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Show THEORY OF THEATRICAL DANCING. 109 ment of melody or harmony of voice and instrument, perform their parts. On this account it is that Ovid gives to the arms of a dancer, the epithet of numerous instead of harmonious. " This dancer, delighting in gesture, gently moves her numerous arms, gracefully inclines or turns with ease her beauteous body."-METASTASIO. 10. Statuaries, painters, and antiquaries, give the upper part of the body the name of torse; but we arc here obliged to make use of such terms as are generally employed in our dancing schools. 11. W e ought rather to say, the point of junction of the humerus or shoulder-bone with the radius or lower bone of the arm ; but our scholars will better understand it by the name of saigndc- 12. I cannot refrain from paying, in this place, due homage to that great sculptor, the Praxiteles and perhaps the Phidias, of our age. His talents have placed him on a level with Michael Angelo, Fiamingo, Algardi, and other sublime geniuses, that Italy can boast of having produced. Canova alone holds the sceptre of modern sculpture*. His numerous works, dispersed through all Europe, are known by that softness of contour, that infinite expression, that enchanting simplicity, that natural grace and rare suavity, which have been so much admired and extolled by all who have bad the pleasure of seeing his Hebe% Madeleine, Paris, Venus, Cupid and Psyche, Daedalus, Dancer, Muse, &c. II ne manque rien a ces charmantes sculptures, Ni le melange exquis des plus aimables choses, Ni ce charme secret, dont l'ceil est enchant^, Ni la grace plus belle encor que la beaute\ L A FONTAINE. Let the beholder, after he has been charmed with the ease, purity, delicacy, and lightness that reign so conspicuously in these delightful statues, turn to the contemplation of the grand sublimity which this immortal sculptor has displayed in his Hercules defeating Lychas; in his Theseus, conqueror of the Centaurs, aud in many other of his productions of the same class. The statue of M . Letizia is remarkable for that noble simplicity by which the Greek chisel is so easily distinguished. 13. I myself have had a convincing proof of this. After receiving the first rudiments of dancing and studying sometime at the school of a coryphaeus, my * When this work first appeared, this artist was still living. |