secret of their identity, and we appreciate the force of Father Faber’s appeal to the frank spirit of a wholesome mirth. Perhaps one reason for the scanty tolerance that humor receives at the hands of the disaffected is because of the rather selfish way in which the initiated enjoy their fun; for there is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join. Mr. George Saintsbury is plainly of this way of thinking, and, being blessed beyond his fellows with a love for all that is jovial, he speaks from out of the richness of his experience. “Those who have a sense of humor,” he says, “instead of being quietly and humbly thankful, are perhaps a little too apt to celebrate their joy in the face of the afflicted ones who have it not; and the afflicted ones only follow a general law in protesting that it is a very worthless thing, if not a complete humbug.” This spirit of exclusiveness on the one side and of irascibility on the other may be greatly deplored, but who is there among us, I wonder, wholly innocent of blame? Mr. Saintsbury himself confesses to a silent chuckle of delight when he thinks of the dimly veiled censoriousness with which Peacock’s inimitable humor has been received by one half of the reading world. In other words, his enjoyment of the Rev. Drs. Folliott and Opimian is sensibly increased by the reflection that a great many worthy people, even among his own acquaintances, are, by some mysterious law of their being, debarred from any share in his pleasure. Yet surely we need not be so niggardly in this matter. There is wit enough in those two reverend gentlemen to go all around the living earth, and leave plenty for generations now unborn. Each might say with Juliet,-- “The more I give to thee, The more I have;” for wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities. When Peacock describes a country gentleman’s range of ideas as “nearly commensurate with that of the great king Nebuchadnezzar when he was turned out to grass,” he affords us a happy illustration of the eternal fitness of humor, for there can hardly come a time when such an apt comparison will fail to point its meaning.