band performed the most fashionable airs, and new figures were at length introduced and announced as a source of attraction; but this place was soon pulled down, and re-built on the ground now occupied by the Theatre du Vaudeville.  The establishment failed, and the proprietor became a bankrupt.  A short time after, it was re-opened by another speculator; but on such a scale, as merely to attract the working classes of the community.  The band was now composed of a set of miserable scrapers, who played in unison, and continually in the key of G sharp; amid the sounds which emanated from their instruments, the jangling of a tambourin, and the shrill notes of a fife were occasionally heard.  Thus did things continue until the French Revolution; when, about the time the Executive Directory was formed, the splendid apartments of the Hotel de Richelieu were opened for the reception of the higher classes, who had then but few opportunities of meeting to ‘trip it on the light fantastic toe.’  Monsieur Hullin, then of the Opera, was selected to form a band of twenty-four musicians, from among those of the highest talent in the various theatres:  he found no difficulty in this, as they were paid in paper-money, then of little or no value; whereas, the administrators of the Richelieu establishment paid in specie.  The tunes were composed in different keys, with full orchestral accompaniments, by Monsieur Hullin; and the contrast thus produced to the abominable style which had so long existed, commenced a new era in dancing:  the old figures were abolished, and stage-steps were adopted;—­Pas de Zephyrs, Pas de Bourres, Ballotes, Jetes Battus, &c. were among the most popular.  Minuets and Forlanes were still continued; but Monsieur Vestris displaced the latter by the Gavotte, which he taught to Monsieur Trenis and Madame de Choiseul, who first danced it at a fete given by a lady of celebrity, at the Hotel de Valentinois, Rue St. Lazar, on the 16th of August, 1797; at this fete, Monsieur Hullin introduced an entirely new set of figures of his own composition.—­These elicited general approbation:  they were danced at all parties, and still retain pre-eminence.  The names of Pantalon, L’Ete, La Poule, La Trenis, &c. which were given to the tunes, have been applied to the figures.  The figure of La Trenis, was introduced by Monsieur Trenis’s desire, it being part of the figure from a Gavotte, danced in the then favourite ballet of Nina.

“To the French we are indebted for rather an ingenious, but in the opinion of many professional dancers, an useless invention, by which it was proposed, that as the steps in dancing are not very numerous, although they may be infinitely combined, that characters might be made use of to express the various steps and figures of a dance, in the same manner as words and sentences are expressed by letters; or what is more closely analogous, as the musical characters are employed to represent to the eye the sounds of an air.  The well-known Monsieur Beauchamp, and