To the truly irritable, and I confess that I am one of them, all such irritation, to say the least of it, is superfluous. To us who have "free souls" no such provocation is wanting at any time. We are always ready to go ahead without this high pressure; our quick blood renders the spur unnecessary. We never wait for "the motive and the cue for passion" that Hamlet speaks of. The real relish and enjoyment of it consists in going into a rage about nothing. The next pleasure to that consists in being roused to fury about other people's affairs; in lashing oneself into madness about some grievance borne by a person who seems perfectly indifferent to it. There are numbers of people who may be thus said to go into passions by proxy. They have experienced a slight, of which they give a cool account to some susceptible friend, who stamps and raves at every word of the narrative. They calmly inform you that they have been shamefully ill-used; upon which they stroke their chins complacently, and leave you to tear your hair. The man who has been cruelly wronged describes with a glib tongue, while the uninjured auditor disinterestedly gnashes his teeth. I have always admired that passage in one of George Colman's plays, where a warm-hearted fellow, giving an account of some flagrant act of oppression to which he had been a witness, observes,--"Well, you know, that wasn't _no affair of mine_; no--and _so I felt all my blood creeping into my knuckles_"--and the result shows that he fell, with exemplary promptitude, into a glorious passion in behalf of the oppressed but uncomplaining stranger.