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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.

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

landlord, when the five per cents. are fours, and things in general at sixes and sevens, a hearty and innocent laugh is the most effectual way to take care of number one.

COZENING COUSINS AND CAUSTIC COMPLIMENTS.

"I am no herald to enquire of men's pedigrees; it sufficeth me if I know their virtues." SIDNEY.

"I do fawn on men and hug them hard,

And after scandal them."

SHAKSPEARE.

WERE I a monk, I would rather be a Cenobite than of the Eremitical class; I am by nature much more gregarious than an affecter of

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From open haunts and popularity."

Solitude once pronounced its own condemnation, when it enabled me to read Zimmerman's book all through, and the only character that excites in my mind the smallest misanthropy is a misanthrope: but still society, as it is now constituted in the genteel world, exacts so many sacrifices without rendering any equivalent, compels one to live so much for others and so little for one's self, that I question whether the companionship of rural shades be not more sociable, as it is indisputably more beneficial. "Nunquam minys solus quam cùm solus," said an ancient moralist; and I may reverse the dictum and exclaim, never more

alone than when in a mob. I care not in what "dingle or bushy dell" I bury myself in the country, for its silence and seclusion constitute its natural charms; but the loneliness of a crowd, the solitude of a city, the acquaintanceship of familiar strangers and strange familiars-ugh! the recollection is heart-sickening. However simple and philosophical in your personal habits, you must begin, of course, with a handsome establishment, for your genteel friends will not come to a shabby house; that is to say, you must live for visitants who call upon you to kill time and dine with you, to share your bottle, not your heart ;-for horses whom you hate to employ, if, like me, you prefer walking; and for numerous domestics, who invariably do less the less they have to do. A grand prior of France once abusing Palaprat for beating his servant, he replied in a rage, "Zounds! Sir, his conduct is unpardonable; for though I have but this one, I am every bit as badly served as you who have thirty!" Had I been even rich enough to purchase the right of becoming a slave to my own establishment, and of sacrificing the reality of enjoyment for its appearances, I do not think I should have fallen into a trap so poorly baited; but my means were hardly adequate to the purchase of the wreaths and gilding in which the victims of fashion must be tricked out, though I was quite rich enough to make myself happy in my snug little cottage betweeen Sutton and Epsom.

Though the world has very little gratitude for those who become its slaves, it hates those who appear to be independent of it. Nothing could be more inno

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