ing willow, and I instinctively avoid a birch on account of certain juvenile recollections. "But hail, thou goddess fair and free, and before I go any farther, let me observe how abundantly the Pagan heaven was provided with hearteasing mirth; for besides the damsel we have mentioned, Venus is expressly termed by Homer the laughter-loving Queen; the whole Court of the immortals was often thrown into fits by the awkwardness of Vulcan; Jove himself was so fond of the recreation that he even laughed at lovers' perjuries; and Momus the jester, whose province it was to excite their risible faculties, was instructively represented as the son of Sleep and Night, whereby we are taught to go to bed betimes if we wish to have cheerful and hilarious days. But in this our sombre and antirisible age, it has rather become the fashion to attack laughter, notwithstanding the cowardice of assaulting a personage who is obliged to be constantly holding both his sides, and is therefore incapable of other self-defence than that of sniggering at his assailants. I am too old for laughing, they tell me; but it is by laughing that I have lived to grow old, and they may as well take my life itself as that whereby I live. "Laugh and grow fat" may be a questionable maxim, but “laugh and grow old" is an indisputable one; for so long as we can laugh at all, we shall never die unless it be of laughing. As to performing this operation in one's sleeve, it is a base compromise; no more comparable to the original, than is a teeth-displaying simper to that hilarious roar which shakes the wrinkles out of the heart, and frightens old Time from advancing towards us. Fortune, love, and justice, are all painted blind: they can neither see our smiles nor frowns. Fate is deaf to the most pathetic sorrows: we cannot mend our destined road of life with a paviour's sigh, nor drown care in tears. Let us, then, leave growling to wild beasts, and croaking to the ravens, indulging freely in the rationality of laughter: which, in the first place, is reducible to writing-Ha! Ha! Ha! and should always be printed with three capital letters, and a prop of admiration between each to prevent its bursting its sides. (The very hieroglyphic makes one snigger, so festive, social, and joyous is its character.) And secondly, its delicious alchymy not only converts a tear into the quintessence of merriment, and makes wrinkles themselves expressive of youth and frolic, but lights up the dullest eye with a twinkle, and throws a flash of sunshine over the cloudiest visage, while it irradiates and embellishes the most beautiful. Including thine, reader, in the latter class, I counsel thee to give the experiment a frequent trial. It just occurs to me, that I ought to have begun my essay with a definition of laughter, and an argute inquiry into its causes; but it will come in as well at the end, and perhaps a hysteronproteron, in itself a common provocative to risibility, is more appropriate than any methodical arrangement. Lastly and imprimis, then, it is a great mistake to suppose that wit, which has been termed the unexpected discovery of resemblance between ideas supposed dissimilar, has any tendency to excite the giggling faculties. Quite the contrary: it elicits only the silent smile of the intellect; on which account I have no great regard for wit, for I love to laugh with all my heart and none of my head. Humour, therefore, I deem preferable to but I am not proceeding systematically. Well, then, this convulsion is of three different kinds. Animal laughter, which may be produced by tickling, or by that happy and healthy organization which occasions a constant flow of the animal spirits. Unnatural laughter, which sometimes accompanies the triumph of the most malignant passions, or bursts out upon any unexpected change of fortune, or assumes that ghastly smile or "jealous leer malign," designated the Sardonic grin, not, as a young lady of my acquaintance supposed, from the Sardones or people of Roussillon, but from the involuntary hysterical affection produced by eating that species of ranunculus called the Herba Sardonia. And lastly, (for the second time,) Sentimental laughter,-a compound operation, emanating jointly or separately from the head or the heart, and whose basis seems to be a union, or rather opposition, of suitableness and unsuitableness in the same object, or any unexpected ludicrous combination. I shall not notice the subdivision of Sympathetic laughter, which is a mere infection; or of that which is stimulated by the consciousness that we ought not to laugh, which gives a poignant zest to the ebullition. 66 Talking of incongruities puts me in mind of the steam-boat, and of a conversation between two parties, one conversing of their children, the other settling the ingredients of a wedding-dinner, whose joint colloquies, as I sat between them, fell upon my ear in the following detached sentences. "Thank Heaven! my Sally is blessed—with a calf's head and a pig's face.”Well, if I should have another baby, I shall have it immediately-skinned and cut into thin slices.""I do love to see little Tommy well-dressed—in the fish-kettle over a charcoal fire."" To behold the little dears dancing before one-in the frying-pan.""And to hear their innocent tongues-bubble and squeak."-" My eldest girl is accomplished with plenty of sauce.""I always see the young folks put to bed myself- -and smothered in onions."" And if they have been very good children, I invariably order the heart to be stuffed and roasted, the gizzard to be peppered and devilled, and the sole to be fried." Broken metaphors are not less laughable than these ludicrous games of cross-purposes; and the risible public are much indebted to the Editor of a loyal journal, who lately informed them that the radicals, by throwing off the mask, had at last shown the cloven foot; congratulated his readers that the hydra-head of faction had received a good rap upon the knuckles; and maintained that a certain reformer was a hypocritical pretender to charity, who, whenever he saw a beggar, put his hand in his breeches-pocket, like a crocodile, but was only actuated by ostentation. While we are upon this subject, let us not forget our obligations to the country curate, who desired his flock to admire the miraculous force which enabled Samson to put a thousand Philistines to the sword with the jaw-bone of an ass; nor let us pass over the worthy squire, who being asked by his cook in what way the sturgeon should be dressed, which he had received as a present, desired her to make it into à-lamode beef; and upon another occasion, when interrogated whether he would have the mutton boiled or roasted, or how? replied, "How,-for I never tasted it in that way." If the classical reader ever improved himself when a school-boy by composing nonsense-verses, it is possible that prose of the same description may produce a similar result, of which this essay may be considered an experiment. I know not a nobler or more naïf self-eulogy than that expressed by Scarron, when on his death-bed he exclaimed to his weeping domestics, "Ah! you will never cry half so much as I have made you laugh ;" and were I on the point of bidding adieu to the public as a scribbler, I should not desire a prouder epitaph than to be truly enabled to repeat the same phrase. In the mean time I do most seriously and sadly exhort my readers to be comical; admonishing them, that in these gloomy and puzzling times, when the chances are three to two against the |