I can’t help thinking (of course, on the fox and sour grapes principle), whenever I see a very accomplished male dancer, as when I look upon a first-rate amateur billiard-player, on the immense amount of time the man must have wasted to acquire a useless and frivolous art. Yet I remember the fox and the grapes, and suppress my rising sneer. Dancing to those who like it, and can dance gracefully, is an innocent and cheerful recreation. It does my heart good sometimes to see the little tiny children in our crowded London courts and alleys waltzing and polkaing to the Italian organ-grinder’s music; and I shall be sorry for the day when some new Oliver Cromwell or Puritan government—we may have another in time—may denounce and put down “public dancing and dancing academies.” But why should the dancing academy column in the “Times” advertisements possess more than general attractions for me? Is it that I have a sneaking inclination to visit one of these establishments as a pupil; take six private lessons from Miss Leonora Geary, or Mrs. Nicholas Henderson—I could never dare to face Madame Mélanie Duval, or the Semiramis of dancing mistresses, Madame Michau Adelaïde—study the fashionable steps in secret, and then burst upon the world as an adept in the _Schottische_, the _Cellarius_, and the _Deux Temps_? Alas! I do not even know the names of the fashionable dances of the day, and very probably those to which I have alluded are by this time old fashioned, out of date, rococo, and pigtaily. But I have a theory that every man must dance before he dies, and that of the choreographic art we may say as of love— “Whoe’er thou art, thy master see, Who is, or was, or is to be.” And I shall dance, I suppose, some of these days, although my nerves be shrunk, my blood be cold, and hair white, and Death scrape away on the fiddle, as in Hans Holbein’s shudder-giving panorama. Mr. William M’Connell, however, the young gentleman who is my artistic _fides achates_ in this horological undertaking, is, I am given to understand, a complete master of this desirable accomplishment, and a finished adept in its various mysteries. In this case, therefore, the leader has become the led, and I am grateful to him for his service as cicerone in introducing me to the domains of Terpsichore.