It is an active, meddlesome--quality, forever putting things in unexpected and somewhat startling relations to each other; and such new relations are as unwelcome to the ordinary mind as poor relations to a _nouveau riche_. Who wants to be all the time painfully conceiving of the antipodes walking like flies on the ceiling? Yet wit is related to some of the profoundest qualities of the intellect. It is the reasoning faculty acting _per saltum_, the sense of analogy brought to a focus; it is generalization in a flash, logic by the electric telegraph, the sense of likeness in unlikeness, that lies at the root of all discoveries; it is the prose imagination, common-sense at fourth proof. All this is no reason why the world should like it, however; and we fancy that the Question, _Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?_ was plaintively put in the primitive tongue by one of the world's gray fathers to another without producing the slightest conviction. Of course, there must be some reason for this suspicion of wit, as there is for most of the world's deep-rooted prejudices. There is a kind of surface-wit that is commonly the sign of a light and shallow nature. It becomes habitual _persiflage_, incapable of taking a deliberate and serious view of anything, or of conceiving the solemnities that environ life. This has made men distrustful of all laughers; and they are apt to confound in one sweeping condemnation with this that humor whose base is seriousness, and which is generally the rebound of the mind from over-sad contemplation. They do not see that the same qualities that make Shakspeare the greatest of tragic poets make him also the deepest of humorists. Dr. Holmes was already an author of more than a quarter of a century's standing, and was looked on by most people as an _amusing_ writer merely. He protested playfully and pointedly against this, once or twice; but, as he could not help being witty, whether he would or no, his audience laughed and took the protest as part of the joke. He felt that he was worth a great deal more than he was vulgarly rated at, and perhaps chafed a little; but his opportunity had not come. With the first number of the "Atlantic" it came at last, and wonderfully he profited by it. The public were first delighted, and then astonished. So much wit, wisdom, pathos, and universal Catharine-wheeling of fun and fancy was unexampled. "Why, good gracious," cried Madam Grundy, "we've got a _genius_ among us fit last! I always knew what it would come to!" "Got a fiddlestick!" says Mr. G.; "it's only rockets." And there was no little watching and waiting for the sticks to come down. We are afraid that many a respectable skeptic has a crick in his neck by this time; for we are of opinion that these are a new kind of rocket, that go without sticks, and _stay up_ against all laws of gravity.