of humanity. He was of a

He was of a peaceful, placid nature"no jarring element in it, all was mixed up so kindly within him; my uncle Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a

fly.

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Go-says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzzed about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinnertime, and which after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him; - I'll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand, I'll not hurt a hair of thy head: Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape: go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me."

And then there is that other story of Uncle Toby's humanity - the kindness and care with which he watched Le Fevre, the poor Lieutenant wounded unto death. In a fortnight or three weeks, Uncle Toby thought the Lieutenant might join his regiment. "An' please your honour, said the corporal, he will never march but to his grave:- - He shall march, cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which

χχχίν

had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch, — he shall march to his regiment. — He cannot stand it, said the corporal;- He shall be supported, said my uncle Toby; He'll drop at last, said the corporal, and what will become of his boy? - He shall not drop, said my uncle Toby, firmly. - A-well-o'day, — do what we can for him, said Trim, maintaining his point, the poor soul will die : He shall not die, by G-, cried my uncle Toby.

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The ACCUSING SPIRIT, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blush'd as he gave it in; and the RECORDING ANGEL, as he wrote it down, dropp'd a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever."

This veteran of King William's wars, with a heart so tender that he could not bear the death of a soldier or a fly, was also as modest as a girl. His face always blushed scarlet red at his brother's persistent allusions to an indelicate incident in family history; and unskilled in the ways of woman, he came near falling a victim to the wiles of the Widow Wadman, into whose lambent eyes he was induced to look for chaff, mote, or speck. And finally, in the simplicity of his joys and sorrows — -in his hobby and its demolition - he remained

a schoolboy to the end. The hypotheses of his brother, which contradicted the truth of heart and instinct, he never could understand, and was content to answer them by " whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero," an old Irish ballad, popular in his youth. To the making of Uncle Toby, Sterne lent all the finer feelings of his own nature, creating a character which typifies, says Leslie Stephen, "the wisdom of love."

To designate the soft state of heart and imagination from which an Uncle Toby springs, Sterne himself employed the epithet sentimental and made it current throughout Europe. It was an age of sentimentalism. Go to the theatre, or pick up a novel, and the theme was a woman in some sort of distress. Humor was banished from the stage, and the last comedy was as dull as a sermon. In the novel there were, it is true, the humorists Fielding and Smollett, but they wrote for less than half England. Richardson had the greater audience, and his pages dripped with tears. Sterne's sentimentalism must be distinguished from Richardson's and from all the rest of his school. Sterne wrote to Garrick from France: "I laugh till I cry, and in the same

tender moments, cry till I laugh." Therein he described the mood in which Tristram Shandy was composed. His sentiment always ends in humor. Uncle Toby's oath and Uncle Toby's fly are as ludicrous as they are choice in feeling. This give and take between sentiment and humor Sterne also called Shan

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deism which, he said, opens the heart and lungs; and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely through its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and cheerfully round."

W. L. C.