may say what they please, about those only opposing this capering vice, who cannot dance themselves. They may tell us, that Lord Byron wrote his fretful satire upon waltzing, because his lordship could not participate in that fashionable dance, owing to his _club foot_. They may preach, that the ignorant alone complain of those accomplishments which they cannot attain themselves; that the dances in practice, from time immemorial, among our ancestors, were equally objectionable as those we now adopt and admire, which certain bold critics, going beyond their province, dare to denounce as dangerous innovations, savoring of foreign modes and manners, licentious and demoralizing. All this will not do, Mr. Editor. Dancing is dangerous, and _the waltz especially_: and a virtuous and intelligent community will unite, I feel assured, to frown these vicious amusements out of society, and consign them to the barbarous regions whence they were so irreverently introduced among us. This mania for dancing, waltzing, &c., is the bane of every social circle. Do you go to pass the evening sociably with your friend, where you have a vague instinctive idea you will meet the pretty creature you passed in the street, on the Thursday previous--you will enter--your fondest anticipations are realized--you draw your chair towards her, and fall into a charming tete-a-tete, with the dear object for whom you already conceive a nascent passion--who has made you lose a whole week's sleep, break your mirror, tear your black silk _bonnet de nuit_ into fragments, and kick your faithful _valet de chambre_ down stairs, because your laundress has failed to impart the due degree of rigidity to your collar linen. Now you promise yourself a full indemnity for all the _contre-temps_ of the past week--you are just arranging a most pleasant excursion with the lady the next afternoon, when, alas! the vanity of human hopes! an impertinent coxcomb, whose only merit consists in a well arranged dress and capacious whiskers, demands the honor of the lady's hand for the next waltz. Odious, detested waltz! You have too much taste to dance yourself: your _inamorata_, however, must yield to the unrelenting tyranny of fashion, and you are left in a posture of _amiable_ abstraction, musing on the provoking scene enacting before you. To sit quietly and await the termination of the dance, might not be an unattainable effort of patience; but to see her partner's place supplied again and again--you take leave of hope and the company together, and pass the next week to the manifest infringement of your own peace of mind, and your aforesaid ill-fated valet's physical comforts.