But the most common and strongly marked instances of variation are where what is seriously taken by one person is regarded as ludicrous by another. Thus the conception of the qualities desirable in public speaking are very different on this side to the Atlantic from what they are on the other, and what appears to us to partake of the ludicrous, seems to them to be only grand, effective, and appropriate. "In patriotic eloquence," says a U.S. journal, "our American stump-speakers beat the world. They don't stand up and prose away so as to put an audience to sleep, after the lazy genteel aristocratic style of British Parliamentary speech-making." This boast is certainly just. There is a vigour about the popular style of American oratory that we are sure has never been equalled in the British Parliament. A paper of the interior in paying a glowing tribute to the eloquence of the Fourth of July orator who officiated in the town where the journal is published, says--"Although he had a platform ten feet square to orate upon, he got so fired up with patriotism that it wasn't half big enough to hold him: his fist collided three times with the President of the day, besides bunging the eye of the reader of the Declaration, and every person on the stage left it limping." Such a style of oratory would leave durable impressions, and be felt as well as heard. It cannot be doubted that our mental state, whether temporary or habitual, exercises a great influence over us in regard to humour. Temperament must modify all our emotional feelings, some are naturally gay and hilarious, some grave and austere, children laugh from little more than exuberance of spirits, and joyousness causes us to seek pleasure, to notice ludicrous combinations which would otherwise escape us, and renders us sensitive of all humorous impressions. But the cares of life have generally the effect of making men grave even where there is no lack of imagination. Some have been so serious in mood that it has been recorded that they were never known to laugh, as it is said of Philip the Third of Spain that he only did so once--on reading Don Quixote.