In early 18th century England country dance continued to be enjoyed by all layers of society. As an anonymous broadside from 1707 makes clear, however, the mix of dances and style of dancing did vary greatly depending on social context:

Lately I went to a masque at the Court,
Where I saw dances of every sort;
There they did dance with time and measure,
But none like a country-dance for pleasure;
They did dance as in France,
not like the English lofty manner;
And every she must furnished be
With a feathered knack, when she's hot for to fan her.

But we, when we dance, and do happen to
have a napkin in and for to wipe off the wet;
And we with our lasses do jig it about,
Not like at Court, where they often are out;
If the tabor play, we jump away,
A nd turn, and meet our lases to kiss 'em;
Nay, they will be as ready as we,
That hardly at any time can we miss 'em.

That kissing was still an essential part of dance occasion is also clear from an anonymous ditty of 1740:

Begin, says Hall, - Aye, ay, says Mall,
We'll led up Pakington's Pund;
No, no, says Noll, and so says Doll,
We'll first have Sellenger's round.
Then every man began
T o foot it round about,
And every girl did jet it, jet it, jet it in and out.

You're out, says Dick, - Not I, says Nick;
'Twas the fiddler played it wrong;
'Tis true, says Hugh, and so says Sue,
And so says every one.
the fiddler then began
To play the tune again,
And every girl did trip it, trip it, trip it to the men.

Let's kiss, says Jane, - content, says Nan,
A nd so says every she;
How many? says Batt, - why three, says Matt,
For that's a maiden's fee.
The men, instead of three,
Did give them half a score;
The maids in kindness, kindness, kindness, gave 'em as many more.

The, after an hour, they went to a bow'r,
And play'd for ale and cakes;
And kisses too, - until they were due
The lasses held the stakes.
The girls did then begin
To quarrel with the men,
And bade them take their kisses back, and give them their own again.

Now there they did stay the whole of the day,
And tired the fiddler quite
With dancing a play, without any pay,
From morning until night.
They told the fiddler the
they'd pay him for his play,
An each a twopence, twopence, twopence, gave him, and went away.

In the countryside the landed gentry might dance with their tenants when there was a birthday or weddings to celebrate in the manor house (to which were being added longways dancing rooms for the easier enjoyment of the now more prevalent longways-for-as-many-as-will sets). The atmosphere could be very casual and, it is reassuring to know, the dancers sometimes got into a tangle. The character Hobb tries to sought out just such a tangle at a rural country dance in a scene from John Hippisley's 1729 ballad opera, Flora, or hob in the Well:

Set to now, William... Ah, rarely done! In, Mary. Ah, dainty Mary! turn her about John-...Look, Ralph should ha' cast off. And while John had turn'd Mary about, Thomas should ha' led up Nan, and Joan met Ralph at the bottom agen. Meanwhile, John should have sided with Mary, and then Mary should back to back with Ralph, and then Thomas had come in again in his own place. And so all had been right.-- Come, begin again.

The English gentry would enjoy the most fashionable longways dances in assembly rooms they would visit in towns when on holiday or business. In 1729 one such member of the gentry (indeed, a young member of parliament), Soame Jenys, wrote a poem, 'The Art of Dancing'. In Canto II he offers advice on which dances to attempt:

Firsty, with French-dancing be each Ball begun,
Nor Country-dance intrude till these are done...
And if he finds king nature's gifts impart
Endowments proper fo the dancing art,
If in himself he feels together joined
An active body, and a sprightly mind;
In nimble rigadoons let him advance,
Or in the louvre's slow majestic dance:
But if, for want of genius, warmth, and fire,
He dares not to such noble acts aspire,
Let him, contented with an easy pace,
The gentle minuet's circling mazes trace;
If this too hard shall seem, let him forbear,
And to the country-dance confine his care...

and on the importance of timing:

Would you in dancing ev'ry fault avoid,
To keep tru time be your first thoughts employed:
All other errors they in vain shall mend
Who in this one important point offend.
for this, when now united hand in hand,
Eager to start the youthful couple stand,
Let them awhile their nimble feet restrain,
and with soft taps beat time to ev'ry strain...

'Tis not enought that ev'r stander-by
No glaring errors on your steps can spy;
The dance and music must so neicely meet,
Each not must seem an echo to your feet:
A nameless grace must on each movement dwell,
Which words can ne'er express, nor precepts tell...

