The nearest assimilation to this strange exhibition of the dance in full career, at all familiar to our minds, is the prancing of the basket-horses in Mr. Peake’s humorous farce of Quadrupeds.

An entertaining variety of appearance arose also from the conformity of the steps to the diversified measure of the tune.  The jig measure, which corresponds to the canter in a horse’s paces, produced a strong bounding up and down of the hoop—­and the gavotte measure, which corresponds to the short trot, produced a tremulous and agitated motion.  The numerous ornaments, also, with which the hoops were bespread and decorated—­the festoons—­the tassels—­the rich embroidery—­all of a most catching and taking nature, every now and then affectionately hitched together in unpremeditated and close embrace.  To the parties in action, it is not difficult to suppose these combinations might prove something short of perfectly agreeable, more especially, as on such occasions as these, some of the fair daughters of our courtly belles were undergoing the awful ordeal of a first ball-room appearance, on whom these contingencies would inflict ten-fold embarrassment.—­The Ball, or a Glance at Almack’s in 1829.

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FRENCH PAINTINGS.

General le Jeune has added a new picture to his collection of battle paintings, exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly.  It represents one of the general’s perilous adventures in the Peninsular War, and is a vigorous addition to these admirable productions of the French school.  The whole series will be found noticed at page 212 of our vol. xi.

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FLOWERS ON THE ALPS.

The flowers of the mountains—­they must not be forgotten.  It is worth a botanist’s while to traverse all these high passes; nay, it is worth the while of a painter, or any one who delights to look upon graceful flowers, or lovely hues, to pay a visit to these little wild nymphs of Flora, at their homes in the mountains of St. Bernard.  We are speaking now, generally, of what may be seen throughout the whole of the route, from Moutier, by the Little St. Bernard, to Aosta,—­and thence again to Martigny.  There is no flower so small, so beautiful, so splendid in colour, but its equal may be met with in these sequestered places.  The tenaciousness of flowers is not known; their hardihood is not sufficiently admired.  Wherever there is a handful of earth, there also is a patch of wild-flowers.  If there be a crevice in the rock, sufficient to thrust in the edge of a knife, there will the winds carry a few grains of dust, and there straight up springs a flower.  In the lower parts of the Alps, they cover the earth with beauty.  Thousands, and tens of thousands, blue, and yellow, and pink, and violet, and white, of every shadow and every form, are to