134 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
lovelier than he; and as he stands, silent with awe, 
amid the pomp of Nature’s ever-busy rest, hears, as 
of old, “ The Word of the Lord God walking among 
the trees of the garden in the cool of the day.” 
One sight more, and we have done. I had 
something to say, had time permitted, on the 
ludicrous element which appears here and there in 
nature. There are animals, ike monkeys and crabs, 
which seem made to be laughed at; by those at 
least who possess that most indefinable of faculties, 
the sense of the ridiculous. As long as man pos- 
sesses muscles especially formed to enable him to 
laugh, we have no right to suppose (with some) that 
laughter is an accident of our fallen nature; or to 
find (with others) the primary cause of the ridiculous 
in the perception of unfitness or disharmony. And 
yet we shrink (whether rightly or wrongly, we can 
hardly tell) from attributing a sense of the ludicrous 
to the Creator of these forms. It may be a weakness 
on my part; at least I will hope it is a reverent 
one: but till we can find something corresponding 
to what we conceive of the Divine Mind in any 
