Woman is so charming, so fascinating, so winning, and so ruling by the attractions which properly belong to her—by her delicacy—her gentleness—and her modesty—that we honestly confess, whenever we see a lovely girl doing that which degrades her, which must lower her even in her own estimation, we feel a pang of regret, and lament to find conduct applauded to the very echo which reduces the beautiful creatures before us to a mere animal in a state of exhibition.
But if there really be men who take delight in the "Ionici motus" of the Italian Opera, surely our own women should be spared the sight of such indelicacies: nothing which the Roman satirist mentions as tending to destroy the delicate feelings of the female sex could possibly be worse than those which week after week may be seen in the Haymarket.
We have strenuously attacked, for its unnatural indecency, the custom of dressing actresses in men's attire upon the English stage, but a lady in small clothes is better on a public theatre than a lady with no clothes at all.
We are quite ready to admit, without in the smallest degree lamenting, the superiority of foreigners over the natives of England in the art and mystery of cutting capers, and if the ladies and gentlemen annually imported jumped as high as the volteurs in Potier's "Danaides" at the Porte St. Martin, neither would our envy nor our grief be excited; but we certainly do eye with mistrust and jealousy the avidity with which "foreign manners," "foreign customs," and "foreign morality," are received into our dear and much-loved country.
While custom sanctions the nightly commission of waltzing in our best society, it perhaps is only matter of consolation to the matrons who permit their daughters to be operated upon in the mysteries of that dance, to see that women can be found to commit grosser indelicacies even on a public stage.
A correspondent of the Spectator, in the 67th Number, Vol. I., describes accurately under another name the mechanical part of the foreign waltz of these days, and says:—"I suppose this diversion was first invented to keep up a good understanding between young men and women; but I am sure, had you been here, you would have seen great matter for speculation."
We say so now; but the waltz has proved a bad speculation to the very dowagers who allow it to be committed; for, as can be proved by reference to fashionable parish registers, there have been fewer marriages in good society by one half, annually upon the average, since the introduction of this irritating indecency into England.
If, therefore, the public dances at the King's Theatre are looked at, merely as authorities for the conduct of private balls, the matter is still worse; but we have too high an opinion of our countrywomen in general to think this of them, and we are sure that we are speaking the sentiment of the most amiable and the most charming when we raise the voice of rebuke against the dress and deportment of the Italian Corps de Ballet.
One advocate we are certain to have in the person of an old gentlewoman next to whom we sat last Saturday se'nnight, who clearly had never been at the Opera during the whole course of her long and doubtlessly respectable life, till that very evening.