The Dance and Ballet had made progress during the past two centuries and had reached the point when, unable to attain to greater perfection of technique, it needed some fresh artistic inspiration. Italy, however, had long been degenerate as regards the Dance, her whole artistic ambition having expressed itself in Opera and an unrivalled excellence in vocal technique. So that towards the end of the eighteenth century and for half the nineteenth, her singers were unmatched throughout the world. The introduction of French dancers and the production of some of the ballets of French composers turned the attention of the lovers of _bel Canto_ to the possibilities of the sister art. Noverre had produced some of his ballets at Milan, and his methods and artistic taste gradually spread through Italy, his influence being further extended by several of his Italian pupils, such as Rossi and Angiolini. It was not, however, until Carlo Blasis came to preside over the Imperial Academy of Dancing and Pantomime at Milan, 1837, that the Italian ballet began to assume any importance, and the Milan Academy, becoming recognised as the first in Europe, came in turn to influence Paris, London and other capitals of the world. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that probably every opera house which has been established a century owes something directly or indirectly to the genius of Carlo Blasis, who in his enthusiasm for, and appreciation of, the Dance and Ballet, and in his ability to write thereon was another Noverre, but with an even wider range of talent and scholarship. In the history of art there can be few records of such amazing power of assimilation, combined with a high standard of achievement. We have but to glance at a list of his works, to realise this. While the theory and practice of dancing were his leading theme, one to which he returned again and again, few things failed to stimulate his interest and his pen. “_Observations sur le Chant et sur l’Expression de la Musique Dramatique_” were a series of essays contributed to a London paper. He wrote considerably on the art of Pantomime. He contributed biographies of Garrick and of Fuseli to a Milan periodical; and another of Pergolesi to a German paper. A dissertation on “Italian Dramatic Music in France,” was another of his subjects. He left in manuscript works on François Premier; on Lucan and his poem of Pharsalia; on Alexander the Great; on the Influence of the Italian Genius upon the World; on the then Modern Greek Dances; on “_La Grande Epoque de Louis XV en France, en Italie, et en Angleterre_”; a “Lexicon of Universal Erudition”; while perhaps the greatest of his works--according to contemporary criticism--was “_L’Uomo Fisico, Intellettuale e Morale_,” a book of some thousand pages.