‘Twelve youthful pages, pretty and dainty as the pages of opera, slowly entered by a side door under the direction of the chamberlains. They carried torch-holders in wrought silver, containing thick white wax-candles, which they handed to the twelve ministers. The marshal raised his _bâton_, the orchestra from the gallery opposite the emperor slowly began a tuneful _Polonaise_. The bride and bridegroom placed themselves after the ministers, who made the tour of the room, the chamberlain completed the _cortège_, which stopped before the emperor. The bride made a slight curtsey, the emperor rose and offered his arm, the _cortège_ again passed in procession around the room. On returning, the bride invited the empress and made the tour with her. Then the twelve pages approached and took the torches again. The dance continued. The ceremony might have been monotonous but for the infinite variety and richness of the costumes and uniforms, and the liveliness of the music. The twelve pages were quite delicious and marched with all the enthusiasm of youth.’ The German _Rheinländer_ and the _Walzer_ are both dances of the middle class and the city. Whether they ever were danced as folk-dances by the German peasants, we do not know. They probably originated in the mediæval guild circles and spread gradually over the country. The Waltz, as we know it to-day, originated in the eighteenth century in Germany, though the French claim that it is a development of _Volte_, which originally was an old folk-dance of Provence. The _Volte_ was in vogue in France in the sixteenth century. Castil-Blaze writes that ‘the waltz which we again took from the Germans in 1795 had been a French dance for four hundred years.’ The German waltz originated from the widespread folk-song, ‘_Ach du lieber Augustin!_’ which dates back to the middle of the eighteenth century. Gardel introduced it first in his ballet _La Dansomanie_ in 1793 in Paris. But the real vogue for the waltz began after the Czar Alexander the First danced it at his court ball in 1816. Until the masses began to imitate the nobility it was a ‘high society’ dance and such it remained fully half a century, if not longer. The waltz is written in 3/4 rhythm and in eight-bar phrases. It has a gliding step in which the movements of the knees play a conspicuous rôle. Each country developed its particular style of waltz. The Germans and French treated it as a dainty and graceful courtship play. In Scandinavia it grew more heavy and theatrical. In the English waltz the dancers walked up and down the room, occasionally breaking into the step and then pushing the partner backward along the room. The German rule was that the dancers should be able to waltz equally well in all directions, pivoting and crossing the feet when necessary in the reverse turn but the feet should never leave the floor. Waldteufel and Johann Strauss may be considered as the master-composers of the waltz as a social dance. VII