So people who never know "the middle of humanity," but "the extremity of both ends," batter each other's virtue out of shape and capacity to be recognized. Julian Hawthorne likens the cynic to a chimney-sweeper, "that eccentric misanthrope who vents his spite against the race by plucking defilement from the very flame which makes bright the household hearth." But Jaques was expressly plunged into social estimates and manners that he may be withdrawn from them in a less splenetic temper. The wild crab has sunned itself in orchards, and, nodding among mellower branches, is not all flavored with their rottenness. So far from secluding himself in the conceited fashion of all hermits from the manifold culture of life, he has expended himself upon every phase of it, and withdraws with the pensiveness of satiety toning the sharpness of experience in his speech. Some men turn cynics when the first serious disappointment of their lives drifts over them. Of a sudden the whole, nature is drenched from the leaden cloud. The revulsion from a sunny day to this pitiless blackening of heaven chills the very marrow of their common-sense. Then they rail at the sky which is but for a while retired, and insist that its old grace and clearness were a subterfuge. So when the accursed plot of Iachimo to make the chastity of Imogen a naughty thing has its effect, her husband, Posthumus, sets the key for all the woman-haters since:-- "Could I find out The woman's part in me! For there's no motion That tends to vice in man, but I affirm It is the woman's part: Be it lying, note it, The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers; Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers; Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain, Nice longings, slanders, mutability, All faults that may be named, nay, that hell knows, Why, hers, in part, or all; but, rather, all; For ev'n to vice They are not constant, but are changing still One vice, but of a minute old, for one Not half so old as that. _I'll write against them._" HUMOR. If we wished to find a passage from Irony to Humor, we should have to look for it in cases where good-nature assumes the positive attribute of impartiality, because humor is a kind of disposition to adopt the whole of human nature, fuse all its distinctions, tolerate all its infirmities, and assemble vice and misery to receive rations of good cheer. Two Jews have been elected within a few years to be Lord Mayors of London. They were members of the synagogue in full connection, and might have appointed Rabbins for chaplaincies if they had chosen. But they pursued the old custom, which was not however of legal stringency: appointed clergymen of the Church of England, and regularly made all the usual contributions for Christian purposes, including the customary one to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews. In this incident it is the element of Humor which imparts to us the pleasure we feel.