"Who are you? where do you come from? You have no right to be dealing out such fulsome panegyrics about good humour."
Yes, but I have, though; I am universally acknowledged to be the most good-humoured man on town. The pure blood of the Allwits, the Easymirths, and the Goodfellows, flows in my veins. I am heir to a large property in Merryland, and my residence is at Jollity Hall, a picturesque, romantic spot in the county of Greatlaughtershire. I intend to start at the next general election for the borough of Gaybright; when I shall bring in such a measure of reform as shall astonish all our modern menders of constitutions.
I have every right, then, to descant upon the merits of good humour; and I do so the rather because men do not sufficiently appreciate them.
Now I fully agree with Dr. Johnson in thinking that "good humour is the quality to which everything in this life owes its power of pleasing." It is the one great source from which spring all those innumerable streams of enjoyment that intersect, and refresh, and beautify the social and moral world. It is, like Fame, "the spur that the clear spirit doth raise" above the fogs, and the damps, and the vapours that so often hang over and darken this sublunary scene. It is the grand moral alkali that completely neutralizes the corrosive acerbity of all this world's cares and sorrows. It is a pure heavenly sunshine illumining the chambers of the soul; a coal from heaven's own golden hearth, that warms into a congenial and ever-during glow all the best and kindliest emotions of our nature.
How different, indeed, would be the condition of the world if a system of good humour were universally established! For what is it but the absence of good humour that is the cause of almost all the troubles of life? All the wars that have desolated the world spring from no other origin. Kings and rulers wanting good humour have fallen out, and whole nations have been set at loggerheads:
"Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi."
Now, if good humour universally influenced the actions of men, there would be none of these things; war would be at an end. General Evans might then attend to his parliamentary duties. The "mailed Mars" might "on his altar sit," but it would not be "up to the ears in blood." He might lay by his lance, and commence smoking the calumet of peace. Again, we should have no need of that noisy, brawling, troublesome class of men yclept lawyers,—for it is plainly from the absence of good humour that all the litigation in the world takes its rise. The gentlemen of the long robe might then leave silk gowns to their ladies, and transfer their pleading to some other court than a court of law. At all events, the world would be freed from their forensic displays, for men would be on such good terms with each other that there would be no need of law terms to set them right. And also, under a general system of good humour, we should be freed from all the turmoil and contention of politics. Tithes, and church-rates, and corporation bills, would no longer afford such scope for violent and angry declamation. Would not this be glorious? As for our physicians, they might shut up shop, for there is no such admirable conservative of the constitution as good humour,—it being generally admitted that all diseases take their rise from the prevalence of bad humour in the blood. These disciples of Galen, then,—these knights of the lancet,—might become philosophers, and study physics instead of physic; or they might devote themselves to analyse the faculties of the mind, and thus, instead of physicians, become metaphysicians.
But, indeed, the ramifications are so numerous, that it would not be easy to follow out and describe all the innumerable advantages that would result from the establishment of an universal system of good humour.
And thus we are enabled at once to explain what the poets have meant by the Golden Age. It was plainly nothing else than the reign of universal good humour. The proof is quite obvious. Gold is the most excellent of metals,—good humour is the most excellent of the qualities of the mind; and therefore, the analogy being so striking, the poets at once styled this happy period the Golden Age. And hence it is evident that good humour is the only true philosopher's stone.
"This is the charm by sages often told,