teach us that talent of this kind may be often turned into a fruitful channel. The politician can by humour influence his audience; the man of society can make himself popular, and perhaps without this recommendation would never have had an opportunity of gaining his knowledge of the world. When by some happy turn of thought we are successful in raising a laugh, we seem to receive a kind of ovation, the more valuable because sincere. We are allowed a superiority, we have achieved a victory, though it may be but momentary and unimportant. In daily life our sense of the ludicrous leads us to mark many small errors and blemishes, which we should have overlooked had it not given us pleasure to notice them, and thus from observing the failures of others we learn to correct our own. Much that would be offensive, if not injurious, is thus avoided, and those little angles are removed which obstruct the onward course of society. A sensible man will gain more by being ridiculed than praised, just as adverse criticism, when judicious, ought to raise rather than depress. Lever remarks, with regard to acquiring languages, that "as the foreigner is too polite to laugh, the stranger has little chance to learn." A compendium of humorous sayings would, if rightly read, give a valuable history of our shortcomings in the different relations of life. Louis XII., when urged to punish some insolent comedian, replied, "No, no; in the course of their ribaldry they may sometimes tell us useful truths; let them amuse themselves, provided they respect the ladies." Finally, what presage can we form of the future from the experience of the past? We may expect the augmenting emotion in humour to become less, and of a more aesthetical character, indelicacy, profanity, and hostility have been considerably modified even since the commencement of this century. Humour will, by degrees, become more intellectual and more refined, less dependent upon the senses and passions. At some time far hence allusions will be greatly appreciated, the complexity of which our obtuser faculties would now be unable to understand. Still, as keen and excellent wit is a rare gift, some even of the ancient sayings will doubtless survive. By some, humour has been called a "morbid secretion," and its extinction has been foretold, but history, the only unerring guide, teaches us that it will increase in amount and improve in quality. Man cannot exist without emotion, and as we have seen various forms and subjects of humour successively arising, so we may be sure in future ages fresh fields for it will be constantly opening. When we consider how necessary amusement is to all, and how bounteously it has been supplied by Providence, we shall feel certain that man will always have beside him this light, which although it cannot lead as a star, can still brighten his path and cheer his spirits upon the pilgrimage of life. FOOTNOTES [1] Properly Centrones, from a Greek word signifying patchwork.