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teach their children dancing, as an accomplishment, because they can walk and carry their persons with sufficient ease and propriety without it.

They think it unnecessary also, because, however the practice of it may be consistent with the sprightliness of youth, they could never sanction it in maturer age. They expect of the members of their Society that they should abandon amusements, and substitute useful and dignified pursuits, when they become men. But they cannot consider dancing otherwise than as an employment that is useless, and below the dignity of the Christian character, in persons who have come to years of discretion. To initiate, therefore, a youth of twelve or thirteen years of age into dancing, when he must relinquish it at twenty, would, in their opinion, be a culpable waste of his time.

The Quakers cannot view dancing abstractedly, for no person teaches or practises it abstractedly; but they are obliged to view it in connection with other things. If they view it with its usual accompaniment of music, it would be inconsistent, they think, to encourage it, when they have banished

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music

music from their republic. If they view it as connected with an assemblage of persons, they must, they conceive, equally condemn it. And here it is, in fact, that they principally level their arguments against it. They prohibit all members of their society from being present at balls and assemblies; and they think that if their youth are brought up in ignorance of the art of dancing, this ignorance will operate as one preventive at least against their attendances at amusements of this nature.

The Quakers are as strict in their inquiry with respect to the attendances of any of their members at balls, as at theatrical amusements. They consider balls and assemblies among the vain amusements of the world. They use arguments against these, nearly similar to those which have been enumerated on the preceding subjects. They consider them, in the first place, as productive of a kind of frivolous levity, and of thoughtlessness with respect to the important duties of life. They consider them, in the second place, as giving birth to vanity and pride. They consider them, again, as powerful in the excitement of some of the malevolent

malevolent passions. Hence they believe them to be injurious to the religious interests of a man. For, by depriving him of complacency of mind, and by increasing the growth of his bad feelings, they become impediments in the way of his improvement as a moral being.

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SECTION II,

Arguments of the Quakers examined-Three cases made out for the determination of a moral philo sopher Case the first-Case the second-Case the third.

I PURPOSE to look into these arguments of the Quakers, and to see how far they can be supported. I will suppose, therefore, a few cases to be made up, and to be handed, one by one, to some moral philosopher for his decision. I will suppose this philosopher (that all prejudice of education may be excluded) to have been ignorant of the nature of dancing, but that he had been made acquainted with it in order that he might be enabled to decide on the point in question.

Suppose,

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Suppose, then, it was reported to this philosopher, that on a certain day a number of young persons of both sexes, who had casually met at a friend's house, instead of confining themselves to the room on a summer's afternoon, had walked out upon the green; that a person present had invited them suddenly to dance; that they had danced to the sound of musical vibrations for an hour; and that after this they had returned to the room, or that they had returned home. Would the philosopher be able to say, in this case, that there was any thing in it that incurred any of the culpable imputations fixed upon dancing by the Quakers?

He could hardly, I think, make it out that there could have been, in any part of the business, any opening for the charges in question. There appear to have been no previous preparations of extravagant dressing; no premeditated design of setting off the person; no previous methods of procuring admiration; no circumstance, in short, by which he could reasonably suppose that either pride or vanity could have been called into existence. The time also would appear to him to have been too short, and the cir

cumstances

cumstances too limited, to have given birth to improper feelings. He would certainly see that a sort of levity would have unavoidably arisen on the occasion, but his impartiality and justice would oblige him to make a distinction between the levity that only exhilarates, and the levity that corrupts the heart. Nor could he conceive that the dancing for an hour only, and this totally unlooked for, cóuld stand much in the way of serious reflection for the future. If he were desired to class this sudden dancing for an hour upon the green with any of the known pleasures of life, he would probably class it with an hour's exercise in the fields, or with an hour's game at play, or with an hour's employment in some innocent recreation.

But suppose, now, that a new case were opened to the philosopher. Suppose it were told him, that the same party had been so delighted with their dance upon the green, that they had resolved to meet once a month for the purpose of dancing, and, that they might not be prevented by bad weather, to meet in a public room; that they had met according to their resolution; that they had danced

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