The second time I saw the Didone, my attention, in spite of the fascination of the scene, was attracted towards a box near us, which was occupied by a noble English family just arrived at Milan.  In the front of the box sat a beautiful girl apparently not fifteen, with laughing lips and dimpled cheeks, the very personification of blooming, innocent, English loveliness.  I watched her (I could not help it, when my interest was once awakened) through the whole scene.  I marked her increased agitation:  I saw her cheeks flush, her eyes glisten, her bosom flutter, as if with sighs I could not overhear, till at length, overpowered with emotion, she turned away her head, and covered her eyes with her hand.  Mothers!—­English mothers! who bring your daughters abroad to finish their education—­do you well to expose them to scenes like these, and force the young bud of early feeling in such a precious hot-bed as this?  Can a finer finger on the piano,—­a finer taste in painting, or any possible improvement in foreign arts and foreign graces, compensate for one taint on that moral purity, which has ever been (and may it ever be!) the boast, the charm of Englishwomen?  But what have I to do with all this?—­I came here to be amused and to forget;—­not to moralize or to criticise.

Vigano, who is lately dead, composed the Didone Abbandonata as well as La Vestale, Otello, Nina, and others.  All his ballets are celebrated for their classical beauty and interest.  This man, though but a dancing-master, must have had the soul of a painter, a musician, and a poet in one.  He must have been a perfect master of design, grouping, contrast, picturesque, and scenic effect.  He must have had the most exquisite feeling for musical expression, to adapt it so admirably to his purposes; and those gestures and movements with which he has so gracefully combined it, and which address themselves but too powerfully to the senses and the imagination—­what are they, but the very “poetry of motion,” la poesie mise en action, rendering words a superfluous and feeble medium in comparison?

I saw at the Mint yesterday the medal struck in honour of Vigano, bearing his head on one side, and on the other, Prometheus chained; to commemorate his famous ballet of that name.  One of these medals, struck in gold, was presented to him in the name of the government:—­a singular distinction for a dancing-master;—­but Vigano was a dancing-master of genius; and this is the land, where genius in every shape is deified.

The enchanting music of the Prometteo by Beethoven, is well known in England, but to produce the ballet on our stage, as it was exhibited here, would be impossible.  The entire tribe of our dancers and figurantes, with their jumpings, twirlings, quiverings, and pirouettings, must be first annihilated; and Vigano, or Didelot, or Noverre rise again to inform the whole corps de ballet with another soul and the whole audience with another spirit:—­for