In Canto III he offers advice on the choice of a partner, for in that day you might spend most of the evening with the same partner:

Let not outward charms your judgements sway,
Your reason rather than your eyes obey;
And in the dance, as in the marriage noose,
Rather for merit than for beauty choose:
Be her your choice who knows with perfect skill
When she should move, and when shoe should be still:
That uninstructed can perform her share,
And kindly half the pleasing burthen bear.
Unhappy is that hopeless wretch's fate
Who, fetter'd in the matrimonial state,
With a poor, simple unexperienced wife
Is forced to lead the tedious dance of life:
And such is his with such a partner joined;
A moving pupper, but without a mind:
Sitll must his hand be pointing out the way,
Yet ne'er can teach so fast as she can stray:
Beneath her follies he must ever groan,
And ever blush for errors not his own...

The trend to choreograph dances, which started in the late 17th century, continued apace in the early 18th century, and although many compositions were duets for courtly or theatrical display (the courante, sarabande, allemande, gigue and minuet) many were social 'contre dances'. In both England and France the court had a resident dancing master who would compose dances for special occasions, such as for the King's Birthday Ball. In France, although the steps had become highly developed (jeté, plié, pas de bourrée, pas de courante, pas de gaillarde, pas de menuet, pas de passacailel and pas de rigaudon etc) the recording of the choreographies was aided by the development of various systems of notation. The most influential system was that developed by Raoul-Auger Feuillet and used in his 1700 Chorégraphie and 1703 Recueil de contredanse. Other systems were used by Guillaume-Louis Pecour (c.1653-1729) in his 1704 Recueil de dances contenant, and by Pierre Rameau (1674-1748) in his 1725 Le maître à danser and his Abbrégé de la nouvelle méthode. All these works included, besides the preeminent 'danses à deux', some newly favoured 'contredanses' - involving, as Feuillet explains (translation), 'the repetition of a figure by two or more couples'.

The new French contres were soon crossing back across the channel and entering the English dance tradition. In 1706 John Weaver published Orchesography, an translation of Feuillet's 1700 work and in that same year published a collection of dances by Mr Isaac in A collection of ball-dances perform'd at court. Other dances by Mr Isaac were published in other places - including in the Playford manual of 1703. In 1711 Edmund Pemberton published works by Isaacs, Thomas Caverley, Anthony l'Abbé, Pecour and Josiah Priest in An essay for the further improvement of dancing. In 1710 John Essex (c.1680-1744) released his treatise For the Further Improvement of Dancing- effectively a translation of de Feuillet's Recueil de Contredanse and some of the dances Essex offers as 'Country Dances' were clearly French contredanses intended to be danced to Minuet airs. In 1728 Essex translated Rameau's work into English as The Dancing-Master: or, The Art of Dancing Explained.

Translations of French works comprised, however, a small part of the English dance book market. The Dancing Master continued to be published after Henry Playford death by John Young, an established music publisher and instrument maker. The latter continued to publish the book through to its 18th and final edition in 1728, by which time it had become a massive three volume work containing 918 tunes and 928 dance. John Walsh, who started publishing dance works at the end of the previous century, began in 1705 to issue annual collections of 24 dances. Several of these collections were devoted to the owork of particular choreographers (for example, Nathaniel Kynaston being acknowledged as the composer of the dances in the 1710 and 1717 editions, and 'Mr Birkhead of the Theatre Royal' as the composer featured in 1721). Every now and again Walsh issued a compenium of a few years worth of material, and in 1718 he published his first edition of The Compleat Country Dancing Master. This 3 volume work contained 200 dances, with 'at least thirdy new ones', in the third volume alone. the final edition in 1760 was in 6 volumes adn contained more than 1,200 'Old & New Country Dances'. That there was some rivalry between the Young and Walsh publishing houses is clear from a comment in Young's 1727 edition of The Dancing Master:

Great care has been taken that none of the Dances should be printed twice over... which is the case of most of the Collections that have been published of late years. Of this there is an undeniable instance in the last Collection of this kind for the years 1726 [a publication by Walsh], by which may be formed a judgement of the rest.

The rivaly seems to have gone back a long way and extended to pinching each other's work. Thus the Thomas Bray's collection, published by Walsh in 1699, appeared shortly therafter in pirated edition published by Richard Wellington and sold on his behalf by none other than John Young. Outside these two publishing houses other dance books were also appearing. 1724 Kellom Tomlinson completed his masterwork The Art of Dancing explained by Reading and Figures, but the cost of printing the 35 full-page plates delayed publication until 1735.

