These _ballet_ dances are, we now see, generally attempted. I may say _attempted_, for not one young woman in five hundred, can, from the very nature of the thing, after all her study, perform them better than could be done any day by the commonest _figurante_ on the stage. We all know, that to be a fine opera-dancer, requires unremitting practice, and a certain disciplining of the limbs, which hardly any private gentlewoman would consent to undergo. Hence, ladies can never hope to arrive at any comparison with even the poorest public professor of the art; and therefore, to attempt the extravagancies of it, is as absurd as it is indelicate. The utmost in dancing to which a gentlewoman ought to aspire, is an agile and graceful movement of her feet, an harmonious motion with her arms, and a corresponding easy carriage of her whole body. But, when she has gained this proficiency, should she find herself so unusually mistress of the art as to be able, in any way, to rival the professors by whom she has been taught, she must ever hold in mind, that _the same style of dancing is not equally proper for all kinds of dances_. For instance, the English country-dance and the French cotillon require totally different movements. I know that it is a common thing to introduce all the varieties of opera-steps into the simple figure of the former. This ill-judged fashion is inconsistent with the character of the dance, and consequently so destroys the effect, that no pleasure is produced to the eye of the judicious spectator by so discordant an exhibition. The characteristic of an English country-dance is that of _gay simplicity_. The steps should be few and easy, and the corresponding motion of the arms and body unaffected, modest, and graceful. Before I go further on the subject, I cannot but stop a little to dwell more particularly on the necessity there is for more attention than we usually find paid to the management of the arms, and general person, in dancing. In looking on at a ball, perhaps you will see that every woman, in a dance of twenty couple, moves her feet with sufficient attention to beauty and elegance; but, with regard to the deportment, of the rest of the person, most likely you will not discover one in a hundred who seems to know more about it than the most uncultivated damsel that ever jogged at a village wake. I cannot exactly describe what it is that we see in the carriage of our young ladies in the dance; for it is difficult to point out a want by any other expression than a negative. But it is only requisite for my readers to recall to memory the many inanimate, ungraceful forms, from the waist upwards, that they nightly see at balls, and I need not describe more circumstantially.