over their vassals, kept an executioner for purposes of domestic torture, as they kept a seneschal to carve their meats; or as people now keep a chef or a maître d'hôtel. In those excellent olden times of Europe, hangmen, doubtless, carried about written characters from lord to lord, certifying their experience with rope and axe—branding-iron and thong. So long as the Inquisition afforded constant work for able hands, a good hangman out of place must have been a treasure! Had there been register-offices or newspaper advertisements, there probably would have appeared—
"WANTS A SITUATION—An able-bodied, middle-aged man, without encumbrance, who can have an undeniable character from his last situation, as headsman, hangman, and general executioner. He is accustomed to the use of thumbikins and the most approved and fashionable modes of torture; and officiated for many years as superintendent of the wheel of a foreign prince, renowned for the neatness of his rack. Drawing and quartering in all their branches. Pressing to death performed in the most economical style. Impalement in the Turkish manner; and the pile, as practised by the best Smithfield hands, &c. &c. &c."
Independent, indeed, of the high prosperity and vast perquisites of such posts as executioner of the Tower of London or the Grève of Paris, there was honour and satisfaction in the office. A royal master knew when he was well served. Henry III. stood by, in his chateau of Blois, to see, not only the heads severed from the dead bodies of the Duke and Cardinal de Guise, but their flesh cut into small pieces, preparatory to being burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds. "His majesty," says an eyewitness, "stood in a pool of blood to witness the hacking of the bodies."
This Italian gusto for the smell of blood, appears to have been introduced into the palaces of France from those of Italy by alliance with the Medici—those ennobled pawnbrokers of the middle ages, whose parvenu taste engendered the fantastic gilding of the renaissance, which they naturalized in the Tuileries and at Fontainbleau, in common with the stiletto and acqua tofana of their poisoners, and the fatalism of their judicial astrology.
But enough of Catharine de Medicis and her sanguinary son—enough of Henry Tudor and his savage daughters—enough of the monstrous professions flourishing in their age of monstrosities. And turn we for relief to the exquisite vocation completing the antithesis—the vocation whose execution is that of pas de zéphyrs, and the tortures of whose infliction are the tortures of the tender heart!
The calling of the danseuse, we repeat, is among the most lucrative of modern times, and nearly the most influential. The names of Taglioni and Elssler are as European, nay, as universal, as those of Wellington and Talleyrand-Metternich or Thiers; and modern statesmanship and modern diplomacy show pale beside the Machiavelism of the coulisses.
With what pomp of phraseology are the triumphs and movements of these danseuses announced, by the self-same journal which despatches, with a stroke of the pen, the submission of a province or revolution of a kingdom! One poor halfpenny-worth, or half a line, suffices for the death of a sultana; while fiery columns precede the departure and arrival of the steamer honoured by conveying across the Atlantic some ethereal being, whose light fantastic toe is to give the law to the United States. Her appearance in the Ecclesiastic States, on the other hand, is announced in Roman capitals; and her triumphal entry into St Petersburg received with regiments of notes of admiration!!!
Were Taglioni, by the malediction of Providence, to break her leg, what corner of the civilized earth but would sympathize in the casualty? Or were Elssler epidemically carried off, on the same day with the Pope, the Archbishop of Dublin, a chancellor of an university, an historiographer, or astronomer-royal—which would be most cared for by society at large, or to which would the public journals distribute the larger share of their dolefuls?
Nor is it alone the levities of Europe which have encompassed with a gaseous atmosphere of enthusiasm these idols of the day. We appeal to our sober, plodding, painstaking brother Jonathan. We move for returns of the sums he has expended on his beloved Fanny, and for notes of the honours conferred upon her, not only on the boards of his theatres and in the publicity of his causeways, but amid the august nationalities of his senate! "Fanny Elssler in Congress" has become as historical as the name of Washington! As if for the purpose of proving that extremes meet, the democrats of the New World were demonstrating the wildest infatuation in favour of one dancer, while the great autocrat of the Old was exhibiting a similar fervour in honour of another. La Gitana became all but presidentess of the Transatlantic republic; La Bayadère depolarized the tyrant of the Poles! But, above all, the Empress of Russia—albeit, the lightest of sovereigns and coldest of women—was carried so far by her enthusiasm as to fasten a bracelet of gems on the fair arm of Taglioni; while the Queen-Dowager of England conferred a similar honour on the Neapolitan dancer Cerito!
Now, what queen or princess, we should like to know, has lavished necklace, or bracelet, or one poor pitiful brooch, on Miss Edgeworth or Miss Aitkin, Mrs Somerville or Joanna Baillie, or any other of the female illustrations of the age, saving these aerial machines which have achieved such enviable supremacy? Mrs Marcet, who has taught the young idea of our three kingdoms how to shoot; Miss Martineau, who has engrafted new ones on our oldest crab-stocks, might travel from Dan to Beersheba without having a fatted calf or a fatted capon killed for them, at the public expense. But let Taglioni take the road, and what clapping of hands—what gratulation—what curiosity—what expansion of delight!
The only wonder of all this is, that we should wonder about the matter. Dancing constitutes that desideratum of the learned of all ages—an universal language. Music, which many esteem much, is nearly as nationalized in its rhythm as dialect in its words; whereas the organs of sight are cosmopolitan. The eye of man and the foot of the dancer include between them all nations and languages. The poetry of motion is interpreted by the lexicon of instinct; and the unimpregnable grace of a Taglioni becomes omnipotent and catholic as that of
"The statue that enchants the world!"
Who can doubt that the names of these sorceresses of our time will reach posterity, as those of the Aspasias and Lauras of antiquity have reached our own—as having held philosophers by the beard, and trampled on the necks of the conquerors of mankind—as being those for whom Solon legislated, and to whom Pericles succumbed?
Pausanius tells us of the stately tomb of the frail Pythonice in the Vica Sacra; and we know that Phryne offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes, by Alexander overthrown. And surely, if modern guide-books instruct us to weep in the cemetery of Père la Chaise over the grave of Fanny Bias, history will say a word or two in honour of Cerito, who proposed through the newspapers, last season, an alliance offensive and defensive with no less a man than Peter Borthwick, Esq. M.P., (Arcades ambo!) to relieve the distress of the manufacturing classes of Great Britain! It is true such heroines can afford to be generous; for what lord chancellor or archbishop of modern times commands a revenue half as considerable?
Why, therefore—O Public! why, we beseech thee, seeing that the influence of the operative class is fairly understood, and undeniably established among us—why not at once elevate choriography to the rank of one of the fine arts?—Why not concentrate, define, and qualify the calling, by a public academy?—since all hearts and eyes are amenable to the charm of exquisite dancing, why vex ourselves by the sight of what is bad, when better may be achieved? Be wise, O Pubic, and consider! Establish a professor's chair for the improvement of pirouetters. We have hundreds of professor's chairs, quite as unavailable to the advancement of the interests of humanity, and wholly unavailable to its pleasures. Neither painters nor musicians acquire as much popularity as dancers, or amass an equal fortune. Why should they be more highly protected by the state?
To disdain this exquisite art, is a proof of barbarism. The nations of the East may cause their dances to be performed by slaves; but two of the greatest kings of ancient and modern times, the kings after God's own heart and man's own heart—David and Louis le Grand—were excellent dancers, the one before the ark, the other before his subjects.
Never,
