at first seems to be erroneous, but he does not really mean to say that there is no falsehood in it, but that it does not approach nonsense, and often contains useful instruction. Holms exhibits the nature of humour in a passage remarkable for philosophy and elegance: "There is a perfect consciousness in every kind of wit that its essence consists in a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It throws a single ray separated from the rest, red, yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade upon an object, never white light. We get beautiful effects from wit, all the prismatic colours, but never the object is in fair daylight. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always its essential object is the purest white light of truth." Bacon went further, and considered that even the beauty of poetry and the pleasures of imagination were derived from falsehood. "This truth is a naked and open daylight, which doth not show the masques and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and daintily as candle light. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl that showeth well by day, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle that shineth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imagination, and the like, but that it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things full of melancholy indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves." Mr. Dallas goes so far as to say that "it is impossible that laughter should be an unmixed pleasure, seeing it arises from some aspect of imperfection or discordance." The fact that many people would undergo almost any kind of suffering rather than be exposed to ridicule, indicates that it contains some very unpleasant reflection. We sometimes feel uncomfortable even when we hear laughter around us, the cause of which we do not know, fearing that we may be ourselves the object of it--even dogs dislike to be laughed at. Our ordinary modes of speech seem to point to some imperfection or error in humour, as when we say "there is many a true word spoken in jest," or "life is a jest," signifying its unreality. Sometimes we say that an observation "must be a joke," implying that it is false. I have even heard of a man who never laughed at humour because he hated falsehood, and we sometimes say of an untrue statement that it must be taken with a "grain of salt." It is so very common for men to flinch under ridicule, that it is said to be a good test of courage. An old English poet says,