John

naries were signed at Fontainebleau on the 3rd of November, 1763. Lord Bute in the place of William Pitt, and sudden peace in the place of successful war, were widely unpopular. John Wilkes had entered the House of Commons in 1757 as member for Aylesbury. On the 29th of May, 1762, when the Earl of Bute was nominated First Lord of the Treasury, Tobias Smollett set up a periodical called The Briton, to support his government. Wilkes, on the following Saturday, the 5th of June, set up another periodical, The North Briton, to reply to it, and to attack Lord Bute. The two papers battled together. The Brison came to an end on the 12th of February, 1763; Lord Bute resigned on the 8th of April; and The North Briton, of which No. 44 had appeared on the 2nd of April, ended its course with the publication of No. 45 on the 23rd of April. That number criticised a King's Speech, and was interpreted as treason by the Government. Wilkes was seized, and committed to the Tower under a general warrant from a Secretary of State. A few days later the Chief Justice of Common Pleas decided that general warrants were illegal, and Wilkes was set free, to the delight of the populace. In November, when the Government caused No. 45 of The North Briton to be burnt by the hangman, that act was the cause of a riot. This is, with the notes that were added when the whole series of papers was re-published as a volume in 1764,

NO. XLV. OF THE NORTH BRITON.*

The following advertisement appeared in all the papers on

the 13 of April.

The NORTH BRITON makes his appeal to the good sense, and to the candour of the ENGLISH nation. In the present unsettled and fluctuating state of the administration, he is really fearful of falling into involuntary errors, and he does not wish to mislead. All his reasonings have been built on the strong foundation of facts; and he is not yet informed of the whole interior state of government with such minute precision, as now to venture the submitting his crude ideas of the present political crisis to the discerning and impartial public. The SCOTTISH minister has indeed retired. Is HIS influence at an end? or does he still govern by the three wretched tools of his power, who to their indelible infamy, have supported the most odious of his measures, the late ignominious Peace, and the wicked extension of the arbitrary mode of Recine / The NORTH BRITON has been steady in his opponition to a single, insolent, incapable, despotic minister; and is equally ready, in the service of his country, to combat the triple-headed, Cerberean administration, if the Scor is to assume that motley form. By HIM every arrangement to this hour has been made, and the notification has been as regularly ment by letter under HIS HAND. It therefore seems clear to a demonstration, that HE intends only to retire into that situation, which HE held before HE first took the seals; I mean the dictating to every part of the king's administration. The NORTH BRITON desires to be understood, as having pledged himself a firm and intrepid assertor of the rights of his fellowsubjects, and of the liberties of WHIGS and ENGLISHMEN.

• The passages included within the inverted commas are the only pannages to which any objection is made in the INFORMATION filed in Kim King's Bench