prevailed among men from the beginning; but what passes current for wit in our day would not have been intelligible till civilization made a marked progress, and opened new circumstances and new feelings for the exercise of new ingenuity and new fashions corresponding with that advance.

With Shakspeare and his period, we may be said to have commenced our present era, although there have been various phases in the style and shapes of the product, demonstrating, as we have observed, that sometimes one class of humour pervaded the press, the stage, and the social circle, and sometimes another, of a very different tone and nature. In Shakspeare himself we possess almost every variety, from the purest and loftiest range to the inferior sports of badinage, equivoque, and pun. As in everything else, his humour was universal, but we could hardly pronounce it unapproachable; for we have had great masters of the ludicrous since the date of "rare Ben Jonson" and "good Queen Bess." Butler and Swift are conspicuous examples.

Contemporaneous with the one, and anterior to the other, the humours of English society were chiefly exhibited upon the stage; and discreditable examples they were of indecencies of the grossest nature in act and language. Of wit there was no lack; but the dramas of even female writers presented one scene of impure and obscene thoughts, and one revel in loose and disgusting colloquy from beginning to end. Off the stage, Swift, with whom may be coupled Prior, though not to such an extent, used the filthiest terms to describe any filthy matters; and the chastest authors of the age, in calling" a spade, a spade," were not free from the taint.

A period of remarkable mediocrity and dulness succeeded, and for nearly half a century it would be difficult to find a glimpse of brilliancy in our literature. A new era commenced, but it was rather distinguished by solidity than fancy; and publication becoming gradually more diffused, led to a practice which had considerable effect in giving a sameness to production. We refer to what may be called the formation of schools in authorship. No sooner did an eminent man publish a very popular work than the imitatores, servum pecus, the whole herd attempting to follow the great bellwether, set to scribbling after the same pattern; we have had a succession of epochs or episodes, each taking the hue and character of the predominating influence. Thus Johnson's grandiloquence, Sterne's original style, Walpole's romance, Della Crusca-ism, Goldsmith's natural simplicity, Richardson's amative delineations, Fielding's truthful sketches of life, Smollett's coarse sea scenes, down to Scott's Scottish and historical paintings, have all been repeated and re-repeated to the best of their abilities by hosts of imitators. Certain peculiarities are to be detected among these masses, but the cosmopolitan quality of mind recognised under the name of Humour is not very prominent. We have nothing like "Don Quixote" or "Gil Blas" to light up the retrospect. In minor pieces of poetry, the chord of the entertaining has been struck by the Whistlecraft, and Beppo Players, and politically and satirically the "Probationary

Odes," the " Anti-Jacobin," "Peter Pindar," "the Rejected Addresses," "Ingoldsby Legends," and other compositions, have been redolent of the genuine spirit.

It is worthy of remark that the English, Irish, and Scottish humour have ever been, and are, very dissimilar; and it is no less curious that whilst there is scarcely an instance of an Irish joke bordering on obscenity, England has abounded in such "freedoms," and Scotland, the most religiously puritanical country of the three, has been overrun and polluted with jests and anecdotes more than equivocal in religion and depraving in morals. It is a remarkable psychological fact that during the sternest times of the Covenant this licentiousness was most prevalent.

We have thus glanced over the subject generally, as an apposite introduction to our volume of Lay Sermons, which displays the curious alteration of tone that proceeds from the circumstantial changes in social habits. The humours of our own Anglo-Saxon flesh and blood transported to America, and often located in wildernesses, are like nothing among the family which has remained at home. In the idleness of the far West has sprung up a droll system of exaggeration, which appears to have had a long and successful run in the States, quasi Humour. Thus, for instance, a man being so tall that he had to get up a ladder to shave himself; an oyster being so large as to take two men to swallow it whole; a Yankee clipper which sailed so tarnation fast round Long Island, that she left her shadow three miles and nearly a half behind her; a chap who was so tall in his pride and stiff in his back, that he had to take out his spine when he wanted to pull on his boots; or a conveyance flying so rapidly past the milestones along the road, as to induce a passenger to believe he was going through a churchyard, mistaking the milestones for tombs, are familiar instances of this, at any rate, particular novelty, in the extent to which it is carried. And living characters have been coloured in a similar manner, of which we remember two recent examples, called Major Jack Downing, and Colonel David Crocket, the latter at least a reality, and member of Congress for Tennessee. After a pitched battle, in which he was victorious, he boasted himself "the yaller flower of the forest (Kentucky), and all brimstone but the head and ears, and that's aquafortis." This mighty Bear-hunter of the West was the original of Mr. Hackett's clever impersonation of Colonel Wildfire, familiar to London playgoers some fifteen years ago; and his eccentricities laughably illustrate this phase of Yankee humour. Of him it is recorded that he could grin a 'coon from off the top branch of a tree, and the following is given as a portion of a stump speech in the canvass for his election, his opponent being a gentleman of pleasing manners, and wearing a conciliatory smile upon his countenance. Gentlemen, (said the orator) he may get some votes by grinning; for he can outgrin me, and you know I aint slow; and to prove to you that I am not, I will tell you an anecdote. I was concerned myself, and I was fooled a little of the wickedest.. You all know I love hunting. Well, I discovered, a long time ago, that a 'coon couldn't stand my grin. I could bring one tumbling down from the highest

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tree. I never wasted powder and lead when I wanted one of the creatures. Well, as I was walking out one night, a few hundred yards from my house, looking carelessly about me, I saw a 'coon planted upon one of the highest limbs of an old tree. The night was very moony and clear, and old Ratler was with me; but Ratler wont bark at a 'coon-he's a queer dog in that way. So I thought I'd bring the lark down, in the usual way, by a grin. I set myself, and after grinning at the 'coon a reasonable time, found he didn't come down. I wondered what was the reason, and I took another steady grin at him. Still he was there. It made me a little mad; so I felt round, and got an old limb about five feet long, and planting one end upon the ground, I placed my chin upon the other, and took a rest. I then grinned my best for about ten minutes; but the cursed 'coon_hung on. So, finding I couldn't bring him down by grinning, I determined to have him, for I thought he must be a droll chap. I went over to the house, got my axe, returned to the tree, saw the 'coon still there, and began to cut away. Down it came, and I run forward; but d-n the 'coon was there to be seen. I found that what I had mistook for one, was a large knot upon a branch of the tree; and upon looking at it closely, saw that I had grinned all the bark off, and left the knot perfectly smooth.'

Need we add, that the Colonel thus grinned himself into congress as the representative of Tennessee; and in the House his speeches were quite on a par with those he made in the fields-he could almost grin the president out of the chair.

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The colonel's comparisons and dialect are of the true American type. My dander was up, and I was determined not to gack till I had done it." "I saw a little woman streaking it along through the woods like all wrath." Another woman is "as ugly as a stone fence, and so ugly, that it almost gave me a pain in the eyes to look at her. She looked at me as savage as a meat-axe. I instantly felt like going. I screamed out like a young painter (panther), though I was so mad that I was burning inside like a tar kiln, and I wonder that the smoke hadn't been pouring out of me at all points."

Jack Downing's work was political and clever; and we have other specimens in the " Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs," a vividly drawn character of hypocrisy and craft;* and "Georgia Scenes in the first half century of the Republic," both of which exhibit much graphic talent, though perhaps rather too local to afford the same amusement to English as to American readers. One remark, however, may be made on the popularity of these publications in America, viz., that brother Jonathan, although so thin-skinned, sore and irritable when an English author ventures to find fault with or ridicule his national defects or social weak points, is well inclined to enjoy a laugh at them from the pen of a native draughtsman. The Picayune, of New Orleans, and many of the far West journals, especially the latter, at times when news is scarce, are redolent of ludicrous inven* Philadelphia: Carey and Hart. 1846. ↑ New York: Harper and Brothers.

1846.