tenth page of the paper, to-day;[A] and that will be quite enough for
you to read, for the present, I believe.

[A] Appendix 3.

LETTER VII.

OF THE VARIOUS EXPRESSIONS OF NATIONAL FESTIVITY.

_March 4, 1867._

29. The subject which I want to bring before you is now branched, and
worse than branched, reticulated, in so many directions, that I hardly
know which shoot of it to trace, or which knot to lay hold of first.

I had intended to return to those Japanese jugglers, after a visit to
a theater in Paris; but I had better, perhaps, at once tell you the
piece of the performance which, in connection with the scene in the
English pantomime, bears most on matters in hand.

It was also a dance by a little girl--though one older than Ali Baba's
daughter, (I suppose a girl of twelve or fourteen). A dance, so
called, which consisted only in a series of short, sharp contractions
and jerks of the body and limbs, resulting in attitudes of distorted
and quaint ugliness, such as might be produced in a puppet by sharp
twitching of strings at its joints: these movements being made to the
sound of two instruments, which between them accomplished only a quick
vibratory beating and strumming, in nearly the time of a
hearth-cricket's song, but much harsher, and of course louder, and
without any sweetness; only in the monotony and unintended aimless
construction of it, reminding one of various other insect and reptile
cries or warnings: partly of the cicala's hiss; partly of the little
melancholy German frog which says "Mu, mu, mu," all summer-day long,
with its nose out of the pools by Dresden and Leipsic; and partly of
the deadened quivering and intense continuousness of the alarm of the
rattlesnake.

While this was going on, there was a Bible text repeating itself over
and over again in my head, whether I would or no:--"And Miriam the
prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all
the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances." To which
text and some others, I shall ask your attention presently; but I must
go to Paris first.

30. Not at once, however, to the theater, but to a bookseller's shop,
No. 4, Rue Voltaire, where, in the year 1858, was published the fifth
edition of Balzac's 'Contes Drolatiques,' illustrated by 425 designs
by Gustave Dore.

Both text and illustrations are as powerful as it is ever in the
nature of ev