ore this
feeling had arisen. He was careful so to inform the public, and
further to state that his ballet-master, M. Noverre, and his sisters
were Swiss and of a Protestant family; his wife and her sister,
Germans; and that of the whole _corps de ballet_, sixty in number,
forty were English. But this availed not. The pit would not regard it,
holding fast to their opinion that no management should bring over
parley-voos and frog-eaters to take the bread out of English mouths.
Peace was at length restored in Drury Lane, and the dancers sent back.
The management lost L4000; Garrick purchasing knowledge of his public
at rather a high rate.

And in England the ballet had other enemies than those who concerned
themselves in regard to the nationality of its professors. It was held
by many to be, if an art at all--why, then, an art of a shocking kind;
they could see nothing in it but gross impropriety and unseemliness.
Now, of course, the ballet has its vulnerable side--it almost needs,
at any rate it has always assumed, a scantier style of dress than is
otherwise in ordinary use. And then the movements of the dancer of
necessity involve greater display of the human form than is required
by the simpler acts of riding, walking, or sitting. In dancing it is
inevitable that there should be swaying and bending of the figure,
possibly waving to and fro of the arms, certainly some standing upon
the toes, and raising of the nether limbs more or less high in the
air. Bereft of these measures dancing could not be; still here were
matters upon which moralists, or persons who so styled themselves,
were able greatly to enlarge, and concerning which Pharisees, who did
not so style themselves, but were such nevertheless, had much to say.
Now just at the close of the last century the world was in very sad
case; society had gone on from bad to worse: low life was of course
lower than it had ever before been known to be, and high life was not
nearly so high as it should have been. There was profligacy in very
exalted places, and, indeed, dissoluteness and immorality everywhere.
Thereupon, in 1798, a certain Bishop of Durham made a speech from his
place in Parliament in regard to the wickedness of the period; and
especially he drew attention to the dancers of the opera-house. The
excuse for the prelate's speech was a divorce bill; for in those days
the peers spiritual and temporal were much occupied in discussing and
passing divorce bills--an e