‘Voir, c’est avoir. Allons courir! Vie errante Est chose enivrante. Voir, c’est avoir. Allons courir! Car tout voir, c’est tout conquérir. ‘Nous n’avons donc, exempts d’orgueil, De lois vaines, De lourdes chaines; Nous n’avons donc, exempts d’orgueil, Ni berceau, ni toit, ni cercueil. Mais croyez-en notre gaîté, Noble ou prêtre, Valet ou maître; Mais, croyez-en notre gaîté, Le bonheur, c’est la liberté. ‘Oui, croyez-en notre gaîté, Noble ou prêtre, Valet ou maître; Oui, croyez-en notre gaîté, Le bonheur, c’est la liberté.’ The forms of these poems of social amusement are, in truth, as various as the social amusement itself. The variety of the world, singularly various as it everywhere is, is nowhere so various as in that. Men have more ways of amusing themselves than of doing anything else they do. But the essence—the characteristic—of these poems everywhere is, that they express more or less well the lighter desires of human nature;—those that have least of unspeakable depth, partake most of what is perishable and earthly, and least of the immortal soul. The objects of these desires are social accidents; excellent, perhaps, essential, possibly—so is human nature made—in one form and variety or another, to the well-being of the soul, yet in themselves transitory, fleeting, and in other moods contemptible. The old saying was, that to endure solitude a man must either be a beast or a god. It is in the lighter play of social action, in that which is neither animal nor divine, which in its half-way character is so natural to man, that these poems of society, which we have called poems of amusement, have their place.