The first Christians, in imitation of the Jews, gave balls in their churches. On the eve of great festivals, and after the close of the love feasts, the young people danced on a stage in the choir. Scaliger thinks that the bishops were called præsules, a præsiliendo, because they set up the dance. Father Heliot has collected curious particulars of these religious or ecclesiastical balls, which were suppressed by the council of Carthage, in 397, under Pope Gregory. Since that period, the idea seems to have been continually gaining ground, that the happiness of man is displeasing to the deity, and that joyous rites may not form a part of public worship. This prejudice is injurious to the

state.

Quintilian recommends dancing to the orator, and Locke to the gentleman; but its most important value is to the soldier. Because the French are a people of dancers, they carry agility and skill in the military exercises further than their neighbours. In proportion as the imminence of domestic defence increases, government ought to patronize among the common people a taste for dancing. Instead of roasting oxen whole, kindling bonfires, and distributing porter, a victory or peace should be celebrated by a popular hop. Those cotton mills and spinning engines, which inflict a sedentary and unwholesome confinement on the adolescent, ought in atonement to cater for their pleasures, and to attach a dancing-master to the establishment. The subscribers to Sunday-schools should provide, after mental fatigue, bodily recreation for their pupils, and engage a dancing usher to marshal the sports of the children. Not only musicians, but dancers should be attached to every regiment by the secretary at war, and stationed in every barrack, that cheap instruction in the art of dancing may every where be within reach. The physical education of the poor has too long and too inhumanly been neglected: we steep their youth in ceaseless azotic confinement, and rear a melancholy band of withered and distorted carcases. Come back to our temples, ye Graces and ye Sports; joy, health, and beauty, are inseparable attendants of your train!

A. A. R.

EXTRACT

FROM" NEW TALES OF MY LANDLORD.” DAVID alone acted as Lady Staunton's guide, and promised to show her a cascade in the hills, grander and higher than any they had yet seen.* * *

The scene when they reached it, amply rewarded the labour of the walk. A single shoot carried a considerable stream over the face of a black rock, which contrasted strongly in colour with the white foam of the cascade; and, at the depth of about twenty feet, another rock intercepted the view of the bottom of the fall. The water, wheeling out far beneath, swept round the crag, which thus bounded their view, and tumbled down the rocky glen in a torrent of foam. Those who love nature always desire to penetrate into its utmost recesses; and Lady Staunton asked David whether there was not some mode of gaining a view of the abyss at the foot of the fall. He said that he knew a station on the shelf at the further side of the intercepting rock, from which the whole waterfall was visible, but that the road to it was steep and slippery, and dangerous. Bent, however, on gratifying her curiosity, she desired him to lead the way; and accordingly he did so, over crag and stone, anxiously pointing out to her the resting places where she ought to step, for their made of advancing soon ceased to be walking, and became scrambling.

In this manner, clinging like sea-birds to the face of the rock, they were enabled at length to turn round it, and came full in front of the fall, which here had a most tremendous aspect, boiling, roaring, and thundering, with unceasing din, into a black cauldron a hundred feet at least below them, which resembled the crater of a volcano. The din, the dashing of the waters, which gave an unsteady appearance to all around them, the trembling even of the huge crag on which they stood, the precariousness of their footing, for there was scarce room for them to stand on the shelf of the rock which they had thus attained, had so powerful an effect on the senses and imagination of

Lady Staunton, that she called out to David she was falling, and would, in fact, have dropped from the crag had he not caught hold of her.* **

She now screamed with terror, though without hope of calling any one to her assistance. To her amazement, the scream was answered by a whistle from above, of a tone so clear and shrill, that it was heard even amid the noise of the waterfall.

In this moment of terror and perplexity, a human face, black, and having grizzled hair hanging down over the forehead and cheeks, and mixing with moustaches and a beard of the same colour, and as much matted and tangled, looked down on them from a broken part of the rock above.

"It is the enemy!" said the boy, who had nearly become incapable of supporting Lady Staunton.

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No, no!" she exclaimed, inaccessible to supernatural terrors, and restored to the presence of mind of which she had been deprived by the danger of her situation; "it is a man-For God's sake, my friend, help us!"

The face glared at them, but made no answer. In a second or two afterwards, another, that of a young lad, appeared beside the first, equally swart and begrimed, but having tangled black hair, descending in elf locks, which gave an air of wildness and ferocity to the whole expression of the countenance. Lady Staunton repeated her entreaties, clinging to the rock with more energy, as she found that, from the superstitious terror of her guide, he became incapable of supporting her. Her words were probably drowned in the roar of the falling stream; for, though she observed the lips of the younger, before whom she supplicated, move as he spoke in reply, not a word reached her ear.

A moment afterwards it appeared he had not mistaken the nature of her supplication, which, indeed, was easy to be understood from her situation and gestures. The younger apparition disappeared, and immediately after lowered a ladder of twisted oziers, about eight feet in length, and made signs to David to hold it fast while the lady ascended.