gentlemen, friends of the management, and supporters of spectacle and the ballet, draw their swords, endeavouring to awe malcontents, to restore order, and to defend the theatre from outrage.  The mob would have its way.  The benches were torn up, the decorations torn down, chandeliers smashed, even scenes and properties were ruthlessly destroyed.  There was, indeed, a wild proposition rife at one time to fire the house and burn it to the ground.  Garrick could but strike his flag, and yield up his “Chinese Festival.”  Still it was agreed that he had hesitated too long.  The mob therefore repaired to Southampton Street, and smashed his window-panes, doing other mischief to his property there.  He began even to tremble for his life, and from his friends in power obtained a guard of soldiery to protect him.  Strange to say, on two of the nights of riot the king was present—­a fact that did not in the least hinder or mitigate the violent demonstrations of the audience.

But it was not so much the ballet that gave offence as the ballet-dancers whom Garrick had brought from Paris.  They were chiefly Swiss, but the audience believed them to be French, and at that time a very strong anti-Gallican feeling prevailed in the land.  The relations between England and France were of an unfriendly kind; the two countries were, indeed, on the eve of war.  The French, by their conduct in America, had incurred the bitterest English enmity.  It is true that Garrick had projected his spectacle months before this feeling had arisen.  He was careful so to inform the public, and further to state that his ballet-master, M. Noverre, and his sisters were Swiss and of a Protestant family; his wife and her sister, Germans; and that of the whole corps de ballet, sixty in number, forty were English.  But this availed not.  The pit would not regard it, holding fast to their opinion that no management should bring over parley-voos and frog-eaters to take the bread out of English mouths.  Peace was at length restored in Drury Lane, and the dancers sent back.  The management lost L4000; Garrick purchasing knowledge of his public at rather a high rate.

And in England the ballet had other enemies than those who concerned themselves in regard to the nationality of its professors.  It was held by many to be, if an art at all—­why, then, an art of a shocking kind; they could see nothing in it but gross impropriety and unseemliness.  Now, of course, the ballet has its vulnerable side—­it almost needs, at any rate it has always assumed, a scantier style of dress than is otherwise in ordinary use.  And then the movements of the dancer of necessity involve greater display of the human form than is required by the simpler acts of riding, walking, or sitting.  In dancing it is inevitable that there should be swaying and bending of the figure, possibly waving to and fro of the arms, certainly some standing upon the toes, and raising of the nether limbs more or less