in
thought than in emotion. No doubt they sometimes appreciate what is
lighter, especially when a reaction taking place after severe study,
they feel like children let out to play. But ordinarily they certainly
appreciate most that rare and subtle humour which inferior minds cannot
understand. Herbert Spencer is probably correct that "we enjoy that
humour most at which we laugh least." But we must not conclude from this
rule that we can at will by repressing our laughter increase our
pleasure. The statement refers to the cases of different persons or of
the same person under different circumstances. Rude and uneducated
people would little feel the humour at which they could not laugh, and
some grave people entirely miss much that is amusing. "The nervous
energy," he says, "which would have caused muscular action, is
discharged in thought," but this presupposes a very sensitive mental
organization into which the discharge can be made. Where this does not
exist, laughter accompanies the appreciation of humour, and in silence
there would be little pleasure. The cause of mirth also differs as the
persons affected, and the farce which creates a roar in the pit will
often not raise a smile in the boxes. Swift writes--"Bombast and
buffoonery, by nature lofty and light, soar highest of all in the
theatre, and would be lost in the roof, if the prudent architect had
not contrived for them a fourth place called the twelvepenny gallery and
there planted a suitable colony." That emotionable ebullition affords a
lower class less enjoyment than intellectual action gives a higher order
of mind, must be somewhat uncertain. A thoughtful nature is probably
happier than an emotional, but it is difficult to compare the pleasure
derived from intellectual, moral, and sensuous feelings.

It is a common saying that "there is no disputing taste," and in this
respect we allow every man a certain range. But when he transgresses
this limit he often becomes ludicrous, especially to those whose tastes
rather tend in the opposite direction. The strange figure and
accoutrements of Don Quixote raised great laughter among the gay ladies
at the inn, and induced the puissant knight-errant to administer to them
the rebuke "Excessive laughter without cause denotes folly."

A friend of mine, desirous of giving an intellectual treat to the
rustics in the neighbourhood, announced that a reading of Shakespeare
would be given in the village schoolroom by a celeb