Is the work true or false? Is it in good taste or in bad taste? Does it represent the mode and development of genuine human impulses, or is it unreal, conventional-a copy, without the spirit, of the productions of genuine artists? Is the pathos pathetic? Is the fun amusing? Are the jokes witty, or mechanical? Does the passion stir the currents of the soul? Answer us these questions, and what boots it whether the work may be, by a stretch of classification, called sensational or unsensational? There was a time when every picture was pre-Raphaelite or not preRaphaelite, though the term had no relation whatever to a tithe of the pictures produced. These hack phrases and syllables are the mark of the poverty of critical perception and analysis.

The

AN EPIGRAM FROM THE PULPIT!—“Vox populi, vox Dei! impious apotheosis of a lawless democracy! Vox populi, vox diaboli!" I heard this the other day from the pulpit. Perhaps the preacher is right. But what an advantage it is now and then to be able to talk six feet above contradiction.

WHEN we meet a friend in the morning we salute him with "Good morning;" but when we encounter him at night we never say “Good night." "Good evening" serves us very well as long as it is evening, but if the late hours are coming on one feels an awkwardness, and endeavours to put the greeting into a different form altogether. Why should we not keep time with our benedictions, and when it is night say "Good night”? We use this form at parting, why not at meeting? Does custom lean towards propriety, and teach us here that we ought not to meet but only to part at night? or is there something so superlative in the nocturnal blessing that it is not to be used otherwise than as an ultimatum? Decide who can: I cannot. I only know that a watchman whom I am obliged to pass occasionally at midnight hesitates considerably as to what he is to say in salutation. He speaks out an hour later, when he feels that he can properly say "Good morning."

WHAT a curiosity was the first page of the Times during the siege of Paris! Filled to overflowing every day with messages to the beleaguered citizens from friends outside. And, by the way, what a time Mr. Washburne must have had of it: upon the average sixty messages a day were addressed to him, with prayers that he would deliver them. He must have been heartily thankful for the armistice. But the great curiosity of those Times sheets by no means ended with their abnormal displays of private communications. The full interest attached to them is not realised until we perceive how much of modern scientific progress was epitomised in the means by which the messages were conveyed to their destinations. First there was the printing press, that compressed some three or four hundred missives into a single page; then there was

the mail train and its belongings, and the mail steamer with its belongings, which carried the sheet to within pigeon-flight of the invested city. Then there was the photographic camera, that reduced the large page down to a pin's head's dimensions, preserving all the while the integrity of every word of every message. Then there was the balloon, that brought the trained pigeon out of the city to receive the Liliputian letterbag with its precious contents. Then there was the microscope, that magnified the tiny photograph, and brought every despatch into legibility: and we may quite reasonably infer that the electric telegraph had its share in the work of conveying many of the messages to their ultimate addresses. In how many of the decades that the world has rolled through could such a string of resources have been combined? And not one of them had necessity for its mother: all were to hand, and necessity merely made them co-operate.

As a matter akin to the foregoing, compare the postal system of to-day with the state of things existing a century ago, upon which an old manuscript memorandum book, lately presented to the Manchester Literary Society, gives some information. In November, 1774, a letter was sent from Manchester to Glasgow, by express, and this was the postal charge upon it :

The express post from Manchester to London was £2 15s. 3d. In 1772 a letter from the latter place to the former cost £3 5s. 6d., and the time occupied in the passage was 36 hours. The mail journey between Manchester and Glasgow occupied 66 hours. There were then two Continental mails a week, and one a month to North America. The mail bags made up in London were called the packets; hence, evidently, the name steampacket which we apply to mail steamers.

WHY does not somebody invent a new dance? All dancing men and women must be heartily tired of jigging and dawdling through the selfsame limited programme of waltz, galop, and quadrille that is thrust into their hands wherever in balldom they go. What should we think of attending musical parties, night after night, to take part in a neverchanging round of three or four choruses? Who would like to go to one conversaz" after another, and talk through a set catechism on four subjects, over and over again, with never a word of variety? Grant that in dancing the variety is in the company; that variety would obtain in our suppositionary meetings, and yet we should dread their monotony. It is especially in dances of the "square" character, so called, that diversity is to be desired something is wanted to supplement, perhaps to supersede,

the present forms of the quadrille-something that will give pleasure in its performance, and not make a man feel a fool at its execution, as many a man must in some of the present "figures"-something that shall have some "go" in it, and yet be free from the charge of fastness and above Mrs. Grundy's carpings. The only bit of dancing now in vogue that, to my mind, supplies these needs, is the last figure of the Lancers; this is the sole thing in an evening's dance that is worth doing for its own sake: everything else is excuse for flirtation in some form or other, mild or wild. Let any dancing master give the saltatory world a combination of figures as effective as that one, and if he does not make his fortune he will earn a transcendent fame. I see no reason why every dance in an evening's programme should not be different. Dancing, we are taught, is the poetry of motion: let the poets try a few new metres.

If the man in the moon knew what liberties are taken with his lamplight here below, he would keep his lanthorn dark, or else turn its beams towards some more considerate world. People are always coupling the moon with actions it has nothing to do with, and declaring that it shines upon scenes from which, in actual fact, its light is far removed. A great astronomer lately pointed out that Wolfe's line, in his ballad on “The Burial of Sir John Moore," setting forth that his hero was buried " By the struggling moonbeam's misty light," is all fudge; for the burial took place in broad daylight, and the moon was not in visible condition at all. I could cite several modern instances of such lunar ill-usage; but one will suffice: it is quite modern and sufficiently remarkable. A correspondent of a morning paper wrote from Paris, on the 20th of January, a letter headed "Shells by Moonlight," in which, presumably describing events witnessed on that day, or the one before it, he defines the time and scene as "Midnight, a bright moon overhead," and presently alludes to a place "white and shimmering in the moonbeams." Why, on the 20th of January there was no moon; and there could not have been a bright moon overhead in Paris, at midnight, for a week or ten days before that date. There was an extenuating circumstance in this case-the good man had been out to dinner; but in other instances that I have known the error has been committed in cool blood. Every poet and painter cannot afford, like Artemus Ward, to keep a "moonist” on his establishment; but whoever brings the moon upon a scene without knowing de facto that it ought to be there should first consult an almanac, as Nick Bottom did when he wanted a bit of moonshine for his play.

IN all the talk that we have lately heard concerning social science no one seems to have made any allusion to the wonderful labours upon that vast subject achieved by M. Quetelet, the veteran astronomer and statistician of Brussels, and epitomised in his volumes, now two years old, entitled "A Treatise on Social Physics." This is one of the most

remarkable works that the age has produced; it contains a very exhaustive review of man's present condition, physically, intellectually, and morally considered, not for one country only, but for all countries from which the requisite statistical information could be procured: the strange laws which seem mysteriously to govern man's progress and man's conduct are brought into cognisance; and in the end the average condition of men at present is made out, in a chapter on the mean man, in order to form the basis of a study of man's progress from age to age, from century to century. Quetelet's work repeated ten generations hence will show whether in that time the human creature, viewed in every possible light, has advanced any nearer to "the image of his Maker," or whether a limit has been put to the development of morals, as apparently there has been to physical faculties --whether it is as impossible for him to add a talent to his brain as to put an inch to his stature. Of course such a book is heavy reading, but there is a deal in it that would be of great interest to intellectual minds, and my wonder is that none of the heavier reviews have taken it under their notice, and treated it according to its great deserts. It has been long enough in the publisher's hands.

Is there any good reason why the short stories and sketches which Dickens was wont to contribute to his weekly magazine should not be given en masse to the public? There are tales and essays enough to charm a year's readers in the old volumes of "Household Words" and "All the Year Round." And they are buried alive. Why not resuscitate them? Somebody, I suppose, can do so; and somebody ought. I fancy that if this good work were done, one of its results would be the showing that a man's largest works are not necessarily his greatest. Happy things are always short.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

APRIL, 1871.

ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF ENGLAND.

BY CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE.

I. INTRODUCTORY: CHAUCER, &c.

S an introduction to a series of Essays upon the Comic Writers of our own country, it might be expected that some attempt should be made to define the quality by which those writers are mainly distinguished-viz., by a physiological definition of the term Wit, and of its farce-brother, Humour, the two qualities that have procured for man the distinction of being the only "laughing animal." What a blessing, by the way, to be a good laugher! a rare gift, and therefore the more to be prized and cherished. A good laugher must be a good man and a wise man; for to laugh well, he must appreciate, he must have quick and responsive faculties, with various and sound knowledge.. I do not imply that all good men are good laughers any more than that all fools are knaves, because all knaves are over-cunning fools. Some good and estimable men were born under a weeping planet-their melancholy may frequently be traced to physical causes before they saw the light; but the man who knew most of this matter about laughter, good Master William Shakespeare, always makes his best laughers to be good characters. "Laugh if you are wise" is his motto. There is no emotion, however, that is perhaps more various, and at the same time indicative of the real character than laughter. "Speech (said Goldsmith) was given to man to conceal his thoughts." If laughter do not reveal them, it will constantly indicate his sincerity or insincerity of the moment. Some men laugh periodically, as the

VOL. VI., N.S. 1871.

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