entertainment to make less and less demands on the intelligence and
intellectual appreciation of the public, and more and more demands on the
eye--the sense most easily affected--has gradually developed into a
spectacle, the chief interest of which is quite independent of dancing.
Thousands of pounds are spent on dressing a small army of women who do
little but march about the stage and group themselves in accordance with
some design of colour and mass; and no more is asked of the intelligence
than to believe that a ballet dressed, for example, in military uniform is
a compliment to or glorification of the army. Only a few out of hundreds of
members of the _corps de ballet_ are really dancers and they perform
against a background of colour afforded by the majority. It seems unlikely
that we shall see any revival of the best period and styles of dancing
until a higher standard of grace and manners becomes fashionable in
society. With the constantly increasing abolition of ceremony, courtliness
of manner is bound to diminish; and only in an atmosphere of ceremony,
courtesy and chivalry can the dance maintain itself in perfection.

LITERATURE.--One of the most complete books on the ballet is by the Jesuit,
Claude Francois Menestrier, _Des ballets anciens et modernes_, 12mo (1682).
He was the inventor of a ballet for Louis XIV. in 1658; and in his book he
analyses about fifty of the early Italian and French ballets. See also
Noverre, _Lettres sur la danse_ (1760; new ed. 1804); Castel-Blaze, _La
Danse et les ballets_ (1832), and _Les Origines de l'opera_ (1869).

BALL-FLOWER, an architectural ornament in the form of a ball inserted in
the cup of a flower, which came into use in the latter part of the 13th,
and was in great vogue in the early part of the 14th century. It is
generally placed in rows at equal distances in the hollow of a moulding,
frequently by the sides of mullions. The earliest known is said to be in
the west part of Salisbury cathedral, where it is mixed with the tooth
ornament. It seems to have been used more and more frequently, till at
Gloucester cathedral, in the south side, it is in profusion.

BALLIA, a town and district of British India, in the Benares division of
the United Provinces. The town is situated on the left bank of the Ganges,
below the confluence of the lesser Sarju. It is really an aggregation of
rural villages. Pop. (1901) 15,278.

The district of Ballia, constituted in 1879, occupies