His education had been of a kind that should incline him to take, as Bacon did, “all knowledge,” for his province. Madrolle, the famous French publicist of his period, described Blasis as “a man of the most comprehensive mind that he had ever known,” and further declared him “a universal genius.” Indeed, though he achieved fame as a _maître de ballet_, he seems really to have been a sort of super-maître of all the arts. He was born at Naples on November 4th, 1803, the son of Francesco Blasis and Vincenza Coluzzi Zurla Blasis, both, it is said, of noble descent. The family claimed an ancestry reaching back beyond the reigns of Tiberius and Augustus, when there were patricians known as the Blasii. Machiavelli mentions the same family, and various monuments in Italy and Sicily bear the name of De Blasis. When Carlo was two years old, his father, who had forsaken the ancestral profession of the sea for literature and music, took his family from Naples to Marseilles, where the _De_ was dropped, for political reasons, and the name became simply Blasis. Having studied the tastes and tendencies of his children somewhat carefully Francesco determined to give his son Carlo a thorough grounding in the classics and the fine arts. His daughter Teresa was taught singing and the pianoforte; and his younger daughter Virginia, who was born at Marseilles, was destined to Opera. It must be set to the credit of the fond father’s discernment and influence that each of his children achieved distinction in their own sphere and day. The education of Carlo, we are told in a contemporary biography, “was at once literary and artistic and theatrical.” He showed such enthusiasm and ability in his studies that it was said that he might easily have become a painter, a composer of music, or a dancer and ballet-master. He finally chose the last as his profession owing to the fact that it offered more lucrative prospects as well as combining all the varied opportunities for artistic expression which his young soul craved. In other directions, however, his general education was not neglected, and the subjects he studied all came to be employed in the profession he had chosen, rendering him valuable assistance in dancing, pantomime and the composition of ballets. In later life when asked how he came to get through such masses of work as he did he used to declare: “_Le temps ne manque jamais à qui sait l’employer_,” and to add Tissot’s saying: “_Dormons, dormons, très peu; vivons toute notre vie, et pendant trois semaines que nous avons à vivre, ne dormons pas, ne soyons pas morts, pendant quinze jours._” Indeed, he _lived_ every minute of his incessantly active life, and in his later years seldom worked less than fifteen hours a day.