ltogether too strong to need the patronizing special-pleading they
suggest. Instead of going into the metaphysics of the question about the
lawfulness and blamelessness of humor shown or humor relished, suppose
we cut the knot by a delightful illustration of the compatibility of
humor with the highest type of character.

No one will deny the sincerity, earnestness, devotedness, sublime
consecration to duty, of the heroine of the hospitals of Scutari. No one
will dispute the practical piety of the gentle, but fearless, the
tenderhearted, but truly strong-minded woman, who made the lazar-house
her home for months together,--ministered to its sick, miserable, and
ignorant inmates,--put, by the unostentatious exercise of indomitable
faith and unswerving self-sacrifice, the love and humanity of the Gospel
in direct and strongest contrast with the barbarisms of war. No one will
deny or dispute this now. That heroic English maiden, whose shadow, as
it fell on his pillow, the rude soldier kissed with almost idolatrous
gratitude, has won, without thought of seeking it, and without the loss
of a particle of humility and womanly delicacy, the loving admiration of
all Christendom. Well, she

"whose presence honors queenly guests,
Who wears the noblest jewel of her time,
And leaves her race a nobler, in her name,"

shall be the sufficient argument here,--especially as none have paid
finer, more delicate, or truer tributes to her virtue than Punch. In a
recent sketch of her career, accompanying her portrait in the gallery
of noted women, this sentence is given from a descriptive letter:--"Her
general demeanor is quiet and rather reserved; still, I am much
mistaken, if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the
ridiculous." Here is a delightful, and, we doubt not, true intimation.
Since the springs of pathos lie very near the springs of humor, in the
richest souls, the fair Florence must, in moments of weariness, have
glanced with merry eyes over the pages of Punch, or handed, with smiling
archness, his inimitable numbers to her wan and wounded patients, kindly
to cheat them into momentary forgetfulness of their agonies. If this
were so, who shall say that the use or enjoyment of wit is not as right
as it is natural? None, unless it be the narrowest of bigots,--like
those who objected to this heroic lady's mission of mercy to the East,
because she did not echo their sectarian shibboleths, and would not ask
whet