fancy-thus holding a middle place between both. Under the first the wit of comparison, may be ranged all sudden laughter-evoking resemblances, ludicrous metaphors, &c.; under the second-the wit of analysis, which is the highest order, all ludicrous distinctions-perceptions of difference in likeness. In Sheridan's "Duenna," where the Jew, who is hovering between Judaism and Christianity, is compared to the blank leaf between the New and Old Testaments, we have an illustration of the first; and of the second in the following bits of dialogue from Shakspeare and Congreve. In "Much Ado About Nothing," Don Pedro, alluding to Beatrice, says―

“Don Pedro.- Truly the lady fathers herself; be happy, lady, for you are like an honourable father.

"Benedick.—If Signor Leonato be her father, she would not have his head on her shoulders for all Messina, like him as she

is."

As the comedies of Shakspeare belong to the romantic not the conventional order, the wit put into the mouths of particular characters though occasionally, where necessary, of the brightest kind-the rationalis generally playful and fanciful, imaginative and poetic. On the other hand, that exhibited throughout the plays of Molière, whose subject was ridicule, is invariably satirical. His great art consists in inventing scenes, in which the classes of character selected for ridicule are made to expose their special and collective follies unconsciously. Such are the scenes between Vadius and Trissotin, in "The Learned Ladies;" the famous scene between Orgon and Dorine, in which the former, indifferent to the

All through Molière's plays, however, the wit is in the action, not the dialogue; in which respect they differ from the conventional comedy of England in the reign of Charles II., Queen Anne, and later. In Wycherly, but, par excellence, in Congreve, the dialogue is one incessant display of brilliant repartee-a contest among all the characters (who are thus completely unnatural and undramatic) which will say the best thing. In the wit of reason, of repartee, dry, sharp, and brilliant, Congreve has, perhaps, no equal among dramatic writers of comedy that of Beaumarchais, full of French gaiety, is far less trenchant, aculeate, and solid; and while the wit of Sheridan in the "Rivals" is allied to humour, that dal," admirable and finished as it is, displayed in the "School for Scanappears to us less dazzling than that which coruscates through the scenes of his forerunner. As geniuses of comedy, in other respects, however, there is no comparison between them; both in conception of character, humour, and dramatic art, Sheridan is infinitely superior to Congreve; and taken as a whole, in its plot, characters, dialogue (which latter never interferes with the progressive interest of the play, as in Congreve), the "School for Scandal," with its two unequalled scenes, remains the most perfect specimen of conventional comedy in English, or any literature.

Humorous wit is chiefly fancifulvide Falstaff, its greatest illustration; and satirical wit, rational--that in which contradictions among ideas, comparisons, images, &c., are utilized by the reason for the special purpose of ridicule. Among the great wits of prose satire passing over the philosopher, Lucian, who, despite his

"Jupiter

Inter cœlicolas fabula muta, tacet,"

was as much a poet as a satirist; and Rabelais, whose power in the latter character, occasionally transcendant, is overwhelmed by his animal spirits and the genius of buffoonery, let us glance briefly at a few of the great masters in more modern days-Swift, Pascal, and Voltaire.

Swift used to boast that he invented irony, from which it would appear he had never read Plato. The wit of irony consists in placing bad and good, the false and true, in juxtaposition, and by pretentiously defending, by argument or illustration, the first, to expose it in the side light of the second. The grave management of ironical wit is the greatest and most characteristic power of Swift; in this respect no writer has approached his terrible genius. Nothing can exceed the earnest respect with which he treats the absurdity it is his purpose to demolish, or the brightness of the rational wit by which he effects it, evolving the nonsensical proposition and its ultimate consequences. The Modest Proposal for improving the condition of Ireland by turning its superabundant population into food for the remainder, is a good specimen of his ironical treatment of a subject, of his satirical humour, and of his wit, which is of the brightest and most powerful description. In its wild spontaneity this faculty flashes still brighter, in many of the passages of the "Tale of a Tub," and "Dissertations on the Operations of the Spirit." "Gulliver," however, is both the greatest satire and masterpiece of ironical wit which any genius has produced.

