Romans and the last for peace and morality. Thus Orpheus civilized the Satyrs and the bad rude men.

It argues it of some excellency, that it is used only of the most aërial creatures; loved and understood by man alone. The birds next have variety of notes. The beasts, fishes, and the reptilia, which are of grosser composition, have only silence or untuned sounds. They that despise it wholly may well be suspected to be something of a savage nature. The Italians have somewhat a smart censure of those that affect it not. They say, God loves not him whom he hath not made to love music. Aristotle's conceit, that Jove doth neither harp nor sing, I do not hold a dispraise. We find in heaven there be hallelujahs sung. I believe it as a helper both to good and ill, and will therefore honor it when it moves to virtue, and beware it when it would flatter into vice.

OF DANCING.

DOUBTLESS it was out of the jollity of nature, that the art of this was first invented and taken Bate but the fiddle, the colts, up among men.

the calves, and the lambs of the field do the

same. So that the thing in itself seems to me to be natural and innocent, begot and born at first out of the sprightly and innocuous activity and rarefication of the blood and spirits, excited by the youthful heat that flows and flowers within the swelling veins. We need therefore the less wonder, that some of the ancient Grecians should so much extol it, deriving it not only from the amenity and floridness of the warm and spirited blood, but deducing it from heaven itself, as being piactised there by the stars, the conjunctions, oppositions, the aspects and revolutions, the ingresses and the egresses, and the like, making such a harmony and consent, as there seems a well-ordered dance amongst them.

And we shall find it not only practised by the generality of almost all the nations of the earth, but by many of them, and those the most generous and civilized, brought into the solemnities of their religion. As the Phrygians had their Corybantes; the Cretians their Curetes dancing in armour. In Delos, nothing sacred scarce ever done without it. The Indian Brachmans, morning and evening, dancing did adore the sun. The Egyptians, Ethiopians, the ruder Scythian, and the learneder Greek, scarce entered upon any thing that solemn was, without it. The Romans had their

Salii, their dozen of priests to Mars, who, in pied coats, with swords by their sides, a javelin in one hand and a shield in the other, danced about the city. Socrates, that was owned to be the wisest among all the Greeks, disdained not in his age to learn to dance, and after to commend the exercise. And Seneca tells us of the meritorious Scipio, that he was not ashamed, "ut antiqui illi viri solebant, inter lusum et festa tempora, virilem in modum tripudiare," as the ancients then had wont, at plays and solemn festivals, in a manly wise to trip it up and down. Even among the Jews, where the oracles of God were extant, we find it used among the rites and exercises of their religion, and upon occasions of extraordinary joy.

Miriam led the maids their dance with her timbrel in her hand. Jephtha's daughter met her father with a dance. And David did it before the ark; his pious zeal transporting him to this corporal exultation. It is likely he danced alone, else Michal would have laughed at more than him. But yet if it were not mixed, it was next it, being, as all that we read of, in the sight and view of both sexes.

When the prophet Jeremiah foretold the return of the Jews from captivity, (Jer. xxxi.) and begins to reckon up the joys that should ensue,

among the rest he tells them, "The virgins shall rejoice in the dance." The Latin hath it "in choro," and doubtless that did oftentimes consist both of men and women together, as well as virgins comprehend both sexes. And if dancing were unlawful, neither would God allow of being served by it, nor would Solomon have told us, "There is a time to dance, as well as there is to mourn." So that it is not the matter and the thing that is condemned, but the manner and corrupt abuse. I find not that Sallust twitted Sempronia merely for her dancing, but for doing it more artificially than an honest woman needed. And it is for this that Gabinius and Cælius too are reproached. Cato, I know, accused Lucius Muræna for dancing in Asia; and Cicero, that undertook to defend him, said, "He durst not maintain it to be well done in respect of the circumstances, but sure he was he did not do it constantly;" as if the using of it but sometimes were a kind of justification. And in this sense was his saying, "Nemo saltat sobrius" the sober man does seldom act in capers, taking it to be allowed doctrine, that Aliquando dulce est insanire in loco;" it is pleasant to be frolic in season.

Ludovicus Vives tells us of some Asians, that, coming into Spain and seeing the people

dance, did run away affrighted, as thinking them possessed with some ill spirit, or else that they were out of their wits. And indeed one would think there were some sorcery in it, that the tickling of a sheep's-gut with hair and a little rosin should make a wise man leap up and down like mad. Nor did the wise Alphonsus deem that woman less, whom he saw so wildly dancing that he concluded, surely it would not be long before that sybil would declare her oracle; though he himself a little after, with the emperor Frederic and his empress, was content to make one at the sport. To dance too exquisitely is so laborious a vanity, that a man would be ashamed to let any body see, by his dexterity in it, that he hath spent so much time in learning such a trifle. And to be totally ignorant of it, and of the garb and comportment that by learning it is learned, shows a man either stoical or but meanly bred, and not inured to conversation. The best is a kind of careless easiness, as if it were rather natural motion than curious and artificial practising.

That there have been several offences occasioned by it, is not to me an argument against it in itself. Even at sermons, I have read that scenes of lust have been laid. I would not patronize it for the least offence that is in it.