In the later half of the 18th century in England many new dance halls were opened (including William Macall's Almack Assembly Rooms) and many new dance manuals were published. Every year for many years the press of Charles and Samuel Thompson issued a collection of twenty-four dances 'as they are performed at Court, Bath, and all Public Assemblys'. A book of dances found among a cupboardfull of old books by the father of Mrs W.J.Apted, edited by W.S. Porter et.al and published in 1966 as The Apted Book of Country Dances, was almost entirely drawn from Thompson publications. They differ in style from the country dances of the Playford period in that the dances are now almost exclusively triple-minor longways. Presumably to make the dances better suit the taste and number of local dancers, the Apted book editors changed quiet a few Thompson dances by either making them duple minor or by leaving them as triple minor but for a short set of 3 couples with the 3s sometimes repeats the 1s B part figure from the other end. With not all changes being acknowledged and with no original version being presented alongside the editor's version, this influential collection inadvertently lead to many dances in very un-late 18th century formations being thought to be typical of the late-18th century, and by association, with the regency period at the beginning of the 19th century - when there was infact only one formation typical of country dance in this period - the triple minor longways for as many as will. Using this formation it was possible for an experienced number one couple to lead the rest of the set and for less experienced number 2nd and 3rd couples to learn the dance on the way up. For the connoisseurs the dance could be embellished with fancy steps or enhanced by the playing of tunes by a more reknowned composer (e.g. Purcell or Handel).

Country dancing came to be held in the highest regard by dancing masters and aesthetes alike. William Hogarth in his 1753 treatise The Analysis of Beauty, after discussing the Minuet which is 

allowed by the dancing-masters themselves to be the perfection of all dancing 

is able to write:

The lines which a number of people together from in country or figure dancing, make a delightful play upon the eye, especially when the whole figure is to be seen at one view, as at the playhouse from the gallery: the beauty of this kind of mystic dancing, as the poets term it, depends upon moving in a composed variety of lines, chiefly serpentine, govern'd by the principles of intricacy, etc. The dances of barbarians are always represented without these movements, being only composed of wild skipping, jumping, and turning round, or running backward and forward, with convulsive shrugs, and distorted gestures. One of the most pleasing movements in country dancing, and which answers to all the principles of favrying at once, is what they call the hay; the figure of it altogether, is a cypher of S's, or a number of serpentine lines interlacing, or intervolving each otherü Milton in his Paradise Lost, describing the angels dancing about the sacred hills pictures the whole idea in words: Mystical dance!-Mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular. Then most, when most irregular they seem.

Country dancing had become art, but had lost none of its physical and sensual attraction. The playwrite Richard Sheridan in his 1775 The Rivals, has Mr Acre declares his preference for English country dances over the French allemands and cotillons (with their involved steps), he having 'true-born English legs' and 'most Anti-gallican toes!' and in Act II, Scene 1 the character Faulkland is jealous at the thought that his love, Julia, has in his absences been dancing not stade minuets, but country dances:

Country dances...to run the gauntlet thro' a string of amorous palming puppies! - to shew paces like a managed filly!... If there be but one vicious mind in the set 'twill spread like a contagion - the action of their pulse beats to the lascivious movements of the jig - their quivering, warm breasted signs impregnate the very air - the atmosphere becomes electrical to love, and each amorous spark darts thro' every link of chain!

The exporting of English country dance, something which had started in the late 17th century, was still continuing in the late 18th century.

In Scotland the English country dance was gaining acceptance not just in the lowlands but also across the highlands. and the scottish reel, originally a repeated setting and travelling figure for two, three, four or eight dancer, was soon being accommodated within patterned longways sets. No mean compromise considering the Scotts' enthusiasm for their reel - noted by Major Edward Topham in his 1775 Letters from Edinburgh:

The young people in England only consider dancing as an agreeable means of bringing them together. But the Scotch admire the reel for its own merit alone, and may truly be said to dance for the sake of dancing. A Scotchman comes into an assembly room as he would into a field of exercise, dances till he is literally tired, possibly without ever looking at his partnerü In most countries the men have a partiality for dancing with a woman; but her I have frequently seen four gentlemen perform one of these reels seemingly with the same pleasure and perseverance as they would have done, had they had the most sprightly girl for a partner. They give you the idea that they could with equal glee cast off round a joint stool or set to a corner cupboard.

