The following petition was signed by sixteen girls of Charleston, S.C., and presented to Governor Johnson in 1733, and was no doubt thought to set forth a serious evil. "The humble petition of all the maids whose names are under written. Whereas we, the humble petitioners are at present in a very melancholy disposition of mind, considering how all the bachelors are blindly captivated by widows, the consequence is this our request that your Excellency will for the future order that no widow presume to marry any young man until the maids are provided for, or else to pay each of them a fine. The great disadvantage it is to us maids, is that the widows by their forward carriages do snap up the young men, and have the vanity to think their merit beyond ours which is a just imposition on us who ought to have the preference. This is humbly recommended to your Excellency's consideration, and we hope you will permit no further insults. And we poor maids in duty bound will ever pray," &c. It is almost impossible to limit the number of influences, which affect our appreciation of the ludicrous. "Nothing," writes Goethe, "is more significant of a man's character than what he finds laughable." We find highly intellectual men very different in this respect. Quintilian notices the different kind of humour of Aulus Galba, Junius Bassus, Cassius Severus, and Domitius Afer. In modern times Pitt was grave; Fox, Melbourne, and Canning were witty. Sir Henry Holland enumerates as the wits of his day, Canning, Sydney Smith, Jekyll, Lord Alvanley, Lord Dudley, Hookham Frere, Luttrell, Rogers, and Theodore Hook, and he adds-- "Scarcely two of the men just named were witty exactly in the same vein. In Jekyll and Hook the talent of the simple punster predominated, but in great perfection of the art, while Bishop Blomfield and Baron Alderson, whom I have often seen in friendly conflict, enriched this art by the high classical accompaniments they brought to it. The wit of Lord Dudley, Lord Alvanley, and Rogers was poignant, personal sarcasm; in Luttrell it was perpetual fun of lighter and more various kind, and whimsically expressed in his features, as well as in his words.[19] 'Natio comaeda est' was the maxim of his mind and denoted the wide field of his humour. The wit of Mr. Canning was of rarer and more refined workmanship, and drew large ornament from classical sources. The 'Anti-Jacobin' shows Mr. Canning's power in his youthful exuberance. When I knew him it had been sobered, perhaps saddened, by the political contrarities and other incidents of more advanced life, but had lost none of its refinement of irony. Less obvious than the common wit of the world, it excited thought and refined it--one of the highest characteristics of this faculty.