Dancing is styled the =Terpsichorean Art= in honour of Terpsichore, the daughter of Jupiter and Mnemosyne, whom the ancients regarded as its inventress. The =Morris Dance=, from which our “Jack in the Green” and his fellow May-day revellers trace their origin, was the military dance of the Moors, or Moriscoes, introduced into this country by John of Gaunt on his return from Spain in the reign of Edward III. Five men and a boy took part in it, and from the fact of the boy wearing an ill-fitting helmet called a _morione_, he received the name of “Mad Morion,” which was subsequently corrupted into =Maid Marian=. The =Saraband= was invented by Zarabanda, a famous dancer of Seville in the sixteenth century. The =Gavotte= arose among the Gavots, a people who inhabited the department of the Upper Alps and the province of Dauphiny, in France. =Quadrille= is the literal French for “a little square,” so called from the position taken up by the dancers; while the Lancers derived their name from a company of =Lancers= who originally improvised this variation of the Quadrille for their own amusement while seated in their saddles. The =Polka=, of Polish origin, is so designated on account of the Bohemian word _pulka_, a half, in allusion to the half step occurring in it; the =Schottische= is a variation of the Polka; the =Mazourka= is the national dance of Poland--all of which, with the addition of the =Redowa=, are native terms. The =Waltz= is a contraction of the German =Waltzer=, derived from the verb _waltzen_, to roll, to revolve, alluding to the revolutions made by the pairs of dancers placed _vis-à-vis_. The =Country Dance=, so far from being a peasants’ dance, is nothing more than a corruption of the French _contre-danse_, signifying that the parties place themselves opposite to each other during the dance. Strictly speaking, the Contre-danse and the Quadrille are one and the same. The =Roger de Coverley= derived its name from the great-grandfather of Roger de Coverley, or rather, to be precise, of Roger of Cowley, near Oxford, who invented it. The =Minuet= (Latin _minutus_, small) is so called wholly on account of the short steps peculiar to this dance. The =Tarantella= was invented in Italy out of the supposition that the profuse perspiration which it induced was a certain cure for the poisonous bite of the TARANTULA SPIDER, named after the city of Taranto, where its baneful presence was first manifested. =Cinderella Dances= are those which terminate before midnight, in allusion to Cinderella of nursery renown.