion of new ideas. In Paris the new idea was not then encouraged, if it came counter to the traditional technique of which the Vestris, father and son, were the supreme exponents. In London there was more freedom, because there was less of tradition; and while we had to wait until the mid-’forties for the productions which were to the Londoners of the early Victorian period what the Russian ballet has been to Londoners in recent years, there was some fairly sound work being done here from 1795 to 1840. I have, among my books, a volume of libretti of ballets composed by Didelot and produced at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, from 1796 to 1800. It contains “Sappho and Phaon,” _grand ballet érotique, en quatre actes_; “L’Amour Vengé,” _ballet épisodique, en deux actes, dans le genre anacréontique_; “Flore et Zephire,” _ballet-divertissement_, in one act; “The Happy Shipwreck, or The Scotch Witches,” a dramatic ballet in three acts; “Acis and Galatea,” a pastoral ballet in one act; and “Laura et Lenza, or The Troubadour,” a grand ballet in two acts, “performed for the first time for the benefit of Madame Hilligsberg,” who played Laura. “Laura and Lenza,” is of particular interest to us to-day, for among the performers, in addition to M. Didelot, who played the troubadour hero, Lenza, was a M. Deshayes--a capable dancer and producer of ballet in London and Paris--and a Mr. d’Egville, bearer of a name which is well-known in both cities at the present day. “Flora et Zephire,” was the most popular, and was frequently revived even as late as the ’thirties, when Marie Taglioni made her _début_ in it at King’s Theatre, for Laporte’s benefit, on June 3rd, 1830. Both in Paris and London, however, during the first two decades of the nineteenth century Ballet was comparatively undistinguished and it was not really until the ’thirties that it began to assume new interest. True, there were in Paris, some remarkable exponents of advanced technique as regards dancing, but in the glamour of technical achievement the greater idea of the art of Ballet was somewhat obscured.