stronger proof of the great change that has swept over mankind than
the sight of a nation which used to chuckle over "Tom Jones"
absorbing a few years ago countless editions of "Robert Elsmer
e." What is droller still is that the people who read "Robert
Elsmere" would think it wrong to enjoy "Tom Jones," and that the
people who enjoyed "Tom Jones" would have thought it wrong to read
"Robert Elsmere"; and that the people who, wishing to be on the safe
side of virtue, think it wrong to read either, are scorned greatly as
lacking true moral discrimination.

   Now he would be a brave man who would undertake to defend the utterly
indefensible literature of the past. Where it was most humorous it
was also most coarse, wanton and cruel; but, in banishing these
objectionable qualities, we have effectually contrived to rid
ourselves of the humor as well, and with it we have lost one of the
safest instincts of our souls. Any book which serves to lower the sum
of human gaiety is a moral delinquent; and instead of coddling it
into universal notice and growing owlish in its gloom, we should put
it briskly aside in favor of brighter and pleasanter things. When
Father Faber said that there was no greater help to a religious life
than a keen sense of the ridiculous, he startled a number of pious
people, yet what a luminous and cordial message it was to help us on
our way! Mr. Birrell has recorded the extraordinary delight with
which he came across some after-dinner sally of the Reverend Henry
Martyn's; for the very thought of that ardent and fiery spirit
relaxing into pleasantries over the nuts and wine made him appear
like an actual fellow-being of our own. It is with the same feeling
intensified, as I have already noted, that we read some of the
letters of the early fathers—those grave and hallowed figures seen
through a mist of centuries—and find them jesting at one another in
the gayest and least sacerdotal manner imaginable. "Who could tell a
story with more wit, who could joke so pleasantly?" sighs St. Gregory
of Nazienzen of his friend St. Basil, remembering doubtless with a
heavy heart the shafts of good-humored raillery that had brightened
their lifelong intercourse. With what kindly and loving zest does
Gregory, himself the most austere of men, mock at Basil's
asceticism—at those "sad and hungry banquets" of which he was
invited to partake, those "ungarden-like gardens, void of pot-herbs,"
in which he was expected to dig! With what delightful alacrity does
Basil vindicate his reputation for humor by making a most excellent

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