Jones answered coolly, he was very sorry for it, and returned the money into his pocket.

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The highwayman then threatened, if he did not deliver the banknote that moment, he must shoot him, holding his pistol at the same time very near to his breast. Jones instantly caught hold of the fellow's hand, which trembled so that he could scarce hold the pistol in it, and turned the muzzle from him. A struggle then ensued, in which the former wrested the pistol from the hand of his antagonist, and both came from their horses on the ground together, the highwayman upon his back, and the victorious Jones upon him. The poor fellow now began to implore mercy of the conqueror; for, to say the truth, he was in strength by no means a match for Jones. Indeed, sir," says he, "I could have no intention to shoot you, for you will find the pistol was not loaded. This is the first robbery I ever attempted, and I have been driven by distress to this." At this instant, at about a hundred and fifty yards' distance, lay another person on the ground, roaring for mercy in a much louder voice than the highwayman. This was no other than Partridge himself, who, endeavouring to make his escape from the engagement, had been thrown from his horse, and lay flat on his face, not daring to look up, and expecting every minute to be shot. In this posture he lay, till the guide, who was no otherwise concerned than for his horses, having secured the stumbling beast, came up to him, and told him his master had got the better of the highwayman.

Partridge leaped up at the news, and ran back to the place where Jones stood with his sword drawn in his hand to guard the poor fellow, which Partridge no sooner saw than he cried out, "Kill the villain, sir, run him through the body, kill him this instant!"

Luckily, however, for the poor wretch, he had fallen into more merciful hands; for Jones having examined the pistol, and found it to be really unloaded, began to believe all the man had told him before Partridge came up, namely, that he was a novice in the trade, and that he had been driven to it by the distress he mentioned, the greatest indeed imaginable, that of five hungry children, and a wife lying ill, in the utmost want and misery. The truth of all which the highwayman most vehemently asserted, and offered to convince Mr Jones of it, if he would take the trouble to go to his house, which was not above two miles off, saying, "that he desired no favour, but upon condition of proving all he had alleged."

Jones at first pretended that he would take the fellow at his word, and go with him, declaring that his fate should depend entirely on the truth of his story. Upon this the poor fellow immediately expressed so much alacrity, that Jones was perfectly satisfied with his veracity, and began now to entertain sentiments of compassion for him. He returned the fellow his empty pistol, advised him to think of honester means of relieving his distress, and gave him a couple of guineas for the immediate support of his wife and his family; adding, "he wished he had more for his sake, for the hundred pound that had been mentioned was not his own."

The highwayman was full of expressions of thankfulness and gratitude. He actually dropped tears, or pretended so to do. He vowed he would immediately return home, and would never afterwards commit such a transgression; whether he kept his word or no, perhaps may appear hereafter. Our travellers having remounted their horses, arrived in town without encountering any new mishap.

XI. LAURENCE STERNE.

LAURENCE STERNE was born at Clonmel in 1713, and was educated at Cambridge. Morality was then at its lowest ebb in England, and Sterne, though licentious and profligate, did not hesitate to enter the Church; allured probably by the hope of obtaining some preferment through the influence of his uncle, the grandson of an Archbishop of York, and the fortunate holder of many well-endowed benefices in those days of pluralities. He obtained two livings in Yorkshire, but of course the character of his writings prevented his rising in the Church, and his habits rendered him by no means a favourite with the neighbouring clergy. His time was spent in the discharge of his duties, in painting, fiddling, and shooting, and in the composition of his works, by which he acquired immense popularity. His constitution, always delicate, gradually broke down, and he died at London in 1768 while on a visit to town to superintend the publication of some of his writings. His works are "Tristram Shandy," "The Sentimental Journey," and "Sermons," all of them highly characteristic. In the first of these he has shown a rare ability in delineating character, and especially in depicting in the broadest light those whimsical peculiarities which constitute an individual's humour: old Shandy, Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Dr Slop, and Widow Wadman, leave on the reader's mind an impression of reality such as few novelists have produced; in his "Sentimental Journey" we meet with passages which prove his power to wield at will the feelings of his readers, and the "Sermons" are full of good-feeling and sound advice. Against these merits, however, there must be arrayed a long catalogue of defects: the total want of order, the endless digressions, the whimsical style, the blank pages, chapters of asterisks, and innumerable other eccentricities adopted for effect; but above all, the ever-recurring indecency which stains his pages, and looks even more indecent when coming from a clergyman, have sadly undermined the popularity of Sterne, and have abundantly avenged his sins against propriety and morality.

1. UNCLE TOBY AND HIS MINIATURE SIEGES. TRISTRAM SHANDY.")

If the reader has not got a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle Toby's kitchen garden, and which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours, the fault is not in me, but in his imagination, for I am sure I gave him so minute a description, I was almost ashamed of it. My uncle

Toby came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in Italy and Flanders; so let the Duke of Marlborough, or the allies, have set down before what town they pleased, my uncle Toby was prepared for them.

