This mirthful mind had, indeed, settled on his features. ERASMUS, who has furnished us with an enamelled portrait of MORE, among its minuter touches reluctantly confessed that "the countenance of Sir Thomas More was a transcript of his mind, inclining to an habitual smile;" and he adds, "ingenuously to confess the truth, that face is formed for the expression of mirth rather than of gravity or dignity." But, lest he should derange the gravity of the German to whom he was writing, Erasmus cautiously qualifies the disparaging delineation--"though as far as possible removed from folly or buffoonery." MORE, however, would assume a solemn countenance when on the point of throwing out some facetious stroke. He has so described himself when an interlocutor in one of his dialogues addresses him--"You use to look so sadly when you mean merrily, that many times men doubt whether you speak in sport when you mean good earnest."[1] The unaffected playfulness of the mind; the smile whose sweetness allayed the causticity of the tongue; the tingling pleasantry when pointed at persons; the pungent raillery which corrected opinions without scorn or contumely; and the art of promptly amusing the mind of another by stealing it away from a present object--appeared not only in his conversations, but was carried into his writings. The grave and sullen pages of the polemical labours of MORE, whose writings chiefly turn on the controversies of the Romanists and the Reformers, are perhaps the only controversial ones which exhibit in the marginal notes, frequently repeated, "a merrie tale." "A merry tale cometh never amiss to me," said MORE truly of himself. He has offered an apology for introducing this anomalous style into these controversial works. He conceived that, as a layman, it better became him "to tell his mind merrily than more solemnly to preach." Jests, he acknowledges, are but sauce; and "it were but an absurd banquet indeed in which there were few dishes of meat and much variety of sauces; but that is but an unpleasant one where there were no sauce at all." The massive folio of Sir THOMAS MORE'S "English Works"[2] remains a monument of our language at a period of its pristine vigour. Viewed in active as well as in contemplative life, at the bar or on the bench, as ambassador or chancellor, and not to less advantage where, "a good distance from his house at Chelsea, he builded the new building, wherein was a chapel, a library, and a gallery," the character, the events, and the writings of this illustrious man may ever interest us.