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of conduct which is a necessary condition of human life, and upon which is founded the great charm of intercourse between equals. From what pitfalls of vanity and self-assurance have we been saved by this ever-watchful presence! Into what abysmal follies have we fallen when she withholds her restraining hand! Shelley's letters are perhaps the strongest argument in behalf of healthy humor that literature has yet offered to the world. Only a man burdened with an "invincible repugnance to the comic" could have gravely penned a sentence like this: "Certainly a saint may be amiable,—she may be so; but then she does not understand,—has neglected to investigate the religion which retiring, modest prejudice leads her to profess." Only a man afflicted with what Mr. Arnold mildly calls an "inhuman" lack of humor could have written thus to a female friend: "The French language you already know; and, if the great name of Rousseau did not redeem it, it would have been perhaps as well that you had remained ignorant of it." Our natural pleasure at this verdict may be agreeably heightened by placing alongside of it