In Europe the minuet (derived from a Pointou branle) and other formal 'danses à deux' had become dances of great refinement and dignity - elegantly constructed dances with complex steps and patterns (indeed Jean George Noverre 1727-1810 who wrote Les lettres sur la danse et sur le ballet urged would-be choreographers to study mathematics and astronomy) - but the 'contredanse' was gaining on these formal dances in popularity- especially as a social dance form. Mozart and Beethovan wrote music for contra dances. The Paris publisher Landrin issued annual collections between 1760 and 1785 including a Potpourri françois des contre-danse ancienne (12 contredanses) and Receuil d'anglaise (9 English country dances) and La Cuisse issued a 1762 collection Le répertoire des bals. No less than 85 late 18th century contredanses are contained in the Contredanses: description des figures, author and date unknown and there were also Italian and German collections.

In the process of naturalisation in France the contre experienced several changes. Firstly, the 'contredanse française' evolved where four couples danced in a square set (in a class conscious French society, the square formation having the advantage that you could select your company). This dance then turned into one that became called the 'Cotillon' or 'petticoat' (possibly taking its name from the words of a song which accompanied a French peasant circle dance: 'Ma Commaîre, quand je danse / Mon Cotillon va-t-il bien?') in which 4 couples dance 10 to 12 different figures, separated by 'changes'. Secondly, the relatively uncomplicated English footwork was replaced with fancier continental steps. Thirdly, a 'contredanse allemande' evolved to accomodated the interlacing of arms found in the 'Allemande' (it is unclear if this was a new dance from Germany or a descendant of the renaissance 'Almain', whether the name of the dance comes from the French for German, or the French for ' by the hand').

In Scandinavia echoes of 'English' can be found in the Swedish 'engelsika' or 'enkeliska' and the Finnish 'ankleesi' or 'andkeliini' names given to many dances which have typically English figures as the 'hey'. Echos of 'contre' can be found in Finnish 'kontra'. Some dances in the English form may have travelled via Europe, thus giving rise to dances with 'English' in the title, but which are done not in longways sets but in square set .

In America, by the mid-18th century, contras were being danced in all 13 states and dancing masters were producing volumes of easily learned country dances (e.g. M.J.C. Fraisier's 1796 collection of 50 English country dances The Scholars' Companion and Asa Willcox collection of 38 English country dances in 1793). Dances were common place across the colonies, the English social elite putting on splendid balls, while their social and political opponents putting on 'Liberty Assemblies'. Although many of the New England settlers were Puritans and many objected strongly to 'mixed' dancing and professional teaching, dances were taught from memory or from the Playford, Thompson and other tutors. Although some congressional delegates succeeded in having resolutions past banning public dancing for the duration of the revolutionary wars, the ban was not observed. Indeed, Jefferson, Washington, and their French allies all loved to dance. By the end of the 18th century women, such as the Amelia behind an article to the Philadelphia Mineva in 1796, were bold enough to hit back at prudish critics:

Whatever captious cynics, in the delirium of their spleen, may allege to the contrary, dancing is incontestably an elegant and amiable accomplishment: it confers grace and dignity of carriage upon the female sexü it invigorates the constitution, enlivens the role for the cheek, and in its result operates as silent eloquence upon the hearts on men. Nature gives us limbs, and art teaches us to use them.

As successful as the English country dancing was proving to be, another style of dance altogether was starting to knock on western European ballroom doors. The style was couples dancing in triple time - in the form of two spins-offs of central Europe coral dances (literally spin-offs as in these follow-the-leader chain dancers couples would break away and turn before rejoining the line).

The first was the mazurka. Polish dances had traveled already in the 17th century with returning soldiers to Sweden. In the course of the 18th century these Polish dances had - as Sweden became first a refuge for aristocratic refugees from a divided Poland and then a close ally of a united Poland - become popular with the Swedish upper class - even more popular than the minuet- and evolved into a family of dances known as the 'polska'. One particular Polish dance, the mazurka from the plains of Mazovia, spread westward when in the early part of the century Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland from 1697 to 1733 introduced it into the courts of Germany, and by the later part of the century the dance had won devotees in Paris.

The second was the early waltz. Though many French writers believed it descended from the renaissance La Volte / La Volta, the waltz almost certainly evolved out of the turning dances of Alpine Europe, which in turn evolved (like the mazurka) out of follow-the-leader coral dances. These dances went by many names. Some names alluded to the turning motion- thus 'Dreher, 'Weller', 'Spinner', 'Schleifer'. Others to the particular district in which they were especially popular - thus 'Steirer' from Steiermark (Styria, the northern corner of Slovenia) or 'Ländler', from 'Land ob der Enns - another name for Upper Austria. These folk dances still survive today in these lands. Nicholaus Lenau (1802-1850) describes the dance in Der Steyretanz (translation):

High o'er the maiden's head
Then raises he his arm;
His finger as a pivot,
She circles round about
Like strength to beauty joined.
How straight ahead he dances
In noble attitude,
And causes then the maid
Light whirling from the right
To glide beneath the left
His nimble partner now,
Must circle at his back,
dance round and round about him
As if he wished to be
As if he wished to say,
Encircled by his love,
Describe for me the circle
of all my hopes and joys.'
And now the blissful couple
Take hold each other's hands
and with a supple movement
Slip through each other's arms.
His eyes are fixed on her
and Hers see only him.
Perhaps they mean to say,
Why can't we two, united
In one another's arms
Spend all our life together
In such a dance as this?

Another glimpse of how the waltz was danced in the village context is offered by Ernst Arndt in 1799:

The dancers grasped the long dress of their partners so that it would not drag and be trodden upon, and lifted it high, holding them in this cloak which brought both bodies under one cover, as closely as possible against them and in this way the whirling continued in the most indecent positions: the suppporting hand lay firmly on the breast, at each movement making little lustful pressures; the girls went wild and looked as if they would drop. When waltzing on the darker side of the room there were bolder embraces and kisses. The custom of the country: it is not as bad as it looks, they exclaim. But now I understand very well why there and there in parts of Swabia and Switzerland the waltz has been prohibited.

Although folksongs and dances had, as rustic showpieces, played an important part in the Hapsburg entertainments for some centuries, it was not until the late 18th century, with the help of their light footwear and polished ballroom, that the Viennese started to transform this folk dance into the smooth gliding participatory 'vals'. So different was this new dance from the old formal French ones that many called it the 'Deutsche'/'Teutsche' and it was not long before the dance was coming to be associated with exaltation, and surrender. Thus Goethe in his 1774 Die Leiden des jungen Werther:

Never have I moved so lightly. I was no longer a human being. To hold the most adorable creature in one's arms and fly around with her like the wind, so that everything around us fades away...

The dance was taken up with such a passion as among the middle classes of middle Europe. There it joined the other great democratic dance of the time, the contredanse, to fill programs to the exclusion of such upper-class dances as the Minuet. Thus Mozart wrote from Prague in 1787 that:

At six o'clock I went with Count Canal to the so-called Breiten, a rustic ball, at which the flower of the Prague beauties are in the habit of assembling... I saw with wholehearted pleasure how these people jumped around with such sincere enjoyment to the music of my Figaro, which had been turned into all kinds of contres and Teutche.

Similarly, Mozart's Irish friend Michael Kelly recounted in his 1826 Reminiscences, that in Vienna in 1776:

The people were dancing mad... The ladies of Vienna are particularly celebrated for their grace and movements of waltzing of which they never tire... It thought waltzing from ten at night until seven in the morning a continual whirligig, most tiresome to the eye and ear - to say nothing of worse consequences...

Aristocrats were soon caught by the contagion, slipping away from their minuet-dominated balls to enjoy waltzes with the servants and in 1775 the Austrian Empress caused a stir by requesting the court musicians play a Ländler.

In France the revolution, turmoil and emerging meritocracy of the last decades of the century put an end to artificial court manners and gave the coup de grace to the minuet. Middle class manners started to be acceptable in well-dressed company. A couple might now enter a ballroom not the man leading the lady, but the lady with her hand slipped through the man's arm. The way was opened for the vitality, naturalness and romance of the waltz. Its initial reception was, however, mixed. Some thought it outrageous and indecent and wanted to ban it. Thus J.M de Chavanne commented in 1767 that 

The Waltz has nothing to do with good dancing 

and thus the title of an 1799 book by S.J. Woolf, which went into a second edition, Beweis, dass der walzer eine Hauptqueller der Schwäche des Körpers und des Geistes unserer Generation sey ('Proof that the waltz is a main source of the weakness of body and mind of our generation.' ). Others thought the dance outrageous and indecent and wanted more of it.

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