LETTER XX.

Strictures upon the decorous in public

bodies.

My excellent Friend,

LONDON.

YOU charge me with fastidiousness in my remarks upon the merriment of the British house of commons. Perhaps the fervour of writing, the consciousness of addressing "the friendly eye alone," and a certain lens of unequal surface, through which I am too apt to view the wise ones of this world in grotesque attitudes, may have misled me, but I never can be driven from the opinion that gravity is as natural an attendant on wisdom, and as often found in her company, as the laughing

loves beside the car of Venus, or frisking fawns in the train of Bacchus and Ariadne. It is true, the wits have often ridiculed gravity, but what is there so sacred as not to have been, at times, the butt of wit? Rochefoucauld defines gravity to be a mysterious carriage of the body, calculated to cover the defects of the mind. Laurence Sterne, without defining, boldly calls it an "arrant scoundrel," and yet wise men in all ages have been grave men; and, if there are some exceptions, it will be acknowledged, even by the jocose, that they would have been much wiser if they had been much graver. The sportiveness of great and learned men is not reckoned among their excellences, but their weaknesses; and this is the general opinion of people either merry or wise. Among the ancients, who I confess are my standards of human perfection, we find but one laughing philosopher. I remember a print of that merry sage hung in my father's parlour, with that of the

crying philosopher as a companion; and my good mother used to tell me, when I was a small boy, that Mr. Heraclitus was a sensible old gentleman, always weeping at observing what a fool the other was to be always laughing. I know there have been authors of even learned works who have been facetious men-but this resulted from their wit, not their wisdom, and wits are the cicada of literature, who chirp away the summer and starve in the winter of life. But modern or ancient times have not produced any great writers, statesmen, or heroes, who have been noted for jocularity. I do not recollect but one pun in all Cicero's works, and not one tolerable joke in Cæsar's Commentaries. Cardinal Richelieu, although he attempted, could never be facetious. The great Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene were never considered as merry blades and, in our country, Washington and Adams were no jokers. I do not contend that a wise man may not be face

tious, or even merry, but no wise man was ever facetious or merry on great and solemn occasions. It is true, Ludlow, in his memoirs, informs us that Oliver Cromwell and his officers smutted each other with coals, and played barrack tricks at the horse-guards, the night before the execution of Charles the First-but remember there were no repartees, jokes, and Joe Miller jests, in the high commission court no-there all was solemn ;if the thing done was wrong, the manner of doing it was august. If that unfortunate monarch had had to contend with such men as are now found in the British house of commons-if Pym and Haslerig had betted on Sweeper and Sky-Scraper, and Hampden laughed and joked, and drolled about ship-money, and the members had tittered at his ribaldry, English liberty had now been a mere name, and British greatness unknown.

I do not believe there was ever convened a more dignified body of men than

that which composed the American Congress who promulgated the declaration of our independence. The hall of congress was not then a club-room of merry fellows, but a cabinet for the consultation of wise men: the members did not joke, but consulted-they did not laugh, but acted: and under the conduct of such wise, and let me add grave, men, from dependent colonies we became an independent nation. And, however great men may indulge in sportive sallies of social mirth, I still insist it is indecorous on great occasions; and whenever I see a great national council, engaged on momentous concerns, as merry as grigs, I shall adopt the language of the wise and grave Jewish preacher, and say "of laughter, it is mad; "and of mirth, what doeth it?”—I had read the English relations of the frivolity of the French national assembly-Ithought the reprehension of their travellers just, and their epithet of "French monkeys" well applied; but let me no more see