more than rival 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 under her feet, there, sitting ghastly upon a black tribunal, propped up with racks, and instruments of torment. Hark! - what a piteous groan! - See the melancholy wretch who uttered it, just brought forth to undergo the anguish of a mock-trial, 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. dures by it. 'T is all nature can bear. 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, dragg'd 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. 66 The first of these passages gives us another drawing of the famous 'Captive." 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." 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," 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. 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 open You ing them once more before I die: which I now do: so go home and dine with me.' This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy, for he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty; a disposition 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, with uncommon satisfaction for there was only a third person, and of sensibility, with us: and a most sentimental afternoon till nine o'clock have we passed! But thou, Eliza, wert the star that conducted and enlivened the discourse! And when I talked not of thee, still didst thou fill my mind, and warm every thought I uttered, for I am not ashamed to acknowledge I greatly miss thee. Best of all good girls! - the sufferings I have sustained all night in consequence of thine, Eliza, are beyond the power of words. . . . And so thou hast fixed thy Bramin's portrait over thy writing-desk, and wilt consult it in all doubts and difficulties? - Grateful and good girl! Yorick smiles contentedly over all thou dost: his picture does not do justice to his own complacency. I am glad your shipmates are friendly be 1 "I am glad that you are in love: 't will cure you at least of the spleen, which has a bad effect on both man and woman. I myself must ever have some Dulcinea in my head; it harmonises the soul; and in these cases I first endeavour to make the lady believe so, or rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love; but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally: 'L'amour,' say they,' n'est rien sans sentiment. Now, notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called love." -STERNE'S Letters: May 23, 1765. "P.S.- My Sentimental Journey' will please Mrs. J and my Lydia” [his daughter, afterwards Mrs. Medalle]—“I can answer for those two. It is a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind I have been in for some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world and our fellow-creatures better than we do so it runs most upon those gentler passions and affections which aid so much to it." Letters [1767]. ings" (Eliza was at Deal, going back to the Councillor at Bombay, and indeed it was high time she should be off). "You could least dispense with what is contrary to your own nature, which is soft and gentle, Eliza; it would civilise savages though pity were it thou should'st be tainted with the office. Write to me, my child, thy delicious letters. Let them speak the easy carelessness of a heart that opens itself anyhow, everyhow. Such, Eliza, I write to thee!" (The artless rogue, of course he did!) "And so I should ever love thee, most artlessly, most affectionately, if Providence permitted thy residence in the same section of the globe: for I am all that honour and affection can make meTHY BRAMIN.'" The Bramin continues addressing Mrs. Draper until the departure of the "Earl of Chatham" Indiaman from Deal, on the 2nd of April, 1767. He is amiably anxious about the fresh paint for Eliza's cabin; he is uncommonly solicitous about her companions on board: "I fear the best of your shipmates are only genteel by comparison with the contrasted crew with which thou beholdest them. So was-you know who from the same fallacy which was put upon your judgment when - but I will not mortify you!" "You know who" was, of course, Daniel Draper, Esq., of Bombay - a gentleman very much respected in that quarter of the globe, and about whose probable health our worthy Bramin writes with delightful candour: I honour you, Eliza, for keeping secret some things which, if explained, had been a panegyric on yourself. There is a dignity in venerable affliction which will not allow it to appeal to the world for pity or redress. Well have you supported that character, my amiable, my philosophic friend! And, indeed, I begin to think you have as many virtues as my Uncle Toby's widow. Talking of widows-pray, Eliza, if ever you are such, do not think of giving yourself to some wealthy Nabob, because I design to marry you myself. My wife cannot live long, and I know not the woman I should like so well for her substitute as yourself. 'Tis true I am ninety-five in constitution, and you but twenty-five; but what I want in youth, I will make up in wit and goodhumour. Not Swift so loved his Stella, Scarron his Maintenon, or Waller his Saccharissa. Tell me, in answer to this, that you approve and honour the proposal." Approve and honour the proposal! The coward was writing gay letters to his friends this while, with sneering allusions to this poor foolish Bramine. Her ship was not out of the Downs, and the charming Sterne was at the "Mount Coffee-house," with a sheet of gilt-edged paper before him, offering that precious treasure his heart to Lady P—, asking whether it gave her pleasure to see him unhappy? whether it added to her triumph that her eyes and lips had turned a man into a fool? quoting the Lord's Prayer, with a horrible baseness of blasphemy, as a proof that he had desired not to be led into temptation, and swearing himself the most tender and sincere fool in the world. It was from his home at Coxwould that he wrote the Latin letter, which, I suppose, he was ashamed to put into English. I find in my copy of the Letters, that there is a note of I can't call it admiration, at Letter 112, which seems to announce that there was a No. 3 to whom the wretched worn-out old scamp was paying his addresses; 1 and the 1 "To MRS. H "COXWOULD, Nov. 15, 1767. "Now be a good dear woman, my H—, and execute those commissions well, and when I see you I will give you a kiss - there's for |