the poetic character of the story, and the entire stage effect achieved formed an exquisite setting for the dancer-mimes who were to interpret the dramatic little idyll. So runs, in brief, the chronicle of ballet at the Empire, one which, if it is somewhat attenuated in later years by the increasing emphasis of that somewhat casual type of entertainment, the “Revue,” is nevertheless quite remarkable when one remembers that of the sixty or more ballets produced at the famous house in twenty-seven years all were commercially as well as artistically successful, and that the theatre has not received State-aid, as have the continental opera-houses where Ballet has been a staple attraction. Thoughtless folk, who know little or nothing of the hard, unremitting toil which goes to make a dancer, or of the artistic training, thought and feeling which go to make a designer or producer of ballet, often speak lightly and slightingly of a type of theatrical production in which are blended colour, form, movement and music into a balanced harmony of varied arts under the term the art of Ballet. They rank it, usually, somewhere lower than Drama or Opera. But the placing of a colour in a colour scheme requires quite as delicate a taste as the placing of a word in a sentence, or a chord in a phrase of music; the introduction of a dancer or a group needs just as critical a care as the introduction of a character in a play or opera; and the telling of the story, albeit mutely mimed, may be just as dramatic in effect as in any verbal drama. The art of Ballet is a complex and beautiful art, at its best a very beautiful; and those who are prone to dismiss it lightly as a thing that more or less occurs of itself, and is of slight account as a vehicle for the deliberate expression of beauty, should rather feel proud to think that at the Empire in London we have seen, in the course of a quarter of a century, Ballet of such artistic value as to place it among the few real art influences of nineteenth and early twentieth-century London. CHAPTER XXXV FINALE: THE RUSSIANS AND--THE FUTURE It is curious to recall the fact that a taste for dancing has always been a characteristic of the Londoners, who have supported really artistic ballet as often as they have had an opportunity. The Elizabethan masques; the ballet dancers imported by Rich in the reign of Anne; and by Garrick, later; by Lumley at Her Majesty’s in the ’forties; the native productions of Ballet at the Empire and Alhambra for over a quarter of a century; and, since, the importation of Russian ballet, first at various “vaudeville” theatres and then at Covent Garden and at Drury Lane, have all met with enthusiastic support, and the support has been as catholic as it has been cordial.