air--the South-west coming off the sea, or a cry in the Alps.

No one would presume to say that we are deficient in jokers. They abound,
and the organisation directing their machinery to shoot them in the wake
of the leading article and the popular sentiment is good.

But the Comic differs from them in addressing the wits for laughter; and
the sluggish wits want some training to respond to it, whether in public
life or private, and particularly when the feelings are excited.

The sense of the Comic is much blunted by habits of punning and of using
humouristic phrase: the trick of employing Johnsonian polysyllables to
treat of the infinitely little. And it really may be humorous, of a kind,
yet it will miss the point by going too much round about it.

A certain French Duke Pasquier died, some years back, at a very advanced
age. He had been the venerable Duke Pasquier in his later years up to the
period of his death. There was a report of Duke Pasquier that he was a
man of profound egoism. Hence an argument arose, and was warmly
sustained, upon the excessive selfishness of those who, in a world of
troubles, and calls to action, and innumerable duties, husband their
strength for the sake of living on. Can it be possible, the argument ran,
for a truly generous heart to continue beating up to the age of a
hundred? Duke Pasquier was not without his defenders, who likened him to
the oak of the forest--a venerable comparison.

The argument was conducted on both sides with spirit and earnestness,
lightened here and there by frisky touches of the polysyllabic playful,
reminding one of the serious pursuit of their fun by truant boys, that
are assured they are out of the eye of their master, and now and then
indulge in an imitation of him. And well might it be supposed that the
Comic idea was asleep, not overlooking them! It resolved at last to this,
that either Duke Pasquier was a scandal on our humanity in clinging to
life so long, or that he honoured it by so sturdy a resistance to the
enemy. As one who has entangled himself in a labyrinth is glad to get out
again at the entrance, the argument ran about to conclude with its
commencement.

Now, imagine a master of the Comic treating this theme, and particularly
the argument on it. Imagine an Aristophanic comedy of THE CENTENARIAN,
with choric praises of heroical early death, and the same of a stubborn
vitality, and the poet laughing at the chorus; and the grand question for