called nuncupative testaments; but the danger of trusting the will of the dead to the memory of the living soon abolished these; and all testaments were ordered to be in writing.

The Romans were wont to set aside testaments, as being inofficiosa, deficient in natural duty, if they disinherited or totally passed by (without assigning a true and sufficient reason) any of the children of the testator. But if the child had any legacy, though ever so small, it was a proof that the testator had not lost his memory nor his reason, which otherwise the law presumed. Hence probably (says Blackstone) has arisen that groundless, vulgar error of the necessity of leaving the heir a shilling, or some other express legacy, in order to effectually disinherit him; whereas the law of England, though the heir, or next of kin, be totally omitted, admits no querela inofficiosa, to set aside such testament.

Alfred the Great made a will, wherein he declared, in express terms, that it was just the English should be as free as their own thoughts.

P.T.W.

The Cosmopolite.

DANCING.

(For the Mirror.)

Dancing is defined to be "to move in measure; to move with steps correspondent to the sound of instruments." But there are other species of dancing—as

and to dance with pain, or when, as Lord Bacon says, "in pestilences, the malignity of the infecting vapour danceth the principal spirits." The Chorea S. Viti, or St. Vitus's Dance is another variation, said to have once prevailed extensively, and to have been cured by a prayer to this saint! whose martyrdom is commemorated on June 15. It may not be generally known that a person afflicted with this species of dancing can run, although he cannot walk or stand still. Another and a more agreeable species is to lead the dance, an unjust usurpation which is practised in a thousand other places beside the ball-room.

According to the mythologists, (authorities always quotable, and nobody knows why,) the Curetes or Corybantes, a people of Crete, who were produced from rain, first invented the dance to amuse the infant Jupiter—with what success he danced we know not, for when a year old he waged war against the Titans, and then his dancing days must have terminated.

A history of dancing is, however, not to our purpose; but a few of its eccentricities. It occurs in the customs of all people, either as a recreation or as a religious ceremony—held in contempt by some, and in esteem by others. David danced before the ark; the daughters of Shiloh danced in a solemn yearly festival; and the Israelites, (good judges) danced round the golden calf.

The ancients had a peculiar penchant for dancing, whether in person or by animals; and the feats of the latter distance all the wretched efforts of the bears, dogs, and horses of our days. The attempts of Galba to amuse the Roman people throw into the shade all the peace-rejoicings and illuminations of St. James's and the Green Parks. Suetonius, Seneca, and Pliny tell us of elephants in their time that were taught to walk the rope, backwards and forwards, up and down, with the agility of an Italian rope-dancer. Such was the confidence reposed in the docility and dexterity of the animal, that a person sat upon an elephant's back, while he walked across the theatre upon a rope, extended from the one side to the other. Lipsius, who has collected these testimonies, thinks them too strong to be doubted—perhaps even stronger than the rope. Scaliger corroborates all of them; Busbequius saw an elephant dance a pas seul at Constantinople; and Suetonius tells us of twelve elephants, six male and six female, who were clothed like men and women, and performed a country dance, in the reign of Tiberius. In later times, horses have been taught to dance. In the carousals of Louis XIII. there were dances of horses; and in the 13th century, some rode a horse upon a rope. All this eclipses the puny modern feats of Astley and Ducrow.⁴

The Greeks and Romans were divided upon the propriety of dancing. Socrates who held death in contempt, when a reverend old gentleman, learned to dance of Aspasia, the beautiful nurse of Grecian eloquence. The Romans forgot their loss of the republic and of liberty—

in seeing Pylades and Bathyllus dance before them in their theatres—an indifference of which we were reminded on hearing that the Parisians sat in the Cafés on the Boulevard du Italiens—sipping coffee and sucking down ice, during the capitulation of the city, and while the French, killed and wounded, were conveyed along the road before them.

Cato, Censorius, danced at the age of fifty-six. Cicero, however, reproached a consul with having danced. Tiberius, that monster of indulgences, banished dancers from Rome; and Domitian, the illustrious fly-catcher, expelled several of his members of parliament for having danced. We are much more civilized, for such an edict as that of Domitian would clear our senate-houses as effectually as when Cromwell turned out the Long Parliament.

Among the Italians and the French even there have been found enemies to dancing. Alfieri, the poet, had a great aversion to dancing; and one Daneau wrote a Traité des Danses, in which he maintains that "the devil never invented a more effectual way than dancing, to fill the world with ——." The bishop of Noyon once presided at some deliberations respecting a minuet; and in 1770, a reverend prelate presented a document on dancing to the king of France. The Quakers consider dancing below the dignity of the Christian character; and an enthusiast, of another creed, thinks all lovers of the stage belong to the schools of Voltaire and Hume, and that dancing is a link in the chain of seduction. Stupid, leaden-heeled people, who constantly mope in melancholy, and neither enjoy nor impart pleasure, will naturally be enemies to dancing; and such we are induced to think the majority of these opponents.

The French are inveterate dancers. They have their bals parés and their salons de danse in every street; and as long as the weather will permit, they dance on platforms out of doors, and a heavy shower of rain will scarcely cool their ardour in the recreation. Some of their stage figurantes resemble aerial beings rather than bone and blood, for flesh may almost be left out of the composition. But the Italians are a nation of dancers as well as the children of song, and they seem to have followed the noble example of old Cato, in this respect, with better effect than they have studied his virtue. We are also told upon good authority, that the American dancers equal any of the European figurantes.

The English people have always been lovers of dancing; and it forms an accompaniment of almost all their old sports and pastimes. Witness the maypoles, wassails, and wakes of rural life, and the grotesque morris-dance, originating in a kind of Pyrrhic or military dance, and described by Sir William Temple as composed of "ten men, who danced a maid marian and a tabor and pipe." In the time of Henry VII. dancers were remarkably well paid; for in some of his accounts in the Exchequer, we find