ps were called Praesules because they
led the dances in the church choir on feast days. It is a fact of some
significance, indeed, that at more than one period of history it has
been the heretics rather than the orthodox who have raged most
furiously against dancing. The Albigenses and the Waldenses are both
examples of this. Superficially, this may seem to weaken my contention
that preaching and dancing can no more become friends than the lion
and the unicorn. But, if you reflect for a moment, you will see that
it is the heretics rather than the orthodox who are, of all men, the
most given to preaching. Bishops preach as a matter of duty;
Savonarola and Mr Shaw preach for the religious pleasure of it. So
rare a thing is it to find an orthodox clergyman of standing doing
anything that deserves the name of preaching--and by preaching I mean
protesting in capable words against the subordination of life to
luxury--that, whenever he does so, the newspapers put it on their
posters among the great events, like a scandal about a Cabinet
Minister or an earthquake.

It is not difficult to see why the preachers have usually been so
doubtful about the dancers. It is simply that dancing is for the most
part a rhythmical pantomime of sex. It is the most haremish of
pastimes. One is not surprised to learn that Henry VIII was the most
expert of royal dancers. He was an enthusiast for the kissing dances
of his day, indeed, even before he had abandoned his youthful
straitness for the moral code of a farmyard that had gone off its
head. I can imagine how a preacher with his craft at his fingers' ends
could deduce Henry's downfall from those first delicate trippings.
Even the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is driven to admit the presence of
the amorous element in dancing. "Actual contact of the partners," it
insists, "is quite intelligible as matter of pure dancing; for, apart
altogether from the pleasure of the embrace, the harmony of the double
rotation adds very much to the enjoyment." But that reference to "the
pleasure of the embrace" is fatal to the sentence. How are we simple
people as we whirl in the waltz to know whether it is the pleasure of
the embrace or the harmony of the double rotation that is making us
glow so? The preachers will certainly not give us the benefit of the
doubt. They will follow the lead of Byron, who, in his horror at the
popularisation of the waltz, declared that Terpsichore was henceforth
"the least a vestal