) is the exact measure of the stride, buoyant and elastic, with the uneven note marking the hoist of the outside leg from the hip. The tune swoops at us suddenly like a gusty breeze, plunges into the deep pianissimo, vanishes, and returns to a tremolo on the strings which suggests that it has been going on somewhere else all the time; it shifts and changes like the face of earth with the shadows racing across it. If music can ever be bound to time or place, surely we may assign this Allegro to a day in April when we surmount some height like Wetherlam or Maiden Moor, issuing in a long ridge, and swing forward over grass and rock with the wind in our ears and the earth spread out below.
(O Richard Wagner, you who called this movement the Apotheosis of the Dance, what did you mean by it? In that august Valhalla where you justly repose, no doubt by now you have met the author and apologised; but can you do nothing to reassure us on this side of the gulf? Can you not send some authoritative message, or at least work a concurrent automatism, to say that you are sorry?)
Is there any hope for dancing? Is the vicious circle to go on for ever? Is the gulf too deep to be spanned? Let us trust not: it would be tragic if dancing, the union of motion and music, were for ever to be represented only by that misshapen monstrosity, the waltz. Certain practical reforms are necessary before any development can begin; dancing must be performed by day, in fresh air, in reasonable costume, to good music. A minimum level of physical competency must be demanded, backed by proper training; as a provisional test, I would suggest excluding any one who would be refused on sight by the secretary of a fourth-class lacrosse club. New rhythms must be introduced and developed, and concerted dances organised, the dancer working throughout in close co-operation with the musician. When these changes have been made, the way is clear, and dancers can begin to take their craft seriously.
Until then nothing can be done; here at least, in the ball-room, where nature sickens, nothing. As Dr. Middleton said, ‘it is the time for wise men to retire within themselves, with the steady determination of the seed in the earth to grow. Repose upon nature, sleep in firm faith, and abide the seasons.’ For the change must come; if civilisation is based, as it surely is, on reason, the waltz can not be anything more than a temporary aberration. If omnipotent at present, it must ultimately be doomed: if we do not see the change, our grandchildren will. Against that day, when the waltz shall figure with our other fooleries before the inexorable Vehmgericht of posterity, let this at least be put on record, that in our own times, in the height of its popularity, when the false doctrine was expounded with all the art of Viennese composers and backed by all the weight of social authority, not every one acquiesced. Some at least shook their feet clear of it, and were content to tread the roads and hills to simple measures in the unadorned light of day, and to hand on, in however rudimentary a state, a tradition of free movement and clean rhythm to the wiser generation ensuing.
IV
WALKING, SPORT AND ATHLETICS
Our bodies are gardens; to the which our wills are gardeners, so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop or weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.