Notes On Literature, Science And Art.

usual custom , when the sons of Benjamin ( after the barbarous usage of ancient times , when women were considered the goods and chattels of their husbands ) , sprung from their ambush in the vineyard , seized them , and bore them away for their wives ; and whoever heard of them proving less chaste matrons or worse mothers for their Jove of dancing ? " 0 . Jephthah , judge of Israel , what a daughter had thou ! " but whoever loved her the less because when her father returned safe and victorious to Mizpah ,

i 143 B . C ., she went " out to meet him with timbrels and with dances ? " Three thousand and twenty years of darkness , hiding much of the past from us , has not been able to dim that dancing from the eyes of posterity . " When David was returning from the slaughter of the Philistines , " I 0 G 3 years B . C ., we are told by Samuel , " that the women came out of all cities of Israel , singing and dancing ; " and when the Amalekites were so severely smitten with the sword by Davidseven years afterwards

, , it is not recorded as a crime that they were surprised dancing . Nay , the royal psalmist himself sang : — " Hear , 0 Lord , and have mercy upon me : Lord , be Thou my helper ! Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing :

Thou hast put off my sackcloth , and guided me with gladness . —Psalm XJ-J : Again , Psalm cxlix : — " Let them praise His name in the dance : Let them sing praises unto Him with the timbrel and harp . " Then again , Psalm cl . : — ' •' Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet : Praise Him with the psaltery and liaip . Praise Him with the timbrel and dance :

Praise Him with stringed instruments and organs . Praise Him upon the loud cymbals : Praise Him upon the high sounding cymbals . ' "To everything there is a season , " says our wise traditional Grand Master , Solomon , " and a time to every purpose under the heaven ; " and he specialty mentions " a time to weep ) , and a time to laugh ; a time to mourn , and a time to dance . " To " go forth iu the dances of them that make merry , '' was one of the blessings promised

to ihe " virgin of Israel , " 606 B . C ., by the prophet Jeremiah ; and again , — " Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance , both young men and old together ; " and in his Lamentations he exclaims , — "The joy of our heart is ceased ; our dance is turned into mourning . ' ' The anger of Moses , 1491 B . C ., recorded in the thirty-second chapter of Exodus , was not against the dancing , but the return to idolatry . And whenever the holy Jesus mentions dancing , as in the beautiful jiarable of the Prodigal Son , or the hie figurative expression of " We have piped unto you , and ye have not danced , " there

is never the least condemnation of the jrractice . "And when a convenient day was come , that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords , high captains , and chief sstates of Galilee ; and when the daughter of Herodias came in and danced , and pleased Herod and them that sat with him . " it is not dancing ( or even mu . tlting , as I am told this pei-fermance was ) that is condemned-by St . Mark , but her unwomanly request— "I will that thou give me by and by the head of John tho Baptist in a

charger ! " Why , then , should those who profess to take the Scriptures as the guide of their faith and actions , condemn dancing in toto ? Because , like every good thing , it may be abused , is that any reason for banishing it entirely from the world ? Though I never was a dancer myself—the gloom of my blighted hopes through life causing me to brood over the sufferings of humanity too much , like Heraclitus , of Ephesus , when I perhaps had better have laughed a little more at the follies of mankindlike Democritus

, , of Abdera—yet I always have enjoyed that beautiful description of the dance after supper , in Sterne's Sentimental Journey , where he says : — "It was not till the middle of the second dance , when , for some pauses in the movement wherein they all seemed to look up , I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which is the cause or the effect of simple jollity . In a word , I thought I beheld Religion