else. In this respect it may be compared to the Ourang-outang, which according to the travelling showman, "forms the connecting link which separates mankind from the human race.”

LAUGH-a horse.-The sorry hack upon which buffoons and jesters are fain to ride home, when they want to make a retreat, and are at a loss for any other conveyance. Such Merry Andrews save their credit as the Romans did their Capitol, by the cackling of geese. To succeed in this object all expedients are considered fair; to win the laugh, is to win the battle; if you cannot, therefore, check-mate your adversary by reasoning, dumb-found him by your superior learning, or surpass him in the brilliancy of your wit, knock him down by a poor pun, the worse the better; set the example of a hearty laugh, for this is catching, though wit is not, and make your escape while the company are exercising their risible muscles; they will generally be with you, for they like to see a conqueror capsized. The late Jack Taylor, of pleasant memory, who was no mean proficient in thus turning the tables upon his opponent, when he found himself losing, has recorded one of his exploits. He was rapidly losing ground in a literary discussion, when the opposite party exclaimed, "My good friend, you are not such a rare scholar as you imagine; you are an every day man.' "Well, and you are a weak

one," replied Taylor, who instantly jumped upon the back of a horse laugh, and rode victoriously over his prostrate conqueror.

LAUGHTER.-A faculty bestowed exclusively upon man, and one which there is, therefore, a sort of impiety in not exercising as frequently as we can. We may say with Titus, that we have lost a day if it have passed without laughing. The pilgrims at Mecca consider it so essential a part of their devotion, that they call upon their prophet to preserve them from sad faces. "Ah!" cried Rabelais, with an honest pride, as his friends were weeping around his death bed, "if I were to die ten times over, I should never make you cry half so much as I have made you laugh.” "Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est," says an anti-risible reader; but if laughter be genuine, and consequently a means of innocent enjoyment, can it be inept?

LAW-English-see Hocus Pocus, and Chicanery. The following character, or rather sentence of condemnation was pronounced upon it, by one well acquainted with his subject-the lecturer over the remains of the late Jeremy Bentham. In answer to the question, what is this boasted English law, which, as we have been told for ages, renders us the envy and admiration of surrounding nations, he

replies, "The substantive part of it, whether as written in books or expounded by judges, a chaos, fathomless and boundless; the huge and monstrous mass being made up of fiction, tautology, technicality, circuity, irregularity, and inconsistency; the administrative part of it, a system of exquisitely contrived chicanery; a system made up of abuses; a system which constantly places the interest of the judicial minister in opposition to his duty; so places his interest in opposition to his duty, that in the very proportion in which it serves his ends, it defeats the ends of justice; a system of self-authorized and unpunishable depredation; a system which encourages mendacity, both by reward and punishment; a system which puts fresh arms into the hands of the injurer, to annoy and distress the injured; in a word, a system which maximises delay, sale, and denial of justice." And yet, what an outery was raised by the disinterested reverers of our timehallowed institutions, when Lord Brougham attempted to sweep some of the filth from the mere margin of this sink of iniquity. His reforms were too rough, forsooth. They would have him cleanse the Augean stable with a white cambric handkerchief.

Most lawsuits are a juggle, whose sole object seems to be the plunder of both plaintiff and defendant by the prolongation of their quarrel. "Strange," says Old Fuller in his "Worthies," "that reason continuing

always the same, law, grounded thereon, should be capable of so great alteration." It is not grounded upon reason, but upon the artifices of pettifoggers, and therefore its perversions and metamorphoses are infinite. In Republica corruptissimâ plurimæ leges. When Justinian compiled his Institutes, the writings on the civil law alone amounted to many camel loads. Ours may be reckoned by ship loads, and the money annually expended upon law and lawyers, (not upon justice) may be counted by millions. Such is the magnitude and vitality of this hundred headed Hydra, that we may well doubt the power of Lord Brougham to crush it, even though he dip his arrows in the monster's gall. Hercules as he is, he will find it difficult to outlaw the lawyers.

LAWYERS-generally know too much of law to have a very clear perception of justice, just as divines are often too deeply read in theology, to appreciate the full grandeur and the proper tendencies of religion. Losing the abstract in the concrete, the comprehensive in the technical, the principal in its accessories, both are in the predicament of the rustic, who could not see London for the houses.

It has been invidiously said, that lawyers pass their time in taking advantage of their contemporaries; but if we may credit the authority of Foote, they sometimes outwit the undertaker even after their

death. That facetious person being once summoned into the country, by the relatives of a respectable practitioner, to whom he had been appointed executor, was asked what directions should be given respecting the funeral? "What may be your practice in the country," said the wag, "I do not exactly know; but in London, when a lawyer dies, his body is disposed of in a very cheap and simple manner. We lock it up in a room over night, and by the next morning it has always totally disappeared. Whither it has been conveyed we cannot tell to a certainty; but there is invariably such a strong smell of brimstone in the chamber, that we can form a shrewd guess at the character of the conveyancer."

LEARNING—very often a knowledge of words, and an ignorance of things; a common act of memory, which may be exercised without common sense. A mere scholar is generally known by his unacquaintance with everything but languages, which have so filled his head, that they have left room for nothing else. He mistakes the steps for the temple of Minerva; the shrine for the goddess herself; and is as proud of his mind's empty purse, as if there were money in it! Pedantry's jargon will no more improve our understandings, than the importunate clink of a smoke-jack will fill our bellies.