in her "Work and Play," tells of an Englishman of this stamp, to whom a friend described the scene when Sheridan was picked up dead drunk, and, being asked his name and address, stammered out, "My name is Wil-WilWilberforce." The serious gentleman, after a few moments' deep consideration, looked up and asked his fair informant, "What did Sheridan mean? Sydney Smith saw one of this class sitting beside him at a dinner party, and plied him with a joke. The man sat grim over it for some five minutes, trying to extract its meaning. At last he looked up and exclaimed, "Why, Mr. Smith, you probably intended that for a joke." "I didn't intend it for anything else," was the reply; whereupon the solemn gentleman began to laugh, and couldn't stop, doubtless discovering, for the first time in his life, that things have a funny side. Many will remember a similar misadventure which befell poor Smith when he told a lady visitor that he found the weather so hot he was actually obliged to take off his flesh and sit in his bones. "Oh! Mr. Smith," answered the lady, in consternation, "how could you do that?" We were once traveling by rail along the left bank of the Seine in France, with an English family, and hearing the mother ask her son if he would not like "to go in swimming" in that river, we said: "It is not possible that your son would do such a thing as that." "Why not?" was the reply. "Because," we said, "he would be crazy if he did it." "Crazy? how crazy, pray?" "Why, madam," we replied, "he would be in Seine, would he not?" "H-o-w i-n-s-a-n-e?" she asked, with a mingled look of curiosity and surprise. Natures like this, that seem so poor and thin, have often juice enough latent within them; but as some one has said, it is at the bot

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tom, and undissolved. It needs shaking up, in order to impart richness and flavor to their whole being, and save them from bigotry and meanness; and if you can once get a flood of humor fairly to sweep through them, the end may probably be gained.

There is a third class of men who abstain from all exhibitions of playfulness because it is not "respectable." They have, or think they have, a portentous amount of dignity, and are fearful of sacrificing the most infinitesimal portion of it. Thomas Fuller knew some such in his day, who," for fear their orations should giggle, would not let them smile." It is evident that Dr. Franklin did not belong to this class, since we are told that the drawing up of the Declaration of Independence would have been committed to him, if it had not been feared that he would “put a joke into it." Nor did Abraham Lincoln belong to it, whose memory has been saved from a taint of levity only by his martyrdom. William Pitt did belong to it, if we may believe the author of "Caxtonia," who says that he rigidly subdued his native faculty of wit, from motives of policy. It was not that he did not appreciate and admire its sparkles in orators unrestrained by the responsibilities of office, but because he considered that a man in the position of First Minister impairs influence and authority by the cheers which transfer his reputation from his rank as Minister to his renown as wit. Doubtless there is force in this. Grave situations, as Bulwer remarks, are not only dignified but strengthened by that gravity of demeanor which is not the hypocrisy of the would-be wise, but the genuine token of the earnest sense of responsiiblity. There was deep wisdom in the Athenian law which interdicted a judge of the Areopagus from writing a comedy.

Yet, as a general thing, it is none the less true that, as "there is beggary in the love that can be reckoned," so there is degradation in the dignity that has to be preserved. If one has the real article, he may safely leave it to take care of itself; and if he has not, no prodigality of starch, or snowdrift of white-linen decency, will supply a substitute. Certainly, there can be no greater mistake than to associate frivolity of character with sportiveness. We are not to suppose that the elephant's trunk is incapable of felling a man because we see it toying with a feather; we do not conclude that the oak wants stability because its light and changeable leaves dance to the music of the breeze; nor may we conclude that a man wants solidity and strength of mind because he may be occasionally playful. Yet, somehow, the man who goes through the world with an owl-like solemnity of face is always thought to be showing a deeper sense of the meaning of life, and to be making more of his talents, than the elastic, sunny, playful man. There are persons who would ever afterward have refused to credit Sydney Smith with the possession of sterling intellectual qualities, had they heard his pleasantry about "a giraffe with a sore throat." Fancy," he said, once, sitting quietly at the deanery of St. Paul's with some ladies, when he was told that one of the giraffes at the Zoological Gardens had caught a cold,-" fancy a giraffe with a yard of sore throat!"

A PLEA FOR THE ERRING.

HERE are few subjects upon which men are so likely

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to err in forming their judgments as in estimating the degrees of guilt involved in the conduct of their erring and depraved fellow men. Especially is this the case when the judgments are passed upon the poor and the outcast, the unhappy persons who from infancy have lived in daily communion with wretchedness and vice. In spite of Canning's sneer at the nice judge who

found with keen, discriminating sight,

Black's not so black, nor white so very white,"

the doctrine thus ridiculed is nevertheless true in morals, if not in physics; and not to recognize it is to incur the risk of undue harshness in our estimates of our fellowmen. If there is any one lesson which frequent intercourse with them teaches, it is the folly of attempting nicely to classify their characters, so as to place them distinctly among the sheep or the goats. Here and there a man is found who is almost wholly bad, and another who is almost wholly good; but, in the infinite majority of cases, the problem is so complex as to defy all our powers of analysis. A young men's debating society may easily enough resolve that some famous man or woman was worthy of approbation or of reprobation; but men of experience, who have learned the infinite complexity of human nature, know that a just judgment of human beings

is not to be packed into any such summary formula. Even in judging our friends, whom we see daily, we make the grossest mistakes; they are constantly startling us by acts which show us how little we know of the fathomless depths of their moral being. How, then, can we expect to judge accurately of those who are utter strangers to us, and by what right do we presume to place them irrevocably in our moral pigeon-holes?

It is difficult to say how far in our judgments of the vilest men, or those who seem to be such, allowance should be made for perplexing circumstances, for temptations which we have never experienced, and for motives which we can but partially analyze. Certain it is that they who, from their earliest years, have lived always in affluence, who have never known the cravings of a hunger that they knew not how to satisfy,- who have been supplied with a constant succession of innocent pleasures to relieve the monotony of life, and with all the appliances of art to cheat pain of its sting,― have but a faint conception of the privations and anxieties, the irritating and maddening thoughts, that torture the victim of poverty, and drive him, with an impulse dreadfully strong, to deeds of darkness and blood. Well did Maggie Mucklebacket, in Scott's novel, retort to the Laird of Monkbarns, when he expressed a hope that the distilleries would never work again: "Ay, it is easy for your honor, and the like o' you gentle folks, to say sae, that hae stouth and routh, and fire and fending, and meat and claith, and sit dry and canny by the fireside; but an ye wanted fire, and meat, and dry claise, and were deeing o' cauld, and had a sair heart into the bargain, which is warst ava, wi' just tippence in your pouch, wadna ye be glad to buy a dram