blood-thirsty monster will devour not only his fellow, but even his blood-relations and his own children. It was this consideration that converted Dr. Franklin from vegetarianism to belief in an animal diet. "If you eat one another," he said to a fish, "I see no reason why we may not eat you." "There is an immense trout in Loch Awe, in Scotland," says a writer, "which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name of Salmo ferox. I pull about this unnatural monster until he is tired, and give him the coup-de-grace. Is this cruelty? Cruelty should be made of sterner stuff." It is a curious fact that the tender-hearted moralists, who croak so over the cruelty of angling, and think it a dreadful thing to trouble a trout with a line intimating that you would be happy to see him at supper, rarely refuse to eat a perch or trout well browned, and will even add the "cool malignity" of salt and sauce. To all such crabbed and hypercritical objectors we can only say with Horace that jubemus stultos esse libenter, while from our heart of hearts we echo the song of old Izaak: "A day with not too bright a beam, A warm, but not a scorching sun, A southern gale to curl the stream, 66 'There, whilst behind some bush we wait We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait, "And think ourselves, in such an hour, Of meaner men the smaller fry." INTELLECTUAL PLAYFULNESS. HE London "Saturday Review," speaking of the many THE 66 pretty things said in play by Sydney Smith, remarks that none of the sayings of that obese angel of English wits throws so amiable a light on the essential vein of his intellect, its playfulness, as that recorded in the story of the pretty girl and the sweet peas. "Oh! Mr. Smith," the pretty girl said, who was visiting his garden with a party of friends, and pointing to some sweet peas, "those sweet peas have not yet come to perfection." Then," said the witty divine and divine wit, "permit me to conduct perfection to the sweet peas." At first blush this looks like a bit of gallantry, of which any man might be guilty; but, "if we look into the sentiment closely," says the "Review," "and observe how delicate and complicated is its structure, and, though in its essence spontaneous, how ideal and polished is its wit, the gallantry falls entirely into the background, iced over, as it were, by the playfulness, and by the intellectual process which almost invariably acts as a refrigerator on the emotions." Of all the qualities which lend a charm to greatness, there is no other, true courtesy only excepted,-which so robes it in beauty as the one here indicated. By playfulness is meant that indescribable something "which, at particular times, surrounds particular people like an electric atmosphere, which gilds their thoughts, lends a perfume to the commonest sentiments, and for a time, trans lates those who fall under its spell into a kind of fairy land remote from the humdrum views, the jog-trot sequences, the little carking cares and little drivelling worries and apprehensions, the tiny rules and infinitesimal points of honor, which almost inevitably beset average life at average moments." This quality is the last touch, the finishing perfection, of a noble character; it is the gold on the spire, the sunlight on the cornfield, the smile on the cheek of the noble knight lowering his swordpoint to his lady-love; and it can result only from the truest balance and harmony of soul. The best and greatest men in all ages have exhibited it; it was seen in Socrates, in Luther, in Cervantes, in Chaucer, in Sir Thomas More - adding a bloom to the sterner graces of their characters, and shining forth with amaranthine brightness in their hours of darkness and gloom. Why is it so rare? Perhaps one reason is, that the quality is so often confounded with a jesting disposition which in our days too often is found in excess, and allied with habitual flippancy and frivolity. There are persons who cannot speak of the most serious subjects except in terms provocative of merriment. The gravest themes of human contemplation suggest to them only comic images and associations, and a remark as gloomy as death will, in passing through their minds, acquire the motley livery of a harlequin. The most popular literature of the day is that which is dedicated to Momus and broad grins. The refined and delicate humor which once characterized our classic writers,- a humor which does not spring from the words alone, but has intense meanings underneath its grotesque sounds,- has given place to "laughter hold 66 แ ing both his sides." Joking has become a trade. The cap and bells, which once, like greatness, were 'thrust upon" a man, because he had a genius for joking, are now assumed with cold-blooded calculation. We have had "comic histories of England and Rome, and "comic Blackstones" ad nauseam, and now we have a "Comic History of the United States." In England the rage for burlesques has almost banished high art from the theatres; and it is now thought to be a fine stroke of wit to call the mightiest of English writers by such titles as "the Divine Williams," or "the Avon party." This superfotation of fun has disgusted many with all fun. They feel that this incessant rattle,- this ceaseless jesting upon even the gravest themes,— must ultimately lessen a man's own sense of the real gravity of human life, and weaken the strength and authority of the moral convictions of those who are always listening to it. Barrow, of whom it has been said that he himself might have outshone, had he chosen to do it, all the wits of Charles's Court, and beaten them with weapons like their own, but of a more dazzling blade, a keener edge, and finer temper, has treated this folly with the contempt it merits. "What more plain nonsense can there be," he asks, "than to be earnest in jest, to be continual in divertisement, or constant in pastime, to make extravagance all our play, and sauce all our diet? Is not this plainly the life of a child, that is ever busy, yet never hath anything to do? or the life of that mimical brute, which is always active in playing uncouth and unlucky tricks, which, could it speak, might surely pass well for a professed wit?" It is plain that those who find their delight in this jibing and vulgarizing spirit confound true humor with facetiousness. The one is a gracious as well as tricksy spirit;" the other is often terribly like the grinning of a death's-head." 66 There is another class of persons-grim, prosaic, matterof-fact men-who, owing to some twist of the brain, cannot understand the quality we have commended. The language of pleasantry is to them an unknown tongue. Not only do they fail to detect the good will which wears the mask of satire, but it is lucky if they do not interpret your circuitous compliments as direct insults, and a design to cheer and amuse into a deliberate intention to sting and wound. It is said that a tribe called Weddahs has lately been discovered in Ceylon, who never laugh, and who know no more what a joke is than does a horse; and even in civilized countries there are many persons who are not more happy in their mental constitution. Sir William Harcourt quotes Canning as saying of the most conservative class in England: "The country gentlemen suspected wit meant something against the land, and solid commercial men thought it had a tendency to depreciate consols." We have known some of these people,-lean, lathy, crabbed, dyspeptic beings,-who think that two and two always make four, and can never possibly make five; and we have sometimes thought that the best way to address them would be to abstain from all irony, and to roll into their spiny natures a few floods of billowy mirth. It was one of these hard, prosaic men, who cannot understand a joke even when it is as unequivocal as a pistolshot, that read Knickerbocker's History of New York, and said, on closing it, that it was far inferior to the works of Hildreth and Bancroft, and contained many things which he found it difficult to believe. Miss Cobbe, |