that humor is wit and love: I am sure, at any rate, that the best humor is that which contains most humanity,

that which is flavored throughout with tenderness and kindness. This love does not demand constant utterance or actual expression; as a good father, in conversation with his children or wife, is not perpetually embracing them, or making protestations of his. love; as a lover in the society of his mistress is not, at least as far as I am led to believe, for ever squeezing her hand, or sighing in her ear, "My soul's darling, I adore you!" He shows his love by his conduct, by his fidelity, by his watchful desire to make the beloved person happy. It lightens from his eyes when she appears, though he may not speak it; it fills his heart when she is present or absent; influences all his words and actions; suffuses his whole being. It sets the father cheerily to work through the long day; supports him through the tedious labor of the weary absence or journey; and sends him happy home again, yearning towards the wife and children. This kind of love is not a spasm, but a life. It fondles and caresses at due seasons, no doubt; but the fond heart is always beating fondly and truly, though the wife is not sitting hand in hand with him, or the children hugging at his knee.

And so with a loving humor. I think it is a genial writer's habit of being; it is the kind, gentle spirit's way of looking out on the world, that sweet friendliness which fills his heart and his style. You recognize it, even though there may not be a single point of wit or a single pathetic touch in the page, though you may not be called upon to salute his genius by a laugh or a tear. That collision of ideas which provokes the one

They must be like

or the other must be occasional. papa's embraces, which I spoke of anon, who only delivers them now and then, and can not be expected to go on kissing the children all night. And so the writer's jokes and sentiment, his ebullitions of feeling, his outbreaks of high spirits, must not be too frequent. One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points; of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humor; these ought to be true and manly in a man, as every thing else in his life should be manly and true; and he loses his dignity by laughing or weeping out of place, or too often.

When the Rev. Laurence Sterne begins to sentimentalize over the carriage in Monsieur Dessein's courtyard, and pretends to squeeze a tear out of a rickety old shandrydan; when, presently, he encounters the dead donkey on his road to Paris, and snivels over that asinine corpse, I say, "Away, you driveling quack! do not palm off these grimaces of grief upon simple folks who know no better, and cry, misled by your hypocrisy." Tears are sacred. The tributes of kind hearts to misfortune, the mites which gentle souls drop into the collections made for God's poor and unhappy, are not to be tricked out of them by a whimpering hypocrite handing round a begging-box for your compassion, and asking your pity for a lie. When that same man tells me of Lefévre's illness and Uncle Toby's charity, of the noble at Rennes coming home and reclaiming his sword, I thank him for the generous emotion, which, springing genuinely from his own

heart, has caused mine to admire benevolence, and sympathize with honor, and to feel love and kindness and pity.

If I do not love Swift (as, thank God! I do not, however immensely I may admire him), it is because I revolt from the man who placards himself as a professional hater of his own kind; because he chisels his savage indignation on his tombstone, as if to perpetuate his protest against being born of our race, the suffering, the weak, the erring, the wicked, if you will, but still the friendly, the loving children of God our Father; it is because, as I read through Swift's dark volumes, I never find the aspect of nature seems to delight him, the smiles of children to please him, the sight of wedded love to soothe him.

I do not remember in any line of his writing, a passing allusion to a natural scene of beauty. When he speaks about the families of his comrades and brotherclergymen, it is to assail them with gibes and scorn, and to laugh at them brutally for being fathers and for being poor. He does mention in the journal to Stella a sick child, to be sure, a child of Lady Masham, that was ill of the small-pox,- but then it is to confound the brat for being ill, and the mother for attending to it when she should have been busy about a court intrigue in which the dean was deeply engaged. And he alludes to a suitor of Stella's, and a match she might have made, and would have made, very likely, with an honorable and faithful and attached man, Tisdall, who loved her; and of whom Swift speaks, in a letter to this lady, in language so foul that you would not bear to hear it. In treating of the good the humorists have

done, of the love and kindness they have taught and left behind them, it is not of this one I dare speak. Heaven help the lonely misanthrope! be kind to that multitude of sins, with so little charity to cover them.

Of Mr. Congreve's contributions to the English stock of benevolence, I do not speak; for, of any moral legacy to posterity, I doubt whether that brilliant man ever thought at all. He had some money, as I have told; every shilling of which he left to his friend the Duchess of Marlborough, a lady of great fortune and the highest fashion. He gave the gold of his brains to persons of fortune and fashion too. There is no more feeling in his comedies than in as many books of Euclid. He no more pretends to teach love for the poor, and good-will for the unfortunate, than a dancing-master does he teaches pirouettes and flic-flacs, and how to bow to a lady, and to walk a minuet. In his private life, Congreve was immensely liked, more so than any man of his age, almost, and, to have been so liked, must have been kind and good-natured. His good-nature bore him through extreme bodily ills and pain with uncommon cheerfulness and courage.

Being so gay, so bright, so popular, such a grand seigneur, be sure he was kind to those about him, generous to his dependants, serviceable to his friends. Society does not like a man so long as it liked Congreve, unless he is likable: it finds out a quack very soon; it scorns a poltroon or a curmudgeon. We may be certain that this man was brave, good-tempered, and liberal. So, very likely, is Monsieur Pirouette, of whom we spoke he cuts his capers, he grins, bows, and

dances to his fiddle. In private he may have a hundred virtues; in public he teaches dancing. His business is cotillons, not ethics.

As much may be said of those charming and lazy epicureans, Gay and Prior, — sweet lyric singers, comrades of Anacreon, and disciples of love and the bottle. "Is there any moral shut within the bosom of a rose?" sings our great Tennyson. Does a nightingale preach from a bough, or a lark from his cloud? Not knowingly; yet we may be grateful, and love larks and roses, and the flower-crowned minstrels too, who laugh and who sing.

CHARITY AND HUMOR.

SECOND READING.

co-thur'nus, a high shoe used in theatrical performances; a buskin. Pall-Mall (pel-mel'), a street in

London.

rouged (roozhd), painted with rouge,
a red cosmetic.
su-per-er'o-ga'tion, performance of
more than duty requires.

OF Addison's contributions to the charity of the world, I have spoken before in trying to depict that noble figure, and say now as then, that we should thank him as one of the greatest benefactors of that vast and immeasurably spreading family which speaks our common tongue. Wherever it is spoken, there is no man that does not feel and understand and use the noble English word "gentleman." And there is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison, - gentle in our bearing through life; gentle and