resistance has made imperceptible to the seated
and stable social world.

The visible flitting figure of the unfettered
madman sprinkled our literature with mad
songs, and even one or two poets of to-day have,
by tradition, written them; but that wild source
of inspiration has been stopped; it has been built
over, lapped and locked, imprisoned, led under-
ground. The light melancholy and the wind-
blown joys of the song of the distraught, which
the poets were once ingenious to capture, have
ceased to sound one note of liberty in the
world's ears. But it seems that the grosser and
saner freedom of the happy beggar is still the
subject of a Spanish song.

That song is gay, not defiant; it is not an
outlaw's or a robber's, it is not a song of vio-
lence or fear. It is the random trolling note of
a man who owes his liberty to no disorder, fail-
ure, or ill-fortune, but takes it by choice from
the voluntary world, enjoys it at the hand of
unreluctant charity; who twits the world with
its own choice of bonds, but has not broken his
own by force. It seems, therefore, the song of
an indomitable liberty of movement, light
enough for the puffs of a zephyr chance.

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