His way, which was the simplest one in the world was this: as soon as ever a town was invested (but sooner when the design was known), to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large roll of pack-thread, and a number of small piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the ditches, he set the Corporal to work, and sweetly it went on. The nature of the soil, the nature of the work itself, and, above all, the good nature of my uncle Toby, sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the Corporal upon pastdone deeds, left labour little else but the ceremony of the name.

When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence, it was invested; and my uncle Toby and the Corporal began to run their first parallel. I beg I may not be interrupted in my story by being told that the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises' distant from the main body of the place, and that I have not left a single inch for it; for my uncle Toby took the liberty of encroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green; and for that reason, generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle Toby's campaigns, of which this I'm now writing is but a sketch.

When the town with its works was finished, my uncle Toby and the Corporal began to run their first parallel, not at random, or anyhow, but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks by the accounts my uncle Toby received from the daily papers, they went on, during the whole siege, step by step, with the allies. When the Duke of Marlborough made a lodgment, my uncle Toby made a lodgment too; and when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined, the corporal took his mattock and did as much; and so on, gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works, one after another, till the town fell into their hands. To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others, there could not have been a greater sight in the world, than on a post-morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the Duke of Marlborough in the main body of the place, to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied forth, the one with the Gazette in his hand, the other with a spade on his shoulder, to execute the

1 A French measure, six feet long.

contents. What an honest triumph in my uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts! what intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the Corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest peradventure, he should nake the breach an inch too wide, or leave it an inch too narrow ! But when the chamade1 was beat, and the Corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts,-Heaven! Earth! Sea!-but what avail apostrophes? —with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.

In this track of happiness, for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture,—but still it was the torture of the happy,-in this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on. The first year's campaign was carried on, from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method I've related. In the second year, in which my uncle Toby took Liege and Ruremond, he thought he might afford the expense of four handsome drawbridges. At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with portcullises; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle Toby, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at Christmas, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis there was left a little kind of an esplanade, for him and the Corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon. The sentry-box was in case of rain. All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle Toby to take the field with great splendour.

My father would often say to Yorick, that if any mortal in the whole universe had done such a thing except his brother Toby, it would have been looked upon by the world as one of the most refined satires upon the parade and prancing manner in which Louis XIV., from the beginning of the war, but particularly that very year, had taken the field. But 'tis not in my brother Toby's nature, kind soul! my father would add, to insult any one.

2. THE DEAD ASS.—(“ SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.”)

Having settled all my little matters, I got into my post-chaise with more ease than ever I got into a post-chaise in my life; and La Fleur having got one large jack-boot on the far side of a little bidet, and another on this (for I count nothing of his legs), he

cantered away before me as happy and as perpendicular as a prince. But what is happiness? what is grandeur, in this painted scene of life? A dead ass, before we had got a league, put a sudden stop to La Fleur's career: his bidet would not pass by it, a contention arose betwixt them, and the poor fellow was kicked out of his jack-boots the very first kick.

"And this," said he, putting the remains of a crust into his wallet;" and this should have been thy portion," said he, “hadst thou been alive to have shared it with me." I thought by the accent, it had been an apostrophe to his child; but 'twas to his ass, and to the very ass we had seen dead in the road, which had occasioned La Fleur's misadventure. The man seemed to lament it much; and it instantly brought into my mind Sancho's lamentation for his; but he did it with more true touches of nature. The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with an ass's pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time, then laid them down, looked at them, and shook his head. He then took his crust of bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it, held it some time in his hand, then laid it upon the bit of his ass's bridle, looked wistfully at the little arrangement he had made, and then gave a sigh. The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him, and La Fleur among the rest, whilst the horses were getting ready as I continued sitting in the post-chaise, I could see and hear over their heads.

He said he had come last from Spain, where he had been from the furthest borders of Franconia; and had got so far on his return home when his ass died. Every one seemed desirous to know what business could have taken so old and poor a man so far a journey from his own home. It had pleased heaven, he said, to bless him with three sons, the finest lads in all Germany; but having in one week lost two of the eldest of them by the small-pox, and the youngest falling ill of the same distemper, he was afraid of being bereft of them all, and made a vow, if Heaven would not take him from him also, he would go, in gratitude, to St Iago in Spain. When the mourner got thus far on his story, he stopped to pay nature his tribute, and wept bitterly. He said, Heaven had accepted the conditions, and that he had set out from his cottage with this poor creature, who had been a patient partner of his journey; that it had ate the same bread with him all the way, and was unto him as a friend.

Everybody who stood about heard the poor fellow with concern; La Fleur offered him money. The mourner said he did not want it; it was not the value of the ass, but the loss of him. The ass, he said, he was assured loved him; and upon this, he told them a long story of a mischance upon their passage over the Pyrenean mountains, which had separated them from each other three days: during which time the ass had sought him as much as he had sought the ; and that they had scarce either ate or drank till they met. "Thou hast one comfort, at least," said I, "in the loss of thy poor

ass