Kate Vaughan herself was one of the most distinguished dancers England has ever had--distinguished for incomparable grace, finish, and characteristically English refinement of manner. There were no ragged edges to her work. Her art was--as all good art must be--deliberate; her every pose and movement beautiful, and always instinct with the quintessence of a special and personal charm that never failed her to the end. I saw her dance, shortly before her death, at a concert given on behalf of one of the various charities which arose out of the Boer War; and all the art and all the charm which had made Kate Vaughan a stage influence in her time were as amply evident as when she had first delighted us some twenty years before. With the ’eighties came the rise of the Ballet as a regular London institution, on the founding of those two veteran Vaudeville houses, the Empire and the Alhambra, where for about a quarter of a century, practically without interruption, Ballet was the chief item on their always varied and attractive programmes. Of course, there was in 1884 the famous production of Manzotti’s great ballet “Excelsior” at Her Majesty’s Theatre; but it was not really until the opening of the two aforenamed houses that we had a real revival of Ballet in London apart from the Opera, and without that State-aid which the art receives on the Continent. CHAPTER XXXI THE ALHAMBRA: 1854-1903 Both the Alhambra and the Empire were alike in having had a somewhat varied career before they became the rival “homes of English ballet.” There was something like a craze for music-halls in the early ’sixties of last century, and it was probably partly due to this that the Alhambra, which had been opened in 1854 as a Panopticon of the Arts and Sciences (with a Royal Charter granted by Queen Victoria in 1850) failing of its more ambitious purpose, ceased (unsuccessfully) to instruct, and sought (with better success) only to amuse. First it was given over to more or less unorthodox religious services on the Sundays and to boxing contests and wrestling on the week days! Then for a time it came under the direction of a then well-known theatrical manager and speculator, the late Mr. E. T. Smith, who called it the Alhambra, and in 1870 secured a regular music-hall licence. The place was still not very successful. It became a circus for a short time. Then it was taken over by a Mr. William Wilde, of Nottingham, who introduced Leotard, the famous gymnast, about whose wonderful grace and daring London went mad, so much so that on his return visit in 1866, under the late John Hollingshead’s management, he received a salary of £180 a week.