No reasonable doubt can be entertained that
elephants have been taught to walk on ropes.
The bibliography of the subject, which we spare
the reader, may be found in Aldrovandi, De
Quadrupedibus, lib. i. From this it appears
at the funambula species was the African, not
the Asiatic, elephant. To show the preciseness
of these records, one statement is, "Nero,
according to Xiphilinus's account, gave great and
most magnificent games in honour of his mother;
on which occasion, an elephant, introduced into
the theatre, mounted an arch on the top of it,
nml from thence walked upon a rope with a man
on his back." Whoever, now, should go to the
expense of training elephants to walk a rope,
would probably receive very considerable returns
for his outlay.

With the exception, however, of elephants,
we may hold quadruped funambulists to have
mistaken their vocation. The animals who are
really at home amidst giddy heights, delighting
to traverse suspension-bridges composed of a
single rope or cane, are the quadrumani, the
four-handed animals, the monkeys, great and
small. In fact, the best rope-dancers imitate
their personal mechanism as far as they can.
True, Blondin has no prehensile tail; but his
hands are prehensile to an eminent degree, while
his feet are quite handy, grasping the rope.
Without wishing to offend those gentlemen (on
the contrary, to pay them a compliment), we
may take Léotard to be a flying squirrel of
superior grace, and Blondin an experienced
gorilla of surpassing abilities and suavity.

From walking erect upon a boarded floor to
walking along one of its narrow planks, and
thence to walking along a plank across a stream,
to walking along the top of a single-brick wall,
along a square bar of iron or wood, along a
very stout rope like a ship's cable, the transition
seems natural and easy. It would be so
in reality, but for the entrance of the second
element of difficulty in the practical problem—
the influence of height on the human nervous
system.

   Come on, sir; here's the place: Stand still.  How fearful
    And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!
    I'll look no more;
    Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
    Topple down headlong.

There ought to be no more difficulty in walking
along the top of a wall thirty feet than on
one only three feet from the ground. To cross
the joists of the fourth story of an unfinished
and unfloored house ought to be just as easy as
to cross those of the ground-floor with no cellar
beneath it. To run up a rope to the top of
St. Paul's Cathedral, and to run up a rope to a
first-floor window, requires exactly the same
conditions of equilibrium, exerted for a longer
al of time in the former case; and yet
most persons would rather attempt the one than
the other.

The power of resisting giddiness in looking
down from precipitous neights is partly constitutional
and partly the effect of habit. The
safest way is not to look down at all, if it can be
avoided; but it cannot always be avoided. This
is the reason why it is so much easier to ascend
an upright cliff or crag than it is to descend it.
It is not the mere elevation which tries the
nerves, but the sheerness of the precipice, the
abruptness of the slope, the angle of inclination,
the danger in fact. Many persons who would
look with indifference down an inclined plane of
forty-five degrees, shrink at the brink of a
perpendicular descent. At Cape Blaney, on the
French coast, opposite to Folkestone, there is a
chalk cliff varying from two to three hundred
feet, which gives goose-flesh sensations, and
causes cold water to run down your backbone
in a way unfelt on the top of Snowdon, Vesuvius,
and the Righi.

To resist this feeling is a point of honour with
mountaineers, sailors, and several other
professions. Hence, Nelson's invitations to his
midshipmen to meet him at the masthead.  In
Martyn's time (see his Voyage) no young man
of St. Kilda could pay his addresses to a girl,
until he had previously performed the ceremony,
which consisted in standing on the top of a
lofty, precipitous rock overhanging the sea, with
both his feet half over the edge of the rock, and
with his face towards the sea, and then bowing
forwards until he touched the tips of his toes
with both hands; being then only at liberty to
resume his upright position, and to retire inland
to his lady fair. The curious may practise the
evolution on their private door-step with a
horse-hair mattress spread before it. In respect
to the resistance to giddiness, it is probable
that many mariners, shipwrights, Swiss guides,
finishers of cathedral spires and weathercocks,
and members of the Alpine Club, with Professor
Tyndal at their head, are quite as accomplished
and as sure of themselves as any funambulist
that ever mounted a rope.

Vauxhall, now historical, displayed during a
considerable period remarkable rope ascents,
rendered still more trying by the accompaniment
of fireworks. Of the rope-runners who
have attained celebrity by mounting up to great
heights, one of the most famous is Madame
Saqui, a Frenchwoman married to an Italian,
who for years and years danced on the cord, to
the delight of Parisian and other audiences.
Her style was fantastic rather than graceful,
abrupt and fearless, striking by its originality
instead of charming by its elegance. This
might be a matter of necessity more than of
choice; for she was a short, thin, wiry little
woman, so badly made that some people said she
was deformed, and she artistically exaggerated
her natural defects by the eccentricity of her
costume. She established a small theatre in
Paris, for the display of her funambular feats,
named after herself, the Théâtre Saqui, which,
like the still existing Funambules, subsequently
discarded rope-dancing for vaudeville and farce.
The Théâtre de la Gaîté also, in its infancy,
derived its support from athletic displays and
rope-dancing.

Madame Saqui may still retain a place in the