n of our day (Madame G. Sand),
"it is that disposition which forms the charm of every delicate
intimacy, and which often prevents our committing many follies and
stupidities.

"To look for the ridiculous side of things is to discover their
weakness. To laugh at the dangers in the midst of which we find
ourselves is to get accustomed to brave them; like the French, who go
into action with a laugh and a song. To quiz a friend is often to save
him from a weakness in which our pity might perhaps have allowed him to
linger. To laugh at one's self is to preserve one's self from the
effects of an exaggerated self-love. I have noticed that the people who
never joke are gifted with a childish and insupportable vanity."

Nevertheless, there are high and noble natures that never laugh, and are
incapable of understanding the pleasures of gayety. But minds like these
have some vacuum; they certainly lack what is called wit.

Lord Byron's gayety, full of dazzling wit and varied tints, like his
other faculties, never went beyond the limits befitting its exercise in
a beautiful soul. As much as the truly ridiculous, that which a great
writer has defined, "_the strength, small or great, of a free being, out
of proportion with its end_,"--as much, I say, as the truly ridiculous
attracted and amused him, just as much did grave, moral, and physical
disorders, produced by corruption of body or soul, sadden and repel his
nature, so full of harmony. He could never laugh at these latter. The
grave disorders of soul that exist in free beings, and that are
therefore voluntary, raised sadness, anger, or indignation in him,
according to the degree of vice or disorder. We need seek no other
origin for his bitterest satires in verse and prose. Great ugliness and
physical defects certainly inspired him with great disgust, consequent
upon his passion for the beautiful; but, at the same time, involuntary
misfortunes excited his liveliest compassion, often testified by the
most generous deeds.

We know, for instance, that Lord Byron had a defect in one of his feet,
but a defect so slight--although it has been greatly exaggerated--that
people have never been able to say in which of the two feet it did
exist. Nor did it in any way diminish the grace and activity all his
movements displayed. If its existence were painful for him, that must
have been because his sense of harmony looked upon this defect as
detrimental to the perfection of his physical be