A great deal of excellent research has been spent on the difference between ‘humour’ and ‘wit,’ into which metaphysical problem ‘our limits,’ of course, forbid us to enter. There is, however, between them, the distinction of dry sticks and green sticks; there is in humour a living energy, a diffused potency, a noble sap; it grows upon the character of the humorist. Wit is part of the machinery of the intellect; as Madame de Staël says, ‘_La gaieté de l’esprit est facile à tous les hommes d’esprit_.’ We wonder Mr. Babbage does not invent a punning-engine; it is just as possible as a calculating one. Sydney Smith’s mirth was essentially humorous; it clings to the character of the man; as with the sayings of Dr. Johnson, there is a species of personality attaching to it; the word is more graphic because Sydney Smith—that man being the man that he was,—said it, than it would have been if said by any one else. In a desponding moment, he would have it he was none the better for the jests which he made, any more than a bottle for the wine which passed through it: this is a true description of many a wit, but he was very unjust in attributing it to himself. Sydney Smith is often compared to Swift; but this only shows with how little thought our common criticism is written. The two men have really nothing in common, except that they were both high in the Church, and both wrote amusing letters about Ireland. Of course, to the great constructive and elaborative power displayed in Swift’s longer works, Sydney Smith has no pretension; he could not have written ‘Gulliver’s Travels;’ but so far as the two series of Irish letters goes, it seems plain that he has the advantage. Plymley’s letters are true; the treatment may be incomplete—the Catholic religion may have latent dangers and insidious attractions which are not there mentioned—but the main principle is sound; the common sense of religious toleration is hardly susceptible of better explanation. Drapier’s letters, on the contrary, are essentially absurd; they are a clever appeal to ridiculous prejudices. Who cares now for a disputation on the evils to be apprehended a hundred years ago from adulterated halfpence, especially when we know that the halfpence were not adulterated, and that if they had been, those evils would never have arisen? Any one, too, who wishes to make a collection of currency crotchets, will find those letters worth his attention. No doubt there is a clever affectation of common-sense as in all of Swift’s political writings, and the style has an air of business; yet, on the other hand, there are no passages which any one would now care to quote for their manner and their matter; and there are many in ‘Plymley’ that will be constantly cited, so long as existing controversies are at all remembered. The whole genius of the two writers is emphatically opposed. Sydney Smith’s is the ideal of popular, buoyant, riotous fun; it cries and laughs with boisterous mirth; it rolls hither