The Ballet had grown formalised, stale. Taglioni came as spirit from another sphere to infuse new vitality and idealism into its wearied splendour, and she provided jaded opera lovers with a new thrill. After her Parisian _début_, she was re-engaged for the following year and returned in the April of 1828 to win further admiration in “Les Bayadères,” and “Lydie” and “Psyché”; then, the year after, in “La Belle au Bois dormant,” a fifteen years’ engagement being finally offered to her at the Opera, with intervals of absence sufficient to enable her to pay visits to Germany, Russia, Italy and England, when, in every country, she achieved fresh triumphs. Her London _début_ at the benefit of Laporte, manager at Her Majesty’s Theatre, took place on June 3rd, 1830, in Didelot’s ballet of “Flore et Zephire.” A contemporary account of her dancing says: “Taglioni unquestionably combines the finest requisites for eminence in her art. The union she displays of muscular ability with the most feminine delicacy of frame and figure is truly extraordinary. A charming simplicity, the principal characteristic of her demeanour on the stage--an utter absence of that false consequence and _bombast_ of carriage and manner which have so peculiarly marked too many artistes of our time; and a native grace and matchless precision in her movements, even those in which the most astonishing difficulties are conquered, and which yet appear to demand of _her_ no effort, leave us delighted with the _fairyism_ of the lovely being before us ... and enchant us into forgetfulness of the unwearied perseverance and application by which, in aid of the lavish gifts of Nature, such unrivalled excellence has been attained.” Every contemporary account of Taglioni insists always on that one note, the _idealism_ of her art. The late Mme. Katti-Lanner, who saw her dance, told me once that she appeared like some fairy being always about to soar away from the earth to which she seemed so little to belong. Was it not Victor Hugo who inscribed a volume which he sent to her: “_à vos pieds--à vos ailes_”? It was but natural then that she should be the ideal exponent of the title-_rôle_ in that graceful Ballet “Sylphide,” which was produced at Paris on March 14th, 1832.