ainly one of the principal
amusements of society, and which has come down to us through all
religions, all customs, all people, and all ages, preserving at the same
time much of its original character. Dancing appears, at each period of
the world's history, to have been alternately religions and profane,
lively and solemn, frivolous and severe. Though dancing was as common an
amusement formerly as it is now, there was this essential difference
between the two periods, namely, that certain people, such as the Romans,
were very fond of seeing dancing, but did not join in it themselves.
Tiberius drove the dancers out of Rome, and Domitian dismissed certain
senators from their seats in the senate who had degraded themselves by
dancing; and there seems to be no doubt that the Romans, from the conquest
of Julius Caesar, did not themselves patronise the art. There were a
number of professional dancers in Gaul, as well as in the other provinces
of the Roman Empire, who were hired to dance at feasts, and who
endeavoured to do their best to make their art as popular as possible. The
lightheartedness of the Gauls, their natural gaiety, their love for
violent exercise and for pleasures of all sorts, made them delight in
dancing, and indulge in it with great energy; and thus, notwithstanding
the repugnance of the Roman aristocracy and the prohibitions and anathemas
of councils and synods, dancing has always been one of the favourite
pastimes of the Gauls and the French.

[Illustration: Fig. 182.--Dancers on Christmas Night punished for their
Impiety, and condemned to dance for a whole Year (Legend of the Fifteenth
Century).--Fac-simile of a Woodcut by P. Wohlgemuth, in the "Liber
Chronicorum Mundi:" folio (Nuremberg, 1493).]

Leuce Carin, a writer of doubtful authority, states that in the early
history of Christianity the faithful danced, or rather stamped, in
measured time during religions ceremonials, gesticulating and distorting
themselves. This is, however, a mistake. The only thing approaching to it
was the slight trace of the ancient Pagan dances which remained in the
feast of the first Sunday in Lent, and which probably belonged to the
religious ceremonies of the Druids. At nightfall fires were lighted in
public places, and numbers of people danced madly round them. Rioting and
disorderly conduct often resulted from this popular feast, and the
magistrates were obliged to interfere in order to suppress it. The church,
too, di