"Pascal's wit, as displayed in the "Provincial Letters," a work equally excellent for the dramatic management of dialogue and for style-is essentially that of argument-the chain of reasoning is the conductor of its lightning flashes. His wit-that of ideas, is of the finest order; and it is solely in virtue of the judicious appropriateness with which it is displayed, that he has been enabled to give an attraction to a

and uninteresting. As an instance of his manner of heightening the effect of argument by ironical wit, take the following paragraph in which one of the propositions of the School of Escobar is followed out to the reductio ad absurdum :

:

thought of God, nor of his sins, nor any apprehension,' that is, as he explained to me, any knowledge of the obligation to do acts of love to God, or of contrition, has no actual grace to do those acts; but it is also true that he does not sin in omitting them, and that if he is damned, it will not be in punishment of this omission.' Some lines farther down: And we may say the same thing of a culpable commission.'"

"I read accordingly: 'He who has no

"Would you have more authorities? Here they are.' But all modern,' quietly observed my Jansenist. 'I see,' I replied; and, addressing the father, said, 'O father, what a blessing to some persons of my acquaintance! I must bring them to you. Perhaps you have seldom seen people with fewer sins, for they never think of God; their vices got the start of their reason; they have never known either their infirmity, or the Physician who can cure it; they have never thought of desiring the God to give it; so that they are still, achealth of their soul, and still less of asking cording to M. Le Moine, as innocent as at their baptism. They have never thought of loving God or being sorry for their sins; so that, according to Father Annat, they have never sinned, being devoid both of love and repentance. Their whole life is a continued search after pleasure of every sort, and their course has never been interrupted by the slightest remorse. All these excesses made me think

once

their perdition certain; but you, father,

teach me, that these excesses make their salvation secure. Blessings on you, father, for thus justifying people! Others teach how to cure souls by painful austerities, but you show that those whom we might have thought most desperately diseased are in good health. O! the nice way of being happy

in this world and in the next.

I always

thought that we sinned the more, the less when once one has so far gained upon one's we thought of God. But from what I see, self as not to think of Him at all, all things in future become pure. None of your half sinners who have some lingering after virtue! They will all be damned, those half sinners. But for those frank sinners, hardened sinners, sinners without mixture, full and finished, hell does not get them; they have cheated the devil, by dint of giving

themselves over to him!'

The wit of different countries par

takes of the character of the respective national genius; that of England (whose turn is more to humour than wit) as evidenced in Swift, is bright and strong; that of France, light and brilliant; that of Ireland, fanciful; that of America, adventurous and extravagant; that of Germany, not very abundant-rational, vide Lessing and Heine. Voltaire, the representative of French intellect, exhibits all varieties of wit, now in a comparison, now in a fine allusion, delicate rapport between diametric ideas, &c.; while, gay and laughter-provoking, it is most frequently allied to reason, and is, par excellence, that of contempt. Frequently, though in a lighter and less mordant spirit, he adopts the somewhat ironical manner of Swift, treating a subject in a pretentiously high tone of defensive politeness up to the climax, when he lets the absurdity slip out as if unconsciously. One may contrast the froide raillerie of Voltaire and the sava indignatio of the Dean, by looking through "Micromegas" and "Gulliver," compositions similar in subject, but different in treatment, style, and turn of wit. In the voyage to Laputa, for instance, Swift has exercised his invention to overwhelm with ridicule the philosophic and scientific spirit of mankind; his philosophers are very bad reasoners and vehemently given to opposition, except when they happen to be of the right opinion, which is seldom the case. In "Micromegas," when the giants of other spheres arrive at this planet, and at length detect, by means of a microscope, the ship full of philosophers who have been wrecked during their voyage, undertaken to measure a degree of the Arctic circlea conversation ensues, during which the enormous beings are astonished to find that the intellectual mites, their new and almost invisible acquaintances, can measure their statures to a hair; that they know as much about matter as themselves; and that the Cartesians and followers of Leibnitz are as ignorant as they are of the nature of spirit. While, in his satire, Swift exhibits the most profound contempt for the powers of intellect itself, Voltaire, while ridiculing the vagaries of philosophy, appears as a higher philosophical satirist in recognising the greatness of the spiritual

power manifesting itself irrespective of magnitude, and levelling all such distinctions-and at the same time its uniform limits.

There are many instances of great wits having said better things than they have written; the flashes eliminated during the animation of oral contest are brighter than those produced in the quietude of the study; and hence, possibly, more brilliant and various specimens of the faculty are to be found in ana and biography than in literary compositions. Lady Wortley Montagu has recorded that the talk of Congreve was still more witty than the dialogue of his plays; it was the same with Fielding. Evidence remains to show that the good things spoken by many other famous wits, from Fuller, Foote, and Sheridan to Jerrold (and what a galaxy of such fleeting stars have perished compared with the few fixed in type), were still more shining than those conserved in their writings. On the other hand, there are exceptions to this apparently general rule, as in the case of Molière, who, however, was a silent observer of life, ever engaged in gathering ideas from without, and whose wit, like that of Butler, only sparkled in his ink.

The delicacy, finesse, brevity, and turns which distinguish the best sayings of French wits is partly a consequence of the language, which, however, like all others, reflects the peculiar structure of the national mind. It would be endless to enumerate the various forms of wit as illustrated in the bon mots of Fontenelle, Voltaire, Nicole, Chamfort, Talleyrand; whose special excellence depends on the union of the abovenamed attributes. If less delicate, in its turn, however, English and Irish wit is quite as brilliant and various as the French, and the bon mots of Jerrold, for instance, as brief. It is a pity that more specimens of the wit of Wilkes have not been preserved; the couple of instances quoted in Lord Brougham's biographical sketch, are perfect. When Thurlow, delivering one of his ultra-loyal speeches, with his usual solemnly hypocritical air, ended by saying: "When I forget my king, may God forget me." Wilkes, looking up from a seat beneath the woolsack, exclaimed, "Forget you? He'll see you damned first." The

other saying of Wilkes referred to is even more perfect in the sharpness of its antithesis. The wit of felicitous quotation is seen in Swift's application of Virgil's line to the lady who had knocked down a Cremona violin with her mantua.

"Mantua, væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremona."

The wit of ludicrous reference is instanced in the story of Foote, who seeing a dirty little ragged boy mounted astride a noble horse, prancing along in all the magnificent freedom and strength of nature, exclaimed: "Warburton on Shakspeare." The wit of repartee annihilating the querist, in the anecdote of Lord Norbury, who, riding in the coach of his friend Purcell, and chancing to pass a gallows, asked, "Where would you be, Purcell, if every man had his due?" "Alone in my carriage," was the reply. When Foote, on being asked, if he had ever seen Cork, replied, "No; but I have seen many drawings of it"-he punned; but produced a flash of satirical wit, when his companion, inquiring further, what he thought of the condition of the people from those drawings, he answered, that it had settled a question which had long perplexed him, namely, what the English beggars did with their cast-off clothes. The characteristic of Sydney Smith's wit, which is more humorous than satirical, is its immensely laughable extravagance, such as his remark on the unequal union of a small person and great mind in Lord John Russell-that he had not body enough to cover his intellect-that his intellect was indecently exposed; that on his comfortless condition on Salisbury Plain-that he was twelve miles from a lemon, &c. The wit of ludicrous observation: Foote remarked on Lord North, that he looked like a man who had lost an hour in the morning and was all day looking for it. Jerrold's wit is as brief as the best French sayings-more bitter, but less delicate. When at dinner, one of the company, despite the variety of viands, cried out, "Well, let others eat what they like, but calf's head say I." "That's egotism," said Jerrold. Talleyrand's wit, which is almost always exquisite, is of the finest sort-that of comic distinction. "I feel the tortures of hell," said an

improbate character of the revolution to him. Already?"

66

Wit is, indeed, the kaleidoscope of the mind, which alternately summons all the faculties of the intellect, observation, comparison, reason, fancy, and imagination to minister under the direction of its fantastical magic; or as it allies itself to each, each and all of which it moulds and colours with its own hues, the gems which it forms different in shape, hue, and sparkle, may be illustrated by the changes in crystallization which take place in some lustrous chemical substance, according to its affinity for the sweets, salts, and acids which are mingled in the medium.

SPIRIT AND MATTER.

