“Il y a trois medecins qui ne se trompent pas,
   La gaite, le doux exercice, et le modeste repas.

Every hour redeemed from despondency and melancholy, and bathed in the sunshine of cheerfulness, is an hour of true life gained.”

Our views with regard to the first appearance of laughter depend on whether we consider that man was gradually developed from the primeval oyster, or that he came into the world much in the same condition as that in which we find him now.  If we adopt the former opinion, we must consider that no outward expressions of feeling originally existed; if the latter, that they were from the first almost as perfect as they are at present.  But I think that we shall be on tolerably safe ground, and have the support of probability and history, if we say that, in his earliest condition, the mental endowments of man were of the very humblest description, but that he had always a tendency to progress and improve.  This view obtains some little corroboration from the fact that the sounds animals utter in the early stages of their lives are not fully developed, and that the children of the poor are graver and more silent than those of the educated classes.  But a certain predisposition to laughter there always was, for what animal has ever produced any but its own characteristic sound?  Has not everyone its own natural mode of expression?  Does not the dog show its pleasure by wagging its tail, and the cat by purring?  We never find one animal adopting the vocal sounds of another—­a bird never mews, and a cat never sings.  Some men have been called cynics from their whelpish ill-temper, but none of them have ever adopted a real canine snarl, though it might express their feelings better than human language.  Laughter, so far as we can judge, could not have been obtained by any mere mental exercise, nor would it have come from imitation, for it is only found in man, the yelping of a hyena being as different from it as the barking of a dog, or the cackling of a goose.  We may, however, suppose that the first sounds uttered by man were demonstrative of pain or pleasure, marking a great primary distinction, which we make in common with all animals.  But our next expression showed superior sensibility and organism:  it denoted a very peculiar perception of the intermingling of pain and pleasure, a combination of opposite feelings not possessed by other animals, or not distinct enough in them to have a specific utterance.  There might seem to be something almost physical in the sensation, as it can be excited by tickling, or the inhalation of gas.  Similar results may be produced by other bodily causes.  Homer speaks of the chiefs laughing after a sumptuous banquet, and of a man “laughing sweetly” when drunk.  Bacon’s term titillatio, would seem very appropriate in such cases.  There was an idea, in olden times, that laughter emanated from a particular part of the body.  Tasso, in “Jerusalem Delivered,” describing the death of Ardonio, who was slain by a lance, says that it