These considerations produce in the spectator cheerfulness and
mirth; and these are continued to him more pure and unalloyed than in
the former case, because he can have no drawbacks from the admission
into his own breast of any of those uneasy, immoral passions, above
described.
But to return to the point in question. The reader has now had the
different cases laid before him as determined by the moral philosopher.
He has been conducted also through the interior of the ball-room. He
will have perceived therefore that the arguments of the Quakers have
gradually unfolded themselves, and that they are more or less
conspicuous, or more or less true, as dancing is viewed abstractedly, or
in connection with the preparations and accompaniments, that may be
interwoven with it. If it be viewed in connection with these
preparations and accompaniments, and if these should be found to be so
inseparably connected with it, that they must invariably go together,
which is supposed to be the case where it is introduced into the
ball-room, he will have no difficulty in pronouncing that, in this case,
it is objectionable as a christian recreation. For it cannot be doubted
that it has an immediate tendency, in this case, to produce a frivolous
levity, to generate vanity and pride, and to call up passions of the
malevolent kind.
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