Brown, in his lectures on "The Human Understanding," observes that in the ludicrous we do not condemn, but admire, and he cites as an illustration the case of some friends dining at an hotel. Boniface smilingly inquires what wine they would like to drink. One says Champagne, another Claret, another Burgundy, but the last one observes knowingly that he should like that best for which he should not have to pay. Now in this there is certainly a fault, for the answer is not applicable to the question. Brown's theory is that the ludicrous arises from the contemplation of incongruities, and he finds himself somewhat puzzled when he considers that the incongruities in science--in chemistry, for instance--do not make us laugh. He is at some trouble to explain that the importance of the subject renders us serious. But had he recognised the fact that the ludicrous implies condemnation, he would have seen that we could not be amused at incongruities in science, because we have a strong conviction that they are not real but only apparent. Some very ignorant persons, as he observes, do occasionally laugh at philosophic truths. I knew a lady who laughed at being told of the great distance of the planets, and a gentleman assured me that a friend of his, a man who had such shrewdness that he rose from the lowest ranks and acquired L100,000, would never believe that the earth was round! Jean Paul, taking the same admiration view, observes that "women laugh more than men, and the haughty Turk not at all." But are not these facts referable to comparative excitability and apathy, and also to the multiplicity and variety of female ideas compared with the dulness of the Moslem's apprehension. Jean Paul proceeds to say that the more people laugh at our joke, the better we are pleased, and that this does not seem as though the enjoyment came from a feeling of triumph. But what is really laughed at is the humour, and not the humorist, and as a man wishes the beauty of a poem he has written to be generally acknowledged, so he desires to see the point of his satire appreciated by as many as possible. A fruitful source of error in the investigation of humour arises from the difficulty in determining where it lies--of localizing it, if I may be allowed the expression. We hear a very amusing observation, and at once join heartily in the laugh, but cannot say whether we are laughing at a circumstance or a person, at a representation or a reality.