hs; let them amuse themselves,
provided they respect the ladies."

Finally, what presage can we form of the future from the experience of
the past? We may expect the augmenting emotion in humour to become less,
and of a more aesthetical character, indelicacy, profanity, and hostility
have been considerably modified even since the commencement of this
century. Humour will, by degrees, become more intellectual and more
refined, less dependent upon the senses and passions. At some time far
hence allusions will be greatly appreciated, the complexity of which our
obtuser faculties would now be unable to understand. Still, as keen and
excellent wit is a rare gift, some even of the ancient sayings will
doubtless survive.

By some, humour has been called a "morbid secretion," and its extinction
has been foretold, but history, the only unerring guide, teaches us that
it will increase in amount and improve in quality. Man cannot exist
without emotion, and as we have seen various forms and subjects of
humour successively arising, so we may be sure in future ages fresh
fields for it will be constantly opening. When we consider how necessary
amusement is to all, and how bounteously it has been supplied by
Providence, we shall feel certain that man will always have beside him
this light, which although it cannot lead as a star, can still brighten
his path and cheer his spirits upon the pilgrimage of life.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Properly Centrones, from a Greek word signifying patchwork.

[2] In which the various kinds of fish are introduced in mock heroic
verse. It dates from the fifth century B.C.

[3] About this time Addison and Bishop Attenbury first called attention
to the beauties of Milton.

[4] Ale-houses at Oxford.

[5] A game at cards.

[6] Haynes writes, "I have known a gentleman of another turn of humour,
who despises the name of author, never printed his works, but contracted
his talent, and by the help of a very fine diamond which he wore on his
little finger, was a considerable poet on glass." He had a very good
epigrammatic wit; and there was not a parlour or tavern window where he
visited or dined for some years, which did not receive some sketches or
memorials of it. It was his misfortune at last to lose his genius and
his ring to a sharper at play, and he has not attempted to make a verse
since.

[7] This seems taken from a Spanish story.

[8] Supposed to be Mrs. Manley, against whom Steele had a grudge