Fountains dance down to the river,

    Rivers to the ocean

Summer leaflets dance and quiver

    To the breeze’s motion

Nothing in the world is single  —

    All things by a simple rule

Nods and steps and graces mingle

    As at dancing school

See the shadows on the mountain

    Pirouette with one another

See the leaf upon the fountain

    Dances with its leaflet brother

See the moonlight on the earth

    Flecking forest gleam and glance!

What are all these dancings worth

    If I may not dance?

— After Shelley

Dance? Why not? The dance is natural, it is innocent, wholesome, enjoyable. It has the sanction of religion, philosophy, science. It is approved by the sacred writings of all ages and nations — of Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, of Zoroaster and Confucius. Not an altar, from Jupiter to Jesus, around which the votaries have not danced with religious zeal and indubitable profit to mind and body. Fire worshipers of Persia and Peru danced about the visible sign and manifestation to their deity. Dervishes dance in frenzy, and the Shakers jump up and come down hard through excess of the Spirit. All the gods have danced with all the goddesses — round dances, too. The lively divinities created by the Greeks in their own image danced divinely, as became them. Old Thor stormed and thundered down the icy halls of the Scandinavian mythology to the music of runic rhymes, and the souls of slain heroes in Valhalla take to their toes in celebration of their valorous deeds done in the body upon the bodies of their enemies. Angels dance before the Great White Throne to harps attuned by angel hands, and the Master of the Revels — who arranges the music of the spheres — looks approvingly on. Dancing is of divine institution.

The elves and fairies “dance delicate measures” in the light of the moon and stars. The troll dances his gruesome jig on lonely hills the gnome executes his little pigeon wing in the obscure subterrene by the glimmer of a diamond. Nature’s untaught children dance in wood and glade, stimulated of leg by the sunshine with which they are soaken top full — the same quickening emanation that inspires the growing tree and upheaves the hill. And, if I err not, there is sound Scripture for the belief that these self same eminences have capacity to skip for joy. The peasant dances — a trifle clumsily — at harvest feast when the grain is garnered. The stars in heaven dance visibly, the firefly dances in emulation of the stars. The sunshine dances on the waters. The humming bird and the bee dance about the flowers which dance to the breeze. The innocent lamb, type of the White Christ, dances on the green, and the matronly cow perpetrates an occasional stiff enormity when she fancies herself unobserved. All the sportive rollickings of all the animals, from the agile fawn to the unwieldly behemoth are dances taught them by nature.

I am not here making an argument for dancing, I only assert its goodness, confessing its abuse. We do not argue the wholesomeness of sunshine and cold water, we assert it, admitting that sunstroke is mischievous and that copious potations of freezing water will founder a superheated horse, and urge the hot blood to the head of an imprudent man similarly prepared, killing him, as is right. We do not build syllogisms to prove that grains and fruits of the earth are of God’s best bounty to man; we allow that bad whisky may — with difficulty — be distilled from rye to spoil the toper’s nose, and that hydrocyanic acid can be got out of the bloomy peach. It were folly to prove that Science and Invention are our very good friends, yet the sapper who has had the misfortune to be blown to rags by the mine he was preparing for his enemy will not deny that gunpowder has aptitudes of mischief; and from the point of view of a nigger ordered upon the safety-valve of a racing steamboat, the vapor of water is a thing accurst. Shall we condemn music because the lute makes “lascivious pleasing?” Or poetry because some amorous bard tells in warm rhyme the story of the passions, and Swinburne has had the goodness to make vice offensive with his hymns in its praise? Or sculpture because from the guiltless marble may be wrought a drunken Silenus or a lechering satyr? — painting because the untamed fancies of a painter sometimes break tether and run riot on his canvas? Because the orator may provoke the wild passions of the mob, shall there be no more public speaking? — no further acting because the actor may be pleased to saw the air, or the actress display her ultimate inch of leg? Shall we upset the pulpit because poor dear Mr. Tilton had a prettier wife than poor, dear Mr. Beecher? The bench had its Jeffrey, yet it is necessary that we have the deliveries of judgment between ourselves and the litigious. The medical profession has nursed poisoners enough to have baned all the rats of christendom; but the resolute patient must still have his prescription — if he die for it. Shall we disband our armies because in the hand of an ambitious madman a field-marshal’s baton may brain a helpless State? — our navi............