When all is said, the significant fact remaining is--that at this end of the history of an art some two thousand years old we find most recently in popular favour not English ballet as it was in the sixteenth-century days of the essentially English Masque; not French as it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; not Italian, as it was in the ’forties of last century; nor English as we have seen it, at its best, at the Empire and Alhambra in the past quarter of a century; but the Russian ballet! the balance of the arts; which the Russians have only been able to do _by sheer technical efficiency_--quite apart from ideas or ideals expressed--in _all_ the arts of which ballet is composed, and which has enabled them to do exactly that which they have set out to do. That, perhaps, is the one thing that Russian ballet has shown us, which is of the greatest value and significance for any lovers of the art in any capital of the world. [Illustration: _E. O. Hoppé_ Mme. Karsavina and M. Adolf Bolm in “L’Oiseau de Feu”] One may ask, however, what is the position of England in regard not only to ballet, but to the other arts? We have State, and County Council Art and Craft schools; we have the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College, the Guildhall School, and numerous private schools and “academies” where music and the dramatic arts are taught; all admirable as far as they go. We have, as yet, no State-aided theatre and no State-aided opera-house, to which, as on the Continent, an academy for the study of the dance and ballet is attached. Is it not strange that the richest city in the world should be deficient in these things? It may be that there is greater vitality in the arts when they are pursued only under the conditions of competitive, private enterprise; but it is curious that in practically every other country the dramatic arts have been fostered by the State, and that we in this country seem ever to show a greater welcome to foreign singers and dancers than we do to our own. There is, of course, always a great danger that an institution, secure in the support it receives from the State, may become conventional; the spirit of its art may grow arid and unprofitable, but at least it ensures a standard of technical efficiency, and, if there be a vital spirit in the nation, that spirit will show itself in the work of such an institution. Russia has proved all this. Given a National Opera-House, to which were attached a Royal Academy of Dancing, what might the future of Ballet be in this country?