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Show RISE AND PROGRESS OF DANCING. 23 As the Italians, in general, prefer strong emotions of terror in their theatrical amusements, their ballet-masters have chiefly succeeded in historical and tragical subjects. The French, on the contrary, are fond of the soft sentiments of refined love and tenderness; their composers dedicate themselves, therefore, almost exclusively to the anacreontic kind 34. From all that I have hitherto said, we perceive that poetry, music and dancing, have agreeably occupied every nation. These arts, which are innate in man, could not, from the pleasure they afforded, fail of being cultivated. They were duly appreciated and esteemed. The orientals, from w h o m we received our first instructions in every thing, speak constantly in their favour. W e all know how much music, and dancing in particular, are valued and practised among the Chinese, and cannot but own that these three arts have possessed an absolute sway over all those nations that enjoy a clear atmosphere and a beautiful sky. The Iroquois, and even the Hurons, have their dances, their pantomimes and their music. The Italian comedians (in 1725) gave a very curious novelty at their theatre, in Paris, which occurs to m e as a proof of m y argument in the foregoing paragraph:-" T w o savages, about twenty-five years of age, tall and well made, (says the author of the Mercure de France, Vol. II.) who lately came from Louisiana, performed three different sorts of dances, together and separately, and that in such a manner as not to leave the least doubt of their having learnt their steps and leaps at an immense distance from Paris. Their gestures are, undoubtedly, very easily understood in their country, but here nothing can be more difficult to make out. The first dancer represented a chief of his nation, rather more modestly dressed than the Louisianians gene- 2* |