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we have a reverence for dancing. Noah danced before the ark. The boar's head and the wine and wassail were crowned with a dance to the tune of 'The Black Almayne,' 'My Lorde Marques Galyarde,' and 'The firste Traces of due Passa.' 'Merrily danc'd the Quaker's wife,

And merrily danc'd the Quaker!"

Why not?

Orpheus charmed the four-footed family with his fiddle: shall it have less effect on the two?

"The innocent and the happy, while the dews of youth are upon them, dance to the music of their own hearts. 'See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing!' The Irishman has his lilt; the Scotchman his reel, which he not unfrequently dances to his own particular fiddle! and the En

Large Assembly Room at the Two Green Lamps, near
Exeter Change, (at the particular desire of Jubilee
Dickey!)
in the year 1749
The large room next door to the Hand and Slippers,

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Long-Lane, West Smithfield,

Lambeth Wells, where a Penny Wedding, in the Scotch manner, was celebrated for the benefit of a young couple,

Old Queen's Head, in Cock-Lane, Lambeth,

1750

1752

1755

and at Mr. Bell's, at the sign of the Ship, in the Strand, where, in 1755, a Scotch Wedding was kept. The bride "to be dressed without any linen; all in ribbons, and green flowers, with Scotch masks. There will be three bag-pipes; a band of Scotch music, &c. &c. To begin precisely at two o'clock. Admission, two shillings and sixpence."

glishman his country-dance. With dogs and bears, horses and geese,1 game-cocks and monkeys ex

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There is an odd print of "Vestris teaching a goose to dance." The terms, for so fashionable a professor as he was in his day, are extremely moderate; "Six guineas entrance, and one guinea a lesson." The following song is inscribed underneath.

"Of all the fine accomplishments sure dancing far the best is, But if a doubt with you remains, behold the Goose and Vestris ;

And a dancing we will go, will go, &c.

Let

hibiting their caprioles, shall man be motionless and mute? Sweetly singeth the tea-kettle; merrily danceth the parched pea on the fire-shovel! Even grim Death has his dance."

Let men of learning plead and preach, their toil 'tis all in vain,

Sure, labour of the heels and hands is better than the brain: And a dancing, &c.

Then talk no more, ye men of arts, 'bout keeping light and shade,

Good understanding in the heels is better than the head :

And a dancing, &c.

Great Whigs, and eke great Tories too, both in and out will dance,

Join hands, change sides, and figure in, now sink, and now advance.

And a dancing, &c.

Let Oxford boast of ancient lore, and Cam of classic rules, Noverre might lay you ten to one his heels against your And a dancing, &c.

schools!

Old Homer sung of gods and kings in most heroic strains, Yet scarce could get, we have been told, a dinner for his pains.

And a dancing, &c.

Poor Milton wrote the most sublime, 'gainst Satan, Death,

and Vice,

But very few would quit a dance to purchase Paradise.

And a dancing, &c.

The soldier risks health, life, and limbs, his fortune to

advance,

While Pique and Vestris fortunes make by one night's single dance.

And a dancing, &c.

'Tis

"And music, Eugenio, in which I know you are an enthusiast. The Italians have a proverb, 'Whom God loves not, that man loves not music.' The soul is said to be music.

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But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.'

Haydn used to say that without melody the most learned and singular combinations are but unmeaning, empty sound. What but the simplicity and tenderness of the Scotch and Irish airs constitutes their charm? This great composer was so extravagantly fond of Scotch, Irish, and Welsh melodies, that he harmonised many of them, and had them hung up in frames in his room. We remember to have heard somewhere of an officer in a Highland regiment, who was sent with a handful of brave soldiers to a penal settlement in charge of a number of convicts; the Highlanders grew sick at heart; the touching strains of Lochaber nae mair,' heard far from home, made them so melancholy, that the officer in command forbade its being played by the band.

'Tis all in vain to sigh and grieve, or idly spend our breath, Some millions now, and those unborn, must join the dance of death.

And a dancing, &c.

Yet while we live let's merry be, and make of care a jest, Since we are taught what is, is right; and what is right is And a dancing, &c.

best!

So, likewise, with the national melody, the ‘Ransdes-Vaches' among the Swiss mountaineers. When sold by their despotic chiefs, and torn from their dearest connexions, suicide and desertion were so frequent when this melody was played, that orders were issued in all their regiments, prohibiting any one from playing an air of that kind on pain of death. La maladie du pays,—that sickening after home! But Handel's music has received more lasting and general applause than that of any other composer. By Boyce and Battishall his memory was adored; Mozart was enthusiastic in his praise; Haydn could not listen (who can?) to his glorious Messiah' without weeping; and Beet

1 Bishop Ken says,

"Sweet music with blest poesy began,
Congenial both to angels and to Man,
Song was the native language to rehearse
The elevations of the soul in verse:
And through succeeding ages, all along,

Saints praised the Godhead in devoted song."

And he adds in plain prose, that the Garden of Eden was no stranger to "singing and the voice of melody." Jubal was the "father of those who handled the harp and organ." Long before the institution of the Jewish church, God received praise both by the human voice and the "loud timbrel ;" and when that church was in her highest prosperity, King David seems to have been the composer of her psalmody - both poetry and music. He occupied the orchestra of the temple, and accounted it a holy privilege "to play before the Lord" upon "the harp with a solemn sound." Luther said, "I verily think that, next to divinity, no art is comparable to music."

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