No one at all familiar with the periodical literature of America will deny that the Americans are a witty people. Whether their native wit be so intellectual and refined as the English, so quaint and subtle as the Scotch humour, or so strong and hearty as the Irish, or, again, whether it be so keen and compact as the French _esprit_, may be reasonably questioned; but that it is a straw that _can_ tickle, and therefore, according to Dryden, an instrument of happiness, all must admit. In considering the nature of American humour, it is obvious that broad exaggeration is its great characteristic. It is essentially _outré_. No people seek to raise the laugh by such extravagant means as the Yankees. Their ordinary speech is hyperbole, or tall talk. They never go out shooting unless with the long bow. Again, their humour comes from without, rather than from within, and is less a matter of thought than of verbal expression. It deals with the association of ideas rather than with ideas themselves. Transatlantic wit is not as a rule terse, epigrammatic, pungent, like the wit of Lamb, Hood, or Jerrold, which often lies in a single sentence or even word. The humour of Sam Slick or James Russell Lowell, for instance, lies as much in accessories as in the thing itself. It is nothing unless surrounded by circumstantial narrative. But in this it must be confessed the Americans are great masters. The humour of a people always reflects the character of that people, and character, as we all know, is influenced in no small measure by country and climate. Our American brethren are born, or as they themselves say "raised," in a country whose physical features have been planned on a scale far surpassing in magnitude--not unfrequently in beauty also--those of every other country in the world. The Americans feel this, and are justly proud of the extent and magnificence of America. It leads them to compare it with other countries, and the comparison is certain to result in favour of their own. Theirs is the country of Lake Superior. Columbia is a Triton among the minnows. Into this Brobdignag of our cousins Munchausen emigrated early, and the genius of the celebrated German Baron still continues to control its people. Only in America will you find a man so tall that he is obliged to go up a ladder in order to shave himself, or so small that it requires two men and a boy to see him; only in America do the railway trains travel so fast that the train often reaches the station considerably in advance of the whistle; only in America are the fogs so thick that they may be cut with a "ham knife." It is only an American artist who can paint a snow-storm so naturally that he catches cold by sitting near it with his coat off; it is only in America that sportsmen are such dead shots that the birds when they see the gun "come down," rather than abide the consequences of remaining "up;" and it is only in America that every