56 Good Night to TagUgjii! -fJuLY, 



the only individuals on record to whom history presents no parallel. 

 We look from Turner to Claude, and from Chantrey to Canova, and 

 from Fanny Kemble to JMrs. Siddons. They are only great in relation 

 to a greater. I can pardon Brocard her pretty spitefulness. It hap- 

 pened on the last night of Taglioni's first engagement (this season), 

 that she was vehemently encored in a dance — she had retreated back, 

 and Brocard was commencing — the audience cheered, and Brocard 

 danced, but it would not do — at length Brocard walked up to the 

 beautiful Italian, and making her a bow, awaited for the conclusion of 

 the encore. — Poor Brocard ! 



It is certainly a pity that no patriotic individual has made any 

 proposal for the endowment of a College of Dancers, privileged to 

 confer honours and medals like the sister universities. Taglioni might 

 read the first lecture on the Poetry of Motion (and sure I am her voice 

 is lovely), illustrated in her own inimitable manner. In India the 

 dancing girls are peculiarly protected by a provision in the Gentoo law, 

 which permits any punishment to be inflicted by the magistrate, except 

 the confiscation of their jewels, clothes, and dwelling. The dancing 

 girl of Hindostan with the rings round her ankles, and her silver bells, 

 and golden garments, and her tresses glittering along each cheek like 

 the locks of the archer God in the old statues, affords the most pic- 

 turesque resemblance to the figm'es of the bacchantes sometimes found 

 on the antique bas-reliefs. 



But to return to the proposal for a new coUege : siu-ely it is needed. 

 Have we not already a London University, and a King's College, and 

 an Academy of iMusic ? What glory will shine upon the Monthly 

 Magazine, as the originator of the scheme ! The spirit of prophecy is 

 rushing upon me, and I see already in the leading column of the 

 Morning Herald : — " IVc have murk pleasure in staling that Mdlle. 

 Taglioni has been appointed professor in the New College. The first 

 meeting of the proprietors will be held on the 26th insl." Who would not 

 be a pupil ! Aspasia taught Socrates to dance. Among a list of names 

 distinguished in literature and science, I have only time to mention the 

 Lord Chancellor and the Bishop of London. The Rev. Edward Irving has 

 solicited the appointment of secretary. IMay the " good cause" prosper ! 



I am not surprised that the dance, in the old time, formed part of the 

 religious ceremonial. It is the language of the heart,? in its season of 

 joy and freshness. So Eve danced into the nightingale-thickets of Eden ; 

 and Glycera, in the love-glow of a Grecian evening, when she bound 

 (the first of her country's daughters) the garland of flowers about her 

 forehead, and went leaping in front of the choir up the radiant steps of 

 the temple of Venus. 



Jeremy Taylor pronounced an anathema against dancing. Had he 

 ever seen Taglioni, he would have taken a stall. In her his eyes would 

 not have been offended by the *' indecent mixtures of wanton dancing." 

 Her gestures cannot be called prologues to voluptuousness. They 

 address themselves, of a truth, to the senses ; but they also wake up 

 thoughts of beauty which sleep, like odours, within the spirit. The 

 eloquent author of the " Holy Living" might have applied to Taglioni 

 his own quaint, yet exquisite, image of light dancing in the eyes, like 

 boys at a festival. 



Good night to Taglioni ! Yet she is stiU dancing before me in tlie 

 light of imaginatioii. That bound ! — if the doctrine of the migration 