ALL that the mind-contemplating spirit, unaided by the immortal lights of faith and revelation, knows is, that it is consciousness resulting from an organization. Primarily, ideas come to us through the senses, and are repeated either through them, or by associations with others retained in the consciousness. An infant's brain is at first a passive recipient of impressions. It is like the hand; it feels, is sensible to touch, capable of seizure, but incapable of regulation for any defined purpose beyond the limits of instinct. After a while it begins to register and distinguish them, and from that moment dates the beginning of its mind. "There is nothing in the intellect," said Leibnitz,“which was not previously in the senses, except the intellect itself;" by which he means the latent power of regulating the impressions of the senses, and perceiving the relations between ideas, resulting from the gradual strengthening and active efficiency of the cerebral machinery, and of the conscious element to which it ministers.

Plato considered that the reason of the soul, or its sense and capacity for perceiving truth, was the proof of its immortality; and though his pantheism excludes the personality of deity, Spinosa held the belief that neither body nor spirit were capable of ultimate extinction. "Mens humana non potest cum corpore detrui, sed ejus aliquid remanet quod æternum est." The idea of Plato is a conception of reason, as just as noble, for

nothing can be more rational than that the rational element of the soul, the highest illustration of the progressive laws of creation on this planet, should be perpetuated-should preserve a continued consciousness and activity after the dissolution of the organization, whose only object was referable to its development. As no element of inert matter is lost or perishable (even the object of the comets, it may be conjectured, is that of collecting the ponderable and imponderable substances radiated or otherwise given off by the spheres in their transit through space, and reconsigning them into the centre of the system)-it is in the last degree irrational to suppose that intelligent life, the ultimate fact of nature and crown of being, should fulfil an inferior destiny; and though the human race has possibly its limit in the scale of creation and time, we may, even scientifically, conclude that their conscious imponderable element or spirit, will, when the planet has undergone a higher change of condition, consequent upon its advance toward the more central regions of this universe, become transformed, in virtue of the progressive law thus occurring, into a superior race, gifted with higher organizations, and higher intelligence.

DISENTHRALMENT.

THE state of the soul after death, forms, next to the reverential aspiration towards deity, the loftiest theme of imaginative contemplation. A person once passing from a reverie on the above subject, into a dream, in which he thought that he died, became intelligent of the following vague revelation. In dying he was conscious of nothing more than sinking for a time into an oblivious slumber; but presently awaking, he recognised a change of condition-a feeling of freedom-an unwonted and intense claritude of being. Wherever he wished to be, he was; whatever he desired to see, he saw; movement from one point of space to another was insensible in its rapidity; intellectual processes arrived instantaneously at truth; and when his spirit was not in action, its prevailing sense was that of deity, as of an universal Conscious Light pervading the regions and spaces of infinity.

THE DRUIDS.

THE Druidical character and religion as described by the Greeks and Romans (whose distinctive races, not to speak of their polytheisms, were but of yesterday compared with the Celts) was the result of a succession of ages and circumstances. Originally they were magicians those priests of the earliest Fetish epoch-just like the magic doctors of the Africans in the present day. By acting on the superstitious ignorance of the barbarians, they gradually formed a powerful theocratic order, which, of course, involved a political. The rude Cyclopean structure of their temples indicates a very remote period, but the order had existed long before they were built, as they exhibit in their arrangement some knowledge of astronomy-the_result of the Celts having advanced from the wandering life of the hunter to the pastoral state. The Druid sect arose at a period when Europe was covered with woods; hence, from the shelter they afforded the half naked savage, a sacredness attached to them. The practice of sacrificing human victims was, doubtless, one of their primitive ceremonials, as, with many other barbarous peoples, being intended to propitiate the god of war, war being one of the most fearful causes of their suffering; and as the Celts and Germans lived in a chronic state of combat, such sacrifices were continued after they had advanced to a life of agriculture (the Celts at least) and even other industries. Like the Chaldeans and all peoples arrived at pastoral civilization, they gained an acquaintance with visual astronomy, while their code of moral maxims had its origin in their governing position with respect to the people, and their meditative secluded life, after their power was established.

The dogma of the immortality of the soul, which distinguishes their theology from that of many other primitive pagan sects, originated naturally in the instinct of self-preservation becoming intellectualized and analogized by observing the never-ending succession of the seasons, the setting and returning of the celestial orbs. This dogma, they found, acted as powerfully on the warlike Celt as that of Mahomet on the Saracen, as an inspirer of courage. The