Bacon observes that those who make others afraid of their wit had need be afraid of others' memory. And Sterne says that there is as great a difference between the memory of jester and jestee as between the purse of the mortgager and mortgagee. Humour is fully as unamiable as wit, but the latter has obtained the worse character simply because it is the more salient of the two. There is always a jealous and ill-natured side to human nature which gives a semblance of truth to Rochefoucauld's saying that we are not altogether grieved at the misfortunes even of our friends; and wit often, from its point and the element of truth it possesses, has been used to add a sting and adhesiveness to malevolent attacks. Writers therefore often remind us to be sparing and circumspect in the use of wit, as if it were necessarily, instead of accidentally offensive. As an instance of the danger of wit, I may mention a case in which two celebrated divines, one of the "high" church, and the other of the "broad" church school, had been attacking and confuting one another in rival reviews. They met accidentally at an evening party, and the high churchman, who was a well-known wit, could not forbear exclaiming, as he grasped the other's hand, "The Augurs have met face to face"--an observation which, if it implied anything, must have meant that they were both hypocrites. Those who consider humour objectionable, have no idea of the variety of circumstances under which our emotions may be excited. A man may smile at his own misfortunes after they are over--sometimes our laughter seems scarcely directed against anyone, and in the most profane and indelicate humour there is often nothing personal. Occasionally it is too general to wound, being aimed at nations, as in my old friend's saying, "The French do not know what they want, and will never be satisfied until they get it," or it may strike at the great mass of mankind, as when one of the same dissatisfied nation calls marriage "a tiresome book with a very fine preface." There is nothing unamiable in Goldsmith's reflection upon the rustic simplicity of the villagers, when he says of the schoolmaster-- "And still the wonder grew, How one small head could carry all he knew." Again, we may ask, what person can be possibly injured by most of the humorous stories in which our Transatlantic cousins delight, such as that an American, describing a severe winter said, "Why I had a cow on my farm up the Hudson river, and she got in among the ice, and was carried down three miles before we could get her out again. And what do you suppose has been the consequence? why, she has milked nothing but ice-cream ever since."