If the motive of the action develope itself successively, the preparatives will follow the same progression for example, the legs crossed, and the feet drawn behind, will separate themselves at once, and fix themselves at their place in a firm manner; the unfolding of the arms will ensue, &c.

This will have equal place, even when no exterior object provokes the activity; when it is solely employed in considering attentively: we turn towards those we are speaking to, we advance near the object which interests us, in a manner which more or less announces the intention and predisposition to enter into a particular action.

LETTER IX.

Costume Dancing-On Soliloquies, or Monologues-Sallust's Observations on Catiline's Mode of Walking-Hamlet-Lear-Tancred.

You are right when you say that in some of my delineations I abandon general traits, in attaching myself too much to the characteristic signs of nations, and the peculiar classes of society. The hands thrust into the clothes, or hid in the bosom, presuppose a certain kind of costume; as the feet, turned in and out, indicate the first elements of the modern art of dancing. I do not mean to give you finished drawings. If my etchings of the gestures and passions should offer you some general ideas of feelings and expressions, common to all ages and all nations, my end will be attained. We have just considered man in a state of quietude, let us now take him in the opposite point of view. He weighs his action and his position; he examines the party it is most proper for him to take; he searches out the most assured means of attaining

his ends; his memory recalls similar situations to his mind. In a word, he compares, discusses, and reasons. The expression will here be more or less animated, according to the cause which shall disclose his activity; while the sole love of truth, which tranquilly searches for fresh sources of knowledge, developes the activity of the soul; or whilst an agreeable play of the imagination is its employment: then, also, the expression will be more feeble, more moderate, and more cold; than whilst the head, labouring for the interests of the heart, ought to consider and weigh the advantage of man; his good, his evil, his happiness, and his misery.

When Hamlet appears in that situation so terrible and insupportable, where he argues both for and against the commission of suicide, he ought most surely to present an expression very different from that of a cold moralist, who reasons upon the same topic, not as an argument which comes home to his own bosom, but as a mere problem for the exercise of his faculties. Nevertheless, the love of truth is also capable of producing a very great interest in the mind. Pythagoras offered a hecatomb to the Muses when he had discovered the demonstration of the geometrical proposition which still bears his name.

The reflections and reasonings, which are admitted on the theatre, are always divided in two parts, the sentiments of the heart, and the pas

sions.

It is from these that gesture receives its more particular modifications, the determinate degree of warmth, the transition or the repose more or less marked, &c.

Since it is impossible to develope all the various shades of interior activity, I shall confine myself to some observations which may serve as a model for a number of others of this kind.

It is principally against the rule of analogy, almost every where observed in nature, that our actors mostly offend. This offence occurs most frequently in their soliloquies or monologues. Sallust, among the numerous characteristic traits of Catiline, distinguishes his walk sometimes slow and sometimes hurried.

"Animus impurus diis hominibusque infestus, neque vigiliis, neque quietibus sedari poterat : ita conscientia mentem excitatam vexarat, igitur color ei exsanguis, foedi oculi, citus modo, modo tardus incessus," &c.

The historian attributes this irregularity to the