only the last time I saw you, you were praising with all your might the legs of Colonel B those flimsy worthless things, that look as if they were bandaged with linen rollers from the heel to the knee. I beg you would look at the Apollo Belvidere, the Fighting Gladiator, and the Farnese Hercules. There are only three handsome kinds of legs in the world, and in these, you have a specimen of each of the three -I speak of gentlemen. As for your own sex, the Venus is the only true model of female form in existence, and yet such is your culpable ignorance of yourselves, that I devoutly believe she would be pronounced a very clumsy person, were she to come into the Aberystwith ballYou may say what you will, but I still assert, and I will prove it if you please, by pen and pencil, that, with one pair of exceptions, the best legs in Cardigan are Mrs P's. As for Miss JD's, I think they are frightful.

room.

+ A great part of this letter is omitted in the Second Edition, in consequence of the displeasure its publication gave to certain individuals in Cardiganshire. I hope I need not say how much I was grieved, when I learned in what way some of the passages had been regarded by several ladies, who have

It is a great mistake under which the Scotch people lie, in supposing themselves to be excellent dancers; and yet one hears the mistake reechoed by the most sensible, sedate, and danceabhorring Presbyterians one meets with. If the test of good dancing were activity, there is indeed no question, the northern beaux and belles might justly claim the pre-eminence over their brethren and sisters of the south. In an Edinburgh ball-room, there appears to be the same pride of bustle, the same glorying in muscular agitation and alertness-the same "sudor immanis," to use the poet's phrase, which used of old to distinguish the sports of the Circus or the Campus Martius. But this is all ;-the want of grace is as conspicuous in their performances, as the abundance of vigour. We desiderate the conscious towerlike poise-the easy, slow, unfatiguing glide of the fair pupils of D'Estainville. To say the truth, the ladies in Scotland dance in

not a more sincere admirer than myself. As for the gentle. man, who chose to take what I said of him in so much dud geon, he will observe, that I have allowed what I said to remain exactly in statu quo, which I certainly should not have done, had he expressed his resentment in the proper manner,

P. M.

common pretty much like our country lasses at a harvest-home. They kick and pant as if the devil were in them; and when they are young and pretty, it is undoubtedly no disagreeable thing to be a spectator of their athletic display; but I think they are very ignorant of dancing as a science. Comparatively few of them manage their feet well, and of these few what a very insignificant portion know any thing about that equally important part of the art—the management of the arms. And then, how absurdly they thrust out their shoulder-blades! How they neglect the undulation of the back. One may compare them to fine masses of silver, the little, awkward workmanship bestowed on which rather takes from than adds to the natural beauty of the materials. As for the gentlemen, they seldom display even vigour and animation, unless they be half-cut-and they never display anything else.

It is fair, however, to mention, that in the true indigenous dances of the country, above all in the reel (the few times I have seen it), these defects seem in a great measure to vanish, so that ambition and affectation are after all at the bottom of their bad dancing in the present day, as well as of their bad writing. The quadrille, notwithstand

ing, begins to take with the soil, and the girls can already go through most of its manœuvres without having recourse to their fans. But their beaux continue certainly to perform these newfangled evolutions, in a way that would move the utmost spleen of a Parisian butcher. What big, lazy, clumsy fellows one sees lumbering cautiously, on toes that should not be called light and fantastic, but rather heavy and syllogistic. It seems that there goes a vast deal of ratiocination to decide upon the moves of their game. The automaton does not play chess with such an air of lugubrious gravity. Of a surety, Terpsichore was never before worshipped by such a solemn set of devotees. One of our own gloomy Welsh Jumpers, could he be suddenly transported among some sets that I have seen, would undoubtedly imagine himself to be in a saltatory prayer meeting; and yet these good people, put them fairly into a reel, can frisk it about with all possible demonstrations of hilarity. They prefer the quadrille, I imagine, upon something of the same principle which leads a maid-servant to spend her two shillings on a tragedy rather than on a comedy. I could not help in my own mind likening these dolorous pas seuls performed in rotation by each of the quadrillers, and then suc

ceeded by the more clamorous display of sadness in their chaine Angloise, &c. to the account which Miss Edgeworth gives us of the Irish lyke wake, wherein each of the cousins chaunts a stave of lamentation, solo, and then the whole generation of them join in the screaming treble of the choral ulululuh! hu! " Why did you leave the potatoes ?" "What ailed thee, Pat, with the butter-milk!" &c. &c. &c.

The waltz has been even more unfortunate than the quadrille; it is still entirely an exotic in the North. Nor, in truth, am I much inclined to find fault with the prejudices which have checked the progress of this fascinating dance among the disciples of John Knox and Andrew Melville. I really I really am of opinion, that it might have been as well, had we of the South been equally shy of the importation.

As for myself, I assure you, that ever since I spent a week at Lady L's, and saw those great fat girls of her's waltzing every night with that odious Dr B, I cannot endure the very name of the thing. By the way, I met the other day with a very nice poem, entitled, “Waltz-an Apostrophic Hymn, by Francis Hornem, Esq. ;" and as I think you have never