th was suitable. A short foot
gives a mincing walk, while a long one requires the person to bring
his body aplomb with the foot before taking the step, which thus
resembles a stride. Good dancers have the limbs short as compared with
the body, which has thus the necessary power over them; but if too
short, there is a deficiency of dexterity in the management of the
feet.

In conclusion, it will be seen, we think, that there is much to be
learned even in the business of the shears. There is no trade whatever
which will not afford materials for thought to an intelligent man, and
thus enlarge the mind and elevate the character.

THE NIGHTINGALE:

A MUSICAL QUESTION.

Is the song of the nightingale mirthful or melancholy? is a question
that has been discussed so often, that anything new on the subject
might be considered superfluous, were it not that the very fact of the
discussion is in itself a curiosity worthy of attention. The note in
dispute was heard with equal distinctness by Homer and Wordsworth; and
indeed there are few poets of any age or country who have not, at one
time or other in their lives, had the testimony of their own ears as
to its character. Whence, then, this difference of opinion? Listen to
Thomson's unqualified assertion, given with the seriousness of an
affidavit:

----'all abandoned to despair, she sings
Her sorrows through the night, and on the bough
Sole sitting still at every dying fall
Takes up again her lamentable strain
Of winding wo; till wide around the woods
Sigh to her song and with her wail resound.'

Then Homer in the _Odyssey_, through Pope's paraphrase:

'Sad Philomel, in bowery shades unseen,
To vernal airs attunes her varied strains.'

Virgil, as rendered by Dryden:

----'she supplies the night with mournful strains
And melancholy music fills the plains.'

Milton, too:

----'Philomel will deign a song
In her sweetest, saddest plight,
Smoothing the rugged brow of night,
While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke
Gently o'er the accustom'd oak:
Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly--
Most musical, most melancholy.'

And again in _Comus_:

----'the love-lorn nightingale
Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well.'

And Shakspeare makes his poor banished Valentine congratulate himself,
that in the forest he can

----'to the nightingale's complaining note
Tune his distre