Amongst cultured people whose social position makes it difficult for them to dance in circles on the grass in order to express or to stimulate their gaiety, and whose school of deportment will not permit them to sing a merry song of sixpence as they trip down the streets, there is some danger of the fire of merriment dying for want of fuel. Vivacity in printed books, therefore, has been encouraged, so that the mind at least, if not the body, may skip about and clap its hands. A portly gentleman with a solemn face, reading his “Punch” or his “Life” in the club, is, after all, giving play to precisely those same humours which in ancient days might have led him, like Georgy Porgy, to kiss the girls or to perform any other merry joke. It is necessary, therefore, ever to enlarge the stock of things humorous, vivacious, or rousing, if the thoughts are to be kept young and eyes bright in this age of restraint. What would Yuletide be without the olden times to bolster it up? What would the Christmas numbers do without the pictures of our great-grand-parents’ coaches snowbound, of huntsmen of the eighteenth century, of jesters at the courts of the barons? What should we do without the “Vicar of Wakefield,” the “Compleat Angler,” “Pepys’ Diary,” and all the rest of the ancient books? And, going back a few centuries, what an amount we should miss had we not “Æsop’s Fables,” the “Odyssey,” the tales of the Trojan War, and so on. It is from the archæologist that one must expect the augmentation of this supply; and just in that degree in which the existing supply is really a necessary part of our equipment, so archæology, which looks for more, is necessary to our gaiety. In order to keep his intellect undulled by the routine of his dreary work, Matthew Arnold was wont to write a few lines of poetry each day. Poetry, like music and song, is an effective dispeller of care; and those who find Omar Khayyam or “In Memoriam” incapable of removing the burden of their woes, will no doubt appreciate the “Owl and the Pussy-cat,” or the Bab Ballads. In some form or other verse and song are closely linked with happiness; and a ditty from any age has its interest and its charm. “She gazes at the stars above: I would I were the skies, That I might gaze upon my love With such a thousand eyes!” That is from the Greek of a writer who is not much read by the public at large, and whose works are the legitimate property of the antiquarian. It suffices to show that it is not only to the moderns that we have to look for dainty verse that is conducive to a light heart. The following lines are from the ancient Egyptian:-- “While in my room I lie all day In pain that will not pass away, The neighbours come and go. Ah, if with them my darling came The doctors would be put to shame: _She_ understands my woe.”