;
the being well versed in this dance especially contributes
greatly to form the gait, and address, as well as the manner in
which we should present ourselves. It has a sensible influence
in the polishing and fashioning the air and deportment in all
occasions of appearance in life. It helps to wear off any thing
of clownishness in the carriage of the person, and breathes
itself into otherwise the most indifferent actions, in a genteel
and agreeable manner of performing them.

This secret and relative influence of the minuet, _Marcel_, my
ever respected master, whom his own merit in his profession, and
the humorous mention of him by _Helvetius_, in his famous book
DE L'ESPRIT, have made so well known, constantly kept in view,
in his method of teaching it. His scholars were generally known
and distinguished from those of other masters, not only by their
excellence in actual dancing, but by a certain superior air of
easy-genteelness at other times. He himself danced the minuet to
its utmost perfection. Not that he confined his practice to that
dance alone; on the contrary, he confessed himself obliged for
his greatest skill in that, to his having a general knowledge of
all the other dances, which he had practised, but especially
those of the serious stile.

But certainly it is not only to the professed dancer, that
dancing in the serious stile, or the minuet, with grace and
ease, is essential. The possessing this branch of dancing is of
great service on the theatre, even to an actor. The effect of it
steals into his manner, and gait, and gives him an air of
presenting himself, that is sure to prepossess in his favor.
Persons of every size or shape are susceptible of grace and
improvement from it. The shoulders so drawn back as not to
protuberate before, but as it were, to retreat from sight, or as
the French express it _bien effacees_, the knees well turning
outwards, with a free play; the air of the shape noble and
disengaged; the turns and movements easy; in short, all the
graces that characterise a good execution of the minuet, will,
insensibly on all other occasions, distribute through every limb
and part of the body, a certain liberty and agreeableness of
motion easier to be conceived than defined. To the actor, in all
characters, it gives, as I have just before observed, a graceful
mien and presence; but, in serious characters, it especially
suggests that striking portliness, that majestic tread of the
stage, f