If we examine carefully the circumstances which awaken the ludicrous, we shall probably come to conclude that they often contain something which puzzles our understanding. An act which seems ridiculous would not appear so if we could entirely account for it, for instance, if it were done to win a bet. There seems to be in the ludicrous not merely some error in the taste brought before us, but something which we can scarcely believe to be the case. This alone would account for some variation, for what seems unintelligible to the ignorant seems plain to the educated, and what puzzles the well-informed raises no question among the inexperienced. The ludicrous depends upon that kind of intellectual twilight which is the lot of man here below. Were our knowledge perfect we should no more laugh than angelic beings,[21] were it final we should be as grave as the lower animals. Humour exists where the faculties are not fully developed, and our capacities are beyond our attainments, but fails where the mind has reached its limit, or feels no forward impulse. Study and high education are adverse to mirth, because the mind becomes impressed with the universality of law and order, and when learned men are merry, they are so mostly from being of genial or sympathetic natures. Density and dullness of intelligence are also unfavourable to humour from the absence of sensibility and generalization. We find that those whose experience is imperfect are most inclined to mirth. This is the reason why children, especially those of the prosperous classes, are so full of merriment. They are not only highly emotional, but have inquiring and progressive minds, while their experience being small, and generalization imperfect, they see much that appears strange and perplexing to them; but their laughter is never hearty as in the case of those whose views are more formed.[22] Exaggeration always contains either falsity, or complication, and when it is used for humour the deficiency is made up. It easily affords amusement, because it can bring together the most distant and discordant ideas. American wits have made great use of it. Thus we read of a man driving his gig at such a pace along the high road that his companion, looking at the mile stones, asked what cemetery they were passing through? One of the same country described the extent of his native land in the following terms: "It is bounded on the North by the Aurora Borealis, on the South by the Southern Cross, on the East by the rising sun, and on the West by the Day of Judgment." The same may be said of diminution which is only humorous when connecting distant ideas. In "The Man of Taste," a poem, by the Rev. T. Bramstone in Dodsley's collection, we read-- "My hair I'll powder in the women's way, And dress and talk of dressing more than they; I'll please the maids of honour if I can, Without black velvet breeches--what is man?"