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Show 74 THE CODE OF TERPSICHORE. at Milan ; a theatre much celebrated for its magnificence, and the combination of talent which it usually displays.) That particular position technically termed attitude is the most elegant, but at the same time the most difficult which dancing comprises. It is, in m y opinion, a kind of imitation of the attitude so much admired in the Mercury of J. Bologne. (See fig. 1, plate VIII, and fig. 2. id., which exhibit two side views of it; see also fig. 1, plate IX, representing the statue of Mercury.) A dancer that studies this attitude, and performs it in a chaste manner, cannot but be remarked as one who has acquired the best notions of his art. Nothing can be more agreeable to the eye than those charming positions which we call arabesques, and which we have derived from antique basso relievos, from a few fragments of Greek paintings, and from the paintings in fresco at the Vatican, executed after the beautiful designs of Raphael. Arabica ornamenta, as a term in painting, mean those ornaments, composed of plants, shrubs, light branches and flowers, with which the artist adorns pictures, compartments, frises, panels, &c. As a term of architecture, they signify various fanciful foliages, stalks, &c. with which pediments and entablatures are often embellished. The taste for this sort of ornaments was brought to us' by the Moors and Arabs, from whom they have taken their name. Our dancing-masters have also introduced this term into their art, as expressive of the picturesque groups which they have formed of male and female dancers, interlaced in a thousand different manners, one with another, by means of garlands, crowns, hoops entwined with flowers, and sometimes ancient pastoral instruments, which they hold in their hands. These attitudes, so |