he mind. Moliere's laughter, in
his purest comedies, is ethereal, as light to our nature, as colour to
our thoughts. The Misanthrope and the Tartuffe have no audible laughter;
but the characters are steeped in the comic spirit. They quicken the
mind through laughter, from coming out of the mind; and the mind accepts
them because they are clear interpretations of certain chapters of the
Book lying open before us all. Between these two stand Shakespeare and
Cervantes, with the richer laugh of heart and mind in one; with much of
the Aristophanic robustness, something of Moliere's delicacy.

The laughter heard in circles not pervaded by the Comic idea, will sound
harsh and soulless, like versified prose, if you step into them with
a sense of the distinction. You will fancy you have changed your
habitation to a planet remoter from the sun. You may be among
powerful brains too. You will not find poets--or but a stray one,
over-worshipped. You will find learned men undoubtedly, professors,
reputed philosophers, and illustrious dilettanti. They have in them,
perhaps, every element composing light, except the Comic. They read
verse, they discourse of art; but their eminent faculties are not under
that vigilant sense of a collective supervision, spiritual and present,
which we have taken note of. They build a temple of arrogance; they
speak much in the voice of oracles; their hilarity, if it does not dip
in grossness, is usually a form of pugnacity.

Insufficiency of sight in the eye looking outward has deprived them of
the eye that should look inward. They have never weighed themselves in
the delicate balance of the Comic idea so as to obtain a suspicion of
the rights and dues of the world; and they have, in consequence, an
irritable personality. A very learned English professor crushed an
argument in a political discussion, by asking his adversary angrily:
'Are you aware, sir, that I am a philologer?'

The practice of polite society will help in training them, and the
professor on a sofa with beautiful ladies on each side of him, may
become their pupil and a scholar in manners without knowing it: he is at
least a fair and pleasing spectacle to the Comic Muse. But the society
named polite is volatile in its adorations, and to-morrow will be
petting a bronzed soldier, or a black African, or a prince, or a
spiritualist: ideas cannot take root in its ever-shifting soil. It is
besides addicted in self-defence to gabble exclusively