as they were once called, have certainly ceased to be.  Once standing, as it were, on the tips of their toes, they supported opera upon their shoulders.  But now there are no dancers at the opera.  Euterpe has dispensed with the aid of Terpsichore; the ballet has fled from the boards of our lyric theatres.  It has been said, indeed, that the ballet d’action has never been really naturalised in this country; that although it has thrived for a while, it was but an exotic, needing careful watching and tending.  Still it was for many years a most prosperous entertainment, especially at our Italian opera-house; and it is to be noted that its decline has not been confined to this country.  Even in France, its natural home and headquarters, ballet is by no means what it once was.  It lives, perhaps, but in a fallen state.  There is no danseuse now really of the first class.  Has the ballet declined on this account, or is this to be ascribed to the decline of the ballet?  Or can it be that the dances of the streets have overcome and ousted from their due position the dances of the stage?

After Mdlle. la Fontaine came Mdlles.  Roland and Prevost; the famous Camargo and her rival Salle, of whom some mention has already been made; Mdlle.  Marie Madeleine Guimard, exquisitely graceful and fascinating, but of such slender proportions that she obtained the surname of “le squelette des Graces,” while witty but malicious, perhaps jealous, Sophie Arnould described her as “the spider;” Mafleuroy, who married Boeldieu, and Mercandotti, who married Mr. Ball Hughes, otherwise “Golden Ball,” the greatest gambler of his time, which is saying a good deal; Noblet and the Ellslers; Pauline Leroux, who became the wife of Lafont, the most elegant actor of the modern theatre; Duvernay and Taglioni—­to name no more, for we have now come to surviving artists—­these are among the more famous of the “Reines de la Danse” who have ruled absolutely at the Academie Royale of Paris and elsewhere.

In England ballet has enjoyed many triumphs, while it has nevertheless experienced sundry disasters.  There was great trouble, for instance, at Drury-lane Theatre in 1755, when Mr. Garrick’s “Chinese Festival” with its French dancers was sternly, even savagely, condemned by the audience.  The manager was over-fond of spangles and spectacles, or inclined to over-estimate his public’s regard for such matters, and a sharp but necessary lesson was read to him upon that occasion.  Then he was very obstinate, and in such wise roused the British lion inordinately.  He would not withdraw the play from his stage; promptly the audience determined that no stage should be left him upon which to represent either the “Chinese Festival” or anything else.  Of course he had to yield at last, as managers must when playgoers are resolute; he had to live by pleasing, not displeasing.  But he did not give way until there had been some six nights of uproar and riot.  In vain did various noble lords and