xample, I know that, in a
remote and even Pictish part of this kingdom, a rural household, humble
and under the shadow of a sorrow inevitably approaching, has found in
'David Copperfield' oblivion of winter, of sorrow, and of sickness. On
the other hand, people are now picking up heart to say that 'they cannot
read Dickens,' and that they particularly detest 'Pickwick.' I believe
it was young ladies who first had the courage of their convictions in
this respect. 'Tout sied aux belles,' and the fair, in the confidence of
youth, often venture on remarkable confessions. In your 'Natural History
of Young Ladies' I do not remember that you describe the Humorous Young
Lady (1). She is a very rare bird indeed, and humour generally is at a
deplorably low level in England.

(1) I am informed that the _Natural History of Young
Ladies_ is attributed, by some writers, to another
philosopher, the author of _The Art of Pluck_.

Hence come all sorts of mischief, arisen since you left us; and, it
may be said, that inordinate philanthropy, genteel sympathy with Irish
murder and arson, Societies for Badgering the Poor, Esoteric
Buddhism, and a score of other plagues, including what was once called
Aestheticism, are all, primarily, due to want of humour. People discuss,
with the gravest faces, matters which properly should only be stated
as the wildest paradoxes. It naturally follows that, in a period almost
destitute of humour, many respectable persons 'cannot read Dickens,' and
are not ashamed to glory in their shame. We ought not to be angry with
others for their misfortunes; and yet when one meets the _cretins_ who
boast that they cannot read Dickens, one certainly does feel much as Mr.
Samuel Weller felt when he encountered Mr. Job Trotter.

How very singular has been the history of the decline of humour. Is
there any profound psychological truth to be gathered from consideration
of the fact that humour has gone out with cruelty? A hundred years ago,
eighty years ago--nay, fifty years ago--we were a cruel but also
a humorous people. We had bull-baitings, and badger-drawings, and
hustings, and prize-fights, and cock-fights; we went to see men hanged;
the pillory and the stocks were no empty 'terrors unto evil-doers,' for
there was commonly a malefactor occupying each of these institutions.
With all this we had a broad blown comic sense. We had Ho-garth, and
Bunbury, and George Cruikshank, and Gilray; we had Leec