with his noble spirit and unconquera- | in the manly endeavor of the ble generosity, Fielding reminds one wounded captain, when the vessel of those brave men of whom one reads in stories of English shipwrecks and disasters of the officer on the African shore, when disease has destroyed the crew, and he himself is seized by fever, who throws the lead with a death-stricken hand, takes the soundings, carries the ship out of the river or off the dangerous coast, and dies founders, who never loses his heart, who eyes the danger steadily, and has a cheery word for all, until the inevitable fate overwhelms him, and the gallant ship goes down. Such a brave and gentle heart, such an intrepid and courageous spirit, I love to recognize in the manly, the English Harry Fielding. STERNE AND GOLDSMITH. ROGER STERNE, Sterne's father, was the second son of a numerous race, descendants of Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, in the reign of James II.; and children of Simon Sterne and Mary Jaques, his wife, heiress of Elvington, near York.* Roger was a lieutenant in Handyside's regiment, and engaged in Flanders in Queen Anne's wars. He married the daughter of a noted sutler "N. B., he was in debt to him," his son writes, pursuing the paternal biography — and marched through the world with this companion; she following the regiment and bringing many children to poor Roger Sterne. The captain was an irascible but kind and simple little man, Sterne says, and informs us that his sire was run through the body at Gibraltar, by a brother officer, in a duel which arose out of a dispute about a goose. Roger never entirely recovered from the effects of this rencontre, but died presently at Jamaica, whither he had followed the drum. Laurence, his second child, was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, in 1713, * "He came of a Suffolk family-one of whom settled in Nottinghamshire. The famous" starling" was actually the family crest. and travelled, for the first ten years of his life, on his father's march, from barrack to transport, from Ireland to England.* One relative of his mother's took her and her family under shelter for ten months at Mullingar: another collateral descendant of the Archbishop's housed them for a year at his castle near Carrickfergus. Larry Sterne was put to school at Halifax in England, finally was adopted by his kinsman of Elvington, and parted company with his father, the Captain, who marched on his path of life till he met the fatal goose, which closed his career. The most picturesque and delightful parts of Laurence Sterne's writings, we owe to his recollections of the military life. Trim's montero cap, and Le Fevre's sword, and dear Uncle Toby's roquelaure, are doubtless reminiscences of the boy, who had lived with the followers of William and Marlborough, and had beat * "It was in this parish (of Animo, in Wicklow), during our stay, that I had that wonderful escape in falling through a mill-race, whilst the mill was going, and of being taken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people flocked to see me.”— STERNE. time with his little feet to the fifes of) Ramillies in Dublin barrack-yard, or played with the torn flags and halberds of Malplaquet on the paradeground at Clonmel. Laurence remained at Halifax school till he was eighteen years old. His wit and cleverness appear to have acquired the respect of his master here; for when the usher whipped Laurence for writing his name on the newly whitewashed school-room ceiling, the pedagogue in chief rebuked the understrapper, and said that the name should never be effaced, for Sterne was a boy of genius, and would come to preferment. our choral songs of gratitude and rejoice to the end of our pilgrimage. Adieu, my L. Return to one who languishes for thy society! As I take up my pen, my poor pulse quickens, my pale face glows, and tears are trickling down on my paper as I trace the word L." This to be sure was five and twenty years after Laurey had been overcome by her generosity and she by Laurey's love. Then he wrote to her of the delights of marriage, saying, “We will be as merry at Halifax will be as merry and as innocent as our first parents in Paradise, before the arch fiend entered that indescribable scene. The kindest affections will have room to expand in our retirement: let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. has seen a polyanthus blow in December? Some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind. No planetary influence shall reach us but His cousin, the Squire of Elving- that which presides and cherishes the ton, sent Sterne to Jesus College, sweetest flowers. The gloomy family Cambridge, where he remained five of care and distrust shall be banished years, and, taking orders, got, through from our dwelling, guarded by thy his uncle's interest, the living of Sut-kind and tutelar deity. We will sing ton and the prebendary of York. Through his wife's connections, he got the living of Stillington. He married her in 1741; having ardently courted the young lady for some years previously. It was not until the young lady fancied herself dying, that she made Sterne acquainted with the extent of her liking for him. One evening when he was sitting with her, with an almost broken heart to see her so ill (the Rev. Mr. Sterne's heart was a good deal broken in the course of his life), she said—“My dear Laurey, I never can be yours, for I verily believe I have not long to live; but I have left you every shilling of my fortune: a generosity which overpowered Sterne. She recovered: and so they were married, and grew heartily tired of each other before many years were over. "Nescio quid est materia cum me," Sterne writes to one of his friends (in dog-Latin, and very sad dog-Latin too); "sed sum fatigatus et ægrotus de meâ uxore plus quam unquam : which means, I am sorry to say, "I don't know what is the matter with me: but I am more tired and sick of my wife than ever. *"My wife returns to Toulouse, and proposes to pass the summer at Big And it is about this woman, with whom he finds no fault but that she bores him, that our philanthropist writes, "Sum fatigatus et ægrotus Sum mortaliter in amore with somebody else! That fine flower of love, that polyanthus over which Sterne snivelled so many tears, could not last for a quarter of a century! Or rather it could not be expected that a gentleman with such a fountain at command should keep it to arroser one homely old lady, when a score of younger and prettier people might be refreshed from the same gushing source.* It was in Decem naères. I, on the contrary, go and visit my wife, the church, in Yorkshire. We all live the longer, at least the happier, for having things our own way; this is my conjugal maxim. I own 'tis not the best of maxims, but I maintain 'tis not the worst." STERNE'S Letters: 20th January, 1764. * In a collection of "Seven Letters by of Rabelais's easy-chair, only fresh stuffed and more elegant than when in possession of the cynical old curate of Meudon,* the more than rival Have you ber, 1767, that the Rev. Laurence Sterne, the famous Shandean, the charming Yorick, the delight of the fashionable world, the delicious divine, for whose sermons the whole polite world was subscribing,* the occupier Sterne and his Friends" (printed for private circulation in 1844) is a letter of M. Tollot, who was in France with Sterne and his family in 1761. Here is a para-show a strong imagination and a sensible graph: “Nous arrivâmes le lendemain à Montpellier, où nous trouvâmes notre ami Mr. Sterne, sa femme, sa fille, Mr. Huet, et quelques autres Anglaises. J'eus, je vous l'avoue, beaucoup de plaisir en revoyant le bon et agréable Tristram. . . . Il avait été assez longtemps à Toulouse, où il se serait amusé sans sa femme, qui le poursuivit partout, et qui voulait être de tout. Ces dispositions dans cette bonne dame lui ont fait passer d'assez mauvais momens; il supporte tous ces désagrémens avec une patience d'ange." About four months after this very characteristic letter, Sterne wrote to the same gentleman to whom Tollot had written; and from his letter we may extract a companion paragraph: hit and sometimes missed. heart; but you see him often tottering on It having been observed that there was little hospitality in London - Johnson: Nay, sir. any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally invited in London. The man, Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three months.' Goldsmith: And a very dull fellow.' Johnson: Why, no, sir.'"- BoswELL's Life of Johnson. "Her [Miss Monckton's] vivacity enchanted the sage, and they used to talk together with all imaginable ease. A singular instance happened one evening, when she insisted that some of Sterne's writings were very pathetic. Johnson bluntly denied it. I am sure,' said she, they have affected me.' Why,' said Johnson, smiling, and rolling himself about-that is, because, dearest, you're a dunce.' When she some time afterwards mentioned this to him, he said with equal truth and politeness, Madam, if I ħad thought so, I certainly should not have said it.'” — lbid. * A passage or two from Sterne's "Sermons" may not be without interest here. Is not the following, levelled against the cruelties of the Church of Rome, stamped with the autograph of the author of "The Sentimental Journey"? All which being premised, I have been for eight weeks smitten with the tenderest passion that ever tender wight underwent. I wish, dear cousin, thou couldst conceive (perhaps thou canst without my wishing it) how deliciously I cantered away with it the first month, two up, two down, always upon my haunches, along the streets from my hotel to hers, at first once then twice, then three times a day, till at length I was within an ace of setting up my hobbyhorse in her stable for good and all. I might as well, considering how the enemies of the Lord have blasphemed thereupon. The last three weeks we were every hour upon the doleful ditty of part- "To be convinced of this, go with me ing; and thou mayst conceive, dear coufor a moment into the prisons of the sin, how it altered my gait and air: for I Inquisition-behold religion with mercy went and came like any loudened carl, and justice chained down under her feet, and did nothing but jouer des sentimens - there, sitting ghastly upon a black triwith her from sun-rising even to the set-bunal, propped up with racks, and inting of the same; and now she is gone to struments of torment. - Hark! what a the south of France; and to finish the piteous groan! See the melancholy comédie, I fell ill, and broke a vessel in wretch who uttered it, just brought forth my lungs, and half bled to death. Voilà to undergo the anguish of a mock-trial, mon histoire !" and endure the utmost pain that a studied system of religious cruelty has been able to invent. Behold this helpless victim delivered up to his tormentors. His body so wasted with sorrow and long confinement, you'll see every nerve and muscle as it suffers. Observe the last movement of that horrid engine. What convulsions it has thrown him into! Consider the nature of the posture in which he now lies stretched. What exquisite torture Whether husband or wife had most of the "patience d'ange" may be uncertain; but there can be no doubt which needed it most! * "Tristram Shandy' is still a greater object of admiration, the man as well as the book : one is invited to dinner, when he dines, a fortnight before. As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them and humor sometimes of the Dean of St. Patrick's, wrote the above-quoted respectable letter to his friend in London: and it was in April of the same year that he was pouring out his fond heart to Mrs. Elizabeth Draper, wife of "Daniel Draper, Esq., Councillor of Bombay, and, in 1775, chief of the factory of Surat a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe." "I got thy letter last night, Eliza," he endures by it. 'Tis all nature can bear. Good GOD! see how it keeps his weary soul hanging upon his trembling lips, willing to take its leave, but not suffered to depart. Behold the unhappy wretch led back to his cell,- dragged out of it again to meet the flames-and the insults in his last agonies, which this principle-this principle, that there can be religion without morality-has prepared for him.” — Sermon 27th. The next extract is preached on a text to be found in Judges xix. vv. 1, 2, 3, concerning a "certain Levite:" Such a one the Levite wanted to share his solitude and fill up that uncomfortable blank in the heart in such a situation: for, notwithstanding all we meet with in books, in many of which, no doubt, there are a good many handsome things said upon the sweets of retirement, &c. yet still it is not good for man to be alone: nor can all which the cold-hearted pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject, ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship; -a good heart wants some object to be kind to and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits, suffer most - under the destitution. "Let the torpid monk seek Heaven comfortless and alone. God speed him! For my own part, I fear I should never so find the way: let me be wise and religious, but let me be MAN; wherever thy Providence places me, or whatever be the road I take to Thee, give me some companion in my journey, be it only to remark to, "How our shadows lengthen as our sun goes down;'-to whom I may say, 'How fresh is the face of Nature how sweet the flowers of the field! how delicious are these fruits !'"- Sermon 18th. Sterne writes, on my return from Lord Bathurst's, where I dined" (the letter has this merit in it, that it contains a pleasant reminiscence of better men than Sterne, and introduces us to a portrait of a kind old gentleman) - "I got thy letter last night, Eliza, on my return from Lord Bathurst's; and where I was heard as I talked of thee an hour without intermission with so much pleasure and attention, that the good old Lord toasted your health three different times; and now he is in his 85th year, says he hopes to live long enough to be introduced as a friend to my fair Indian disciple, and to see her eclipse all other Nabobesses as much in wealth as she does already in exterior, and, what is far better" (for Sterne is nothing without his morality), "in interior merit. This nobleman is an old friend of mine. You know he was always the protector of men of wit and genius, and has had those of the last century, Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Prior, &c., always at his table. The manner in which his notice began of me was as singular as it was polite. He came up to me one day as I was at the Princess of Wales's court, and said, 'I want to know you, Mr. Sterne; but it is fit you also should know who it is that wishes this pleasure. You have heard of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken so much? I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast; but have survived them; and, despairing ever to find their equals, it is some years since I have shut up my books and closed my accounts; but you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die: which now do: so go home and dine with me.' This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and prompt The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous "Cap-ness of a man of thirty; a disposition tive." The second shows that the same reflection was suggested to the Rev. Laurence by a text in Judges as by the fille de-Chambre. Sterne's Sermons were published as those of “Mr. Yorick.” to be pleased, and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew: added to which a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling. "He heard me talk of thee, Eliza, |