In those racy old times, when the manners and usages of Irishmen were more simple and pastoral than they are at present, dancing was cultivated as one of the chief amusements of life, and the dancing-master looked upon as a person essentially necessary to the proper enjoyment of our national recreation. Of all the amusements peculiar to our population, dancing is by far the most important, although certainly much less so now than it has been, even within our own memory. In Ireland it may be considered as a very just indication of the spirit and character of the people; so much so, that it would be extremely difficult to find any test so significant of the Irish heart, and its varied impulses, as the dance, when contemplated in its most comprehensive spirit. In the first place, no people dance so well as the Irish, and for the best reason in the world, as we shall show. Dancing, every one must admit, although a most delightful amusement, is not a simple, nor distinct, nor primary one. On the contrary, it is merely little else than a happy and agreeable method of enjoying music; and its whole spirit and character most necessarily depend upon the power of the heart to _feel_ the melody to which the limbs and body move. Every nation, therefore, remarkable for a susceptibility of music, is also remarkable for a love of dancing, unless religion or some other adequate obstacle, arising from an anomalous condition of society, interposes to prevent it. Music and dancing being in fact as dependent the one on the other as cause and effect, it requires little argument to prove that the Irish, who are so sensitively alive to the one, should in a very high degree excel at the other; and accordingly it is so.