ACROBAT (Gk. one walking on tiptoe, from dorm., akros, highest, + gairetv, bainein, to go). The presence of the word in very early times in most European languages may be taken to indicate the remote origin of the exer cise which called the term into use. Originally it was doubtless used to denote the acrobatic feats of the rope-dancers, but in the course of centuries its meaning has extended so that it in cludes many things which were unknown to the Greeks and Romans as familiarly as were the rope-dancers, who, as Terence in his prologue to Heegra complains, distracted the attention of the public from his play; and so does history repeat itself, a writer in the 7'atier expresses his surprise at finding so small an audience at the opera, because the rope-dancer was not in the bill that night. The most recent celebrated exponent. of the original art was Blondin, who (Tossed Niagara Falls on a rope. carrying a man on his back. But this was no unheard-of feat, for when Isabel of lin V.1 ria, Queen to Charles VI. of France, made her entry into Paris, says Frois sari., who was an eye witness, a cord was stretched from the highest house on the bridge of St. Michel to the topmost gallery of the Church of Our Lady and an acrobat carried two boys holding lighted Candles over it. From be ing a rope-daneer, or rather balancer only, the acrobat gradually added to his exhibits other balancing and thudding acts. Vaulting and jug
gling and contortions became part of the enter tainments of the Middle Ages. Edward 111. paid jugglers handsomely for exhibiting their acro batic skill and the flexibility of their bodies. The austere Queen Mary even relaxed at their pranks; and when Queen Elizabeth attended the revels at Kenilworth Castle, which Sir Walter Scott has immortalized, she was vastly enter tained by acrobatic tumblers. the ful balancing feats of the .4apanese with ladders at right angles, up and down which a second man climbs in apparent defiance of the of equilibrium, had their prototypes, if not equals, among the European acrobats of twit hundred year ago. while modern somersault-th•owing and leaping through hoops are illustrated in manuscripts as far back as the fourteenth cen tury. The more liberal interpretation of the word now includes performances on the trapeze, the horizontal liar, and the other pieces of appa ratus usually found in gymnasiums for the de velopment of the suppleness of the body. Con sult: Le Roux anal ruler, Acrobats and Mountebanks, translated by A. P. Morton, illus trated (London, BOO).