'Working-Men' at Home and Abroad.—We encounter the following passage in a recent editorial letter from abroad, in 'Wilkes' Spirit of the Times.' He is speaking of the little town of Veviers, a place containing some thirty thousand inhabitants, (with a large suburban population,) on the road thenceward from Paris to Cologne: a city, as Mr. Wilkes remarks, that has more need of 'Cologne-water' than any which he has ever visited. That was Coleridge's impression, also; since the multitudinous seas, he thought, could never wash the river clean again, that 'washed' the town of Cologne:
'Veviers is devoted mainly to cloth manufacture, in which it employs some fifty thousand hands, who work from twelve to fifteen hours a day, and who are drilled to as close a discipline as the convicts in a prison, or slaves at an oar. A few work in their houses, but the greater number labor in large shops, the various lofts of which are filled with men and women, who seldom look up from their looms, and who never venture to speak, except by permission of the overseer. This silent system is terrible to the mind as well as body; but there is no power on the part of the oppressed to resist, for a discharge from an establishment is a condemnation to starvation, since, according to a convention among the employers, none will hire a man whom another has turned off. This of course reduces the working classes to a state of absolute vassalage, and wherever such a regulation exists, they may be said to breathe only by the sufferance of their employers. Attempts have been made at different times by certain manufacturers, to introduce this system in the United States, but the atrocious project has always been defeated with infamy to the inventors. The working people of Veviers, those at least who labor in the factories, are remarkable for their downcast look, and the first curse seems to be written in heavy lines upon their brows. They go along like men without hope, as if life were a penalty, and the only expiration of their term of condemnation were to arrive with death. Ah! if these poor people could but see an American mechanic, with his bright eye, erect head, and proud and cheerful carriage, they would understand the value of liberty at a glance, and increase their hours of toil till they could earn enough to enable them to escape into an atmosphere where they may breathe and live.'
Such are the thoughts which we love to see entertained by observant Americans travelling abroad.
The 'North British' on American Humor.—A favorite and popular correspondent of our Magazine once wrote for these pages a paper upon 'Wit and Humor,' separately considered and artistically contrasted: but he has been out-written and out-argued, by a most admirable and evidently competent critic in the last 'North-British Review,' in an article upon 'American Humor.' In quoting from it, we really feel 'l'embarras des richesses'—the embarrassment of riches—for it is full and conclusive upon every point which it touches; while, as to the manner of the reviewer, there cannot possibly be but one opinion. But listen to him, please, in a few segregated passages:
'The influence of healthy Wit and Humor is a benign one, if it comes to us at times, and kindly makes us forget sad thoughts and cankering cares; makes the oldest feel young and fresh, and turns the wrinkles of our sorrow into ripples of laughter. Shakspeare, who mirrored our whole humanity, did not leave the laugh out of its reflected face. He tells us, 'Your merry heart goes all the day;' and he knew how much the merry heart may have to carry. 'We may well be refreshed,' says Jeremy Taylor, 'by a clean and brisk discourse, as by the air of Campanian wines, and our faces and our heads may well be anointed and look pleasant with wit, as with the fat of the Balsam tree.' Humor not only has an earlier beginning than Wit, but it has also a far wider range. It will reach the uneducated as well as the educated; and among the former may often be found very unctuous humorists. In the earlier history of nations and literatures, when life is strong and thought is unperplexed, we get writers full enough in force, and direct enough in expression, to touch nature at most points. Hence the earlier great writers reach the depths of tragedy, and the breadths of humor. In their times they see the full play of the outward actions in which Life expresses itself: all those striking contrasts of life; those broad lights and bold shadows of character which, as they cross and re-cross in the world's web, make rare and splendid patterns for the tragic poet and humorist. It would have been perfectly impossible for the wit of Punch to have been produced in any other time than ours, or in any other place and societary conditions than those of London. No past time could have given us Thomas Hood.... Wit deals more with thoughts, and Humor with outward things. Wit only reaches characteristics, and therefore it finds more food in a later time and more complex state of society. Humor deals with character. The more robust and striking the character, the better for humor: hence the earlier times, being more fruitful in peculiar character, are most fruitful in humor. Wit is more artificial, and a thing of culture; Humor lies nearer to nature. Wit is oftenest shown in the quality of the thought; Humor by the nature of the action. With Wit, two opposite and combustible qualities of the thought are brought into contact, and they explode in the ludicrous. Humor shows us two opposite personal characters which mingle, and dissimilitude is dove-tailed in the laughable.... One of Wit's greatest elements of success is surprise. Indeed, sometimes when your surprise is over, you find nothing else; you have been cheated upon false pretences. Not so with Humor. He is in no hurry. He is for 'keeping it up.' He don't move in straight lines but flows in circles. He carries you irresistibly along with him. With Wit you are on the 'qui vive;' with Humor you grow glorious. If brevity be the soul of Wit, the soul of Humor is longevity.
'Humor makes as much of its subject as possible. It revels in exaggeration; it reigns in Brobdignag. Wit is thinner; it has a subtler spark of light in its eye, and a less carnal gush of jollity in its laugh. It is, as we often say, very dry. But Humor rejoices in ample physical health; it has a strong ruddy nature, a glow and glory of sensuous life, a playful overflow of animal spirits. As the word indicates, Humor has more moisture of the bodily temperament. Its words drop fatness, its face oozes with unctuousness, its eyes swim with dews of mirth. As stout people often make the best dancers and swimmers, so Humor relies on size. It must have 'body,' like good old wine. Humor has more common human feeling than Wit; it is wealthiest, wisest, kindliest. Lord Dudley, the eccentric, said pleasantly to Sydney Smith: 'You have been laughing at me constantly, Sydney, for the last seven years, and yet in all that time, you have never said a single thing to me that I wished unsaid.'... Humor, like imagination, pours itself out, strong and splendid as flowing gold, with oneness and continuity. Wit twinkles and corruscates, gleams and glances about the subject. Humor lightens right to the heart of the matter at once, without by-play. Wit will show you the live sparks rushing red-rustling from the chimney, and prettily dancing away in the dark, a 'moment bright, then gone forever.' But Humor shall give you a pleasanter peep through the lighted window, and show you the fire glowing and ruddy—the smiling heart of home—shining in the dear faces of those you love, who are waiting to overflow in one warm embracing wave of love the moment the door is opened for your coming. Wit teases, tickles, and titillates. But Humor floods you to the brim with measureful content. Wit sends you a sharp, sudden, electric shock, that leaves you tingling from without. Humor operates from within, with its slow and prolonged excitation of your risible soul. Wit gives you a quick, bright nod, and is off. 'What's, going on?' said a bore to Douglas Jerrold. 'I am,' said he. That is just what Wit does. You must be sharp, too, in taking the hit. The most obvious characteristic of American humor is its power of 'pitching it strong,' and drawing the long bow. It is the humor of exaggeration. This consists of fattening up a joke until it is rotund and rubicund, unctuous and irresistible as Falstaff himself, who was created by Shakspeare, and fed fat, so as to become for all time the very impersonation of Humor. There are many differences betwixt the Wit and Humor of different nations. German humor generally goes ponderously upon all fours. French esprit is intangible to the English mind. Irish humor is often so natural that its accidents look intentional. The Scotch have been said not to understand a joke. Undoubtedly they have not the Cockney quickness necessary to catch some kinds of word-wit. But where will you find richer, pawkier humor?'
We commend the entire article, from which these brief passages are taken, to the notice and admiration of our readers. It is one of the most attractive papers in the entire number.
Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—A Boston correspondent, 'A Believer in Phrenology,' must look again, and 'mark, learn, and digest' what it was that Ollapod said in our last, as to the 'science' of Phrenology. Its 'general principles' he admitted; it was only its 'infinitesimal detail' which he satirized. Phrenology, let us say to our 'Believer,' has always had a 'fair show' in the pages of the Knickerbocker; 'else wherefore breathe we in a Christian land?' For the 'New-York Observer,' a religious journal, states that pious probulgences are to 'rule' hereafter as a clerical test in our Church; an exaggerated 'explication,' of course, of the remarks of an able Episcopal contemporary. But as for ourselves, have we not been 'through the mill?' 'Slightuously!' Ask our friends, Fowler and Wells, leaders in 'Bumpology,' else. Were we not 'manipulated?' Did we not lie down in a box like a coffin, and were we not then and there covered, from our 'burst' upward, with a Plaster-of-Paris hasty-pudding? Did not the operation 'fix' us? Rather! It was solemn at first, and upward to the mouth, such was the expression, in the sudden 'solidarity' of our 'mug;' but when Mr. Fowler directed his assistant to use a spoon in feeding us with the white pudding, and not to suffocate us by stopping up our nostrils, we began to laugh; but the laughing muscles stopped short off at the junction with the lugubrious fixed plaster. We saw the result next day, in the show-window of Mr. Fowler, on the Nassau street side of Clinton-Hall. There we were, large as life, labelled and sandwiched between Robinson, the New-Brunswick murderer, and Colonel James Watson Webb, of the 'Courier and Enquirer' daily journal. Haven't we 'suffered' for the 'science' of Phrenology? 'Probably!' 'Phrenology,' says our 'down-east' correspondent, 'can no longer be laughed at.' 'We caänt be laughed at!' is the amusing 'objugatory' of an English Cockney in a modern play; but people will laugh at the marvels which are said to accompany the development of even the smallest and thickest-set organs of the human head. When Gall and Spurzheim were in 'Edinboro,' had established the first Phrenological Society in Great-Britain, and were gaining 'converts' only by slow degrees, they and their confrères were 'laughed at' to something more than 'their hearts' content.' On one occasion, we remember, a dry Scottish wag bought from a countyman a vegetable lusus natura, in the shape of a big Swedish turnip, which presented in perfection the features and 'developments' of a not very good-looking but remarkably 'intellectual' human head. He had a mould made from it, and sent a plaster image to the new Phrenological Society, as a 'cast from the head of Professor Thornipson, a learned Swede of Sockholm!' The bait took; a chart was made at once of the 'cerebral protuberances;' lectures were delivered upon its characteristics; and two or three officers and savants of the Society were overjoyed to find corresponding 'bumps' on their own craniums! Edinburgh, inappreciative of fun though the Scotch are said to be, gave one loud guffaw when the diverting 'trick' was exposed in the 'Courant' by the shrewd joker who perpetrated it, But a propos of 'Bumpology;' our Cedar-Hill neighbor, 'the Colonel,' tells a capital story thereanent, which we will essay to jot down: One day, in the weekly newspaper of a small village in 'old Chatauque,' there appeared an advertisement, setting forth that Professor Feelover, Practical Phrenologist, had arrived, and stood ready to examine heads, give 'certified charts' of character, lecture, and give lessons upon the 'Science.' He 'put up' at the principal hotel, which he found a 'good 'stand' for business,' for a week had passed on, since the paper came out, yet not a solitary person had inquired for the Professor. Tired of this indifference to 'science,' he was broodingly 'fetching a walk' in the outskirts of the village, when a 'slow,' green-looking young countryman entered the hotel, and addressing the landlord, said: 'Be yeöu the Phrenologist that feels of folkses' heads, and gives a receipt for what's inside on 'em?' 'Yes,' answered the fat, good-natured Boniface, who loved a joke better than his dinner; 'yes, I 'm the man.' 'What d' yeöu tax?' 'Half a dollar.' 'Wal, go ahead.' The landlord seated his 'patient,' and directed his clerk at the desk to take down, in two columns, the result. He fumbled, and pinched, and pressed the head of his wincing customer, calling out at the same time the subjoined developments: