Book excerpt: This is a typical example of the antidance literature that was published during the nineteenth century. Although Brookes provides a weak defense of dancing, his final conclusion is that the large assemblies, indelicate dressing, "unwarrantable freedom of intercourse between the sexes," as well as uncontrolled excitement, leads to a thorough worldliness and, ultimately, to the forgetfulness of God. The manual was reissued in the 1890s under the title The modern dance.