tion of Mr. Erskine, that a statue to Lord Melville should be erected in Edinburgh, the majority moved that it should be an equestrian statue, to which Mr. Erskine assented, as there was already an equestrian statue to the Duke of Cumberland, and it would save considerable expence if Lord Melville were put up behind his grace.

Ridicule is fit for refuting error and supporting truth, for restraining wrong conduct, and inciting to the practice of what is right. It attacks not the false but the absurd in tenets; its object is not the criminal, but the foolish and silly in conduct; and in doctrine it is levelled against palpable error and absurdity;-those dogmas, which are beyond the scope of cool reasoning, are within the confines of ridicule. In comedy it has great influence; in tragedy it never legally obtains admittance. Awkwardness, rusticity, ignorance, cowardice, levity, foppery, pedantry and affectation come under its lash. Against murder, cruelty, parricide, ingratitude, perfidy,* to raise a laugh excites disgust. The tragic poet punishes these by taking a different route.

Our passions of every kind lead to wild enthusiastic apprehensions of their several ebjects. When any object seems great in comparison of ourselves, our minds are apt to run into a perfect veneration: when an object appears formidable, a weak mind will run into a panic, an unreasonable, impotent horror. Now in both

An ancient pagan would have added to this black catalogue the crime of adultery, though in our Christian theatres there is not a more common subject of laughter, than this indeliable reproach of British taste!

these cases, by our sense of ridiculous, we are made capable of relief from any pleasant, ingenious well-wisher, by more effectual means, than the most solemn, sedate reasoning. Nothing is so properly applied to the false grandeur, either of good or evil, as ridicule: nothing will sooner prevent our excessive admiration of mixed grandeur, or hinder our being led by that, which is, perhaps, really great in such an object, to imitate also and approve what is really mean.

V.

IT ENABLES US TO CORRECT SOME OF OUR OWN DEFECTS.

Thus

Hartley says, "Laughter is useful not only in respect of the good effects which it has upon the body, and the present amusement and relaxation that it affords to the mind, but also, because it puts us upon rectifying what is so amiss, or any other similar error, in one another, or in children, and has a tendency to remove many prejudices from custom and education. we often laugh at children, rustics, and foreigners, when yet they act right, according to the truly natural, simple, and uncorrupted dictates of reason and propriety, and are guilty of no other inconsistency than what arises from the usurpations of custom over nature; and we often take notice of this, and correct ourselves, in consequence of being diverted by it."

VI.

THE STATE OF THE LAUGHER'S MIND MAY BE DISCOVERED BY HIS LAUGHTER.

Laughter being the outward and visible sign of the laugher's joy, the breathing of the soul, a skilful observer may generally gain an insight into the structure of his mind from the nature of his laughter.

"In order," says (I think) Addison, "to look into any person's temper, I generally make my first observation upon his laugh, whether he is easily moved, and what are the passages which throw him into that agreeable kind of convulsion. People are never so much unguarded as when they are pleased; and laughter being a visible symptom of some inward satisfaction, it is then, if ever, we may believe the faces.

Their is, perhaps, no better index to point out to us the particularities of the mind than this, which is, in itself, one of the chief distractions of our rationality."

When Dr. Franklin came to England to implore the attention of our government to the representations made by America, was ordered to attend at the Privy Council, when he was grossly insulted by Mr. Wedderburn. At the sallies of wit all the members of the counsel, except Lord North, were in fits of laughter. Dr. Franklin told Mr. Lee, one of his counsel, after the business was concluded, that he was indifferent to Mr. Wedderburn's speech, but that he was indeed sincerely sorry to see the lords of council before whom all the colony affairs were tried, manifest a state of mind not likely to act in a candid and impartial manner upon any future American question.

"He is a clever man," said a lady, speaking of a gentleman whom she had never before seen, and who had not spoken a word," he always laughs in the right place."

We all remember Shakespeare's observations upon Cassius:

"He loves no plays,

As thou dost, Anthony: he hears no music:
Seldom he smiles: and smiles in such a sort,
As if he mocked himself; and scorned his spirit,
That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease,
Whilst they behold a greater than themselves.

Julius Cæsar.

An intelligent medical friend once said to me that he always considered wit by a powerful minded man, when in a dangerous illness, to be a bad sympton; as it was evidence of an effort to relieve itself from painful sensation.-During the French Revolution, when Danton was going from his prison to the place of execution, he talked only of the pleasures of the country.-The wellknown story of the witticism of Sir Thomas More, when his head being laid upon the block, he put his beard aside, saying, "This has committed no treason;" is praised by Addison, as a proof of his tranquillity. Was Addison right in this inference?

So too turbulent laughter frequently exhibits a forlorn or ill regulated mind. The women of the town often laugh: Do they ever smile?

Such are the different manifestations of joy, the

nature of which is thus described by South. "In the next place for the lightsome passion of joy: it is not that which often usurps this name; that trivial, vanishing, superficial thing, that only gilds the apprehension and plays upon the surface of the soul. It is not the mere crackling of thorns, a sudden blaze of the spirits, the exultation of a tickled fancy, or a pleased appetite. Joy is a masculine and a severe thing, the recreation of the judgment, the jubilee of reason. It is the result of a real good suitably applied. It commences upon the solidities of truth, and the substance of fruition. It does not run out in voice, but fills the soul, as God does the universe, silently and without noise."

It is thus that an insight is gained into the mind by laughter; and, perhaps, observations upon pictures and laughter are amongst the best, if not the best mental indices. Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria says,—

"When I was at Rome, among many other visits to the tomb of Julius the Second, I went thither once with a Prussian artist, a man of genius and great vivacity of feeling. As we were gazing on Michael Angelo's Moses, our conversation turned on the horns and beard of that stupendous statue, of the necessity of each to support the other, of the super-human effect of the former, and the necessity of the existence of both, to give a harmony and integrity both to the image and the feeling excited by it. Conceive them removed, and the statue would become un-natural without being super-natural. We called to mind the horns of the rising sun, and I repeated the noble passage from Taylor's Holy Dying.' That horns were the emblem of power among the Eastern nations, and are still retained as such in Abyssinia