inment at which the Messiah should be welcomed among the Jews, an
enormous bird should be killed and roasted, of which the Talmud says
that it once threw an egg out of its nest which crushed three hundred
lofty cedars, and when broken, swept away sixty villages.

The following petition was signed by sixteen girls of Charleston, S.C.,
and presented to Governor Johnson in 1733, and was no doubt thought to
set forth a serious evil.

"The humble petition of all the maids whose names are under
written. Whereas we, the humble petitioners are at present in a
very melancholy disposition of mind, considering how all the
bachelors are blindly captivated by widows, the consequence is this
our request that your Excellency will for the future order that no
widow presume to marry any young man until the maids are provided
for, or else to pay each of them a fine. The great disadvantage it
is to us maids, is that the widows by their forward carriages do
snap up the young men, and have the vanity to think their merit
beyond ours which is a just imposition on us who ought to have the
preference. This is humbly recommended to your Excellency's
consideration, and we hope you will permit no further insults. And
we poor maids in duty bound will ever pray," &c.

It is almost impossible to limit the number of influences, which affect
our appreciation of the ludicrous. "Nothing," writes Goethe, "is more
significant of a man's character than what he finds laughable." We find
highly intellectual men very different in this respect. Quintilian
notices the different kind of humour of Aulus Galba, Junius Bassus,
Cassius Severus, and Domitius Afer. In modern times Pitt was grave; Fox,
Melbourne, and Canning were witty. Sir Henry Holland enumerates as the
wits of his day, Canning, Sydney Smith, Jekyll, Lord Alvanley, Lord
Dudley, Hookham Frere, Luttrell, Rogers, and Theodore Hook, and he
adds--

"Scarcely two of the men just named were witty exactly in the same
vein. In Jekyll and Hook the talent of the simple punster
predominated, but in great perfection of the art, while Bishop
Blomfield and Baron Alderson, whom I have often seen in friendly
conflict, enriched this art by the high classical accompaniments
they brought to it. The wit of Lord Dudley, Lord Alvanley, and
Rogers was poignant, personal sarcasm; in Luttrell it was perpetual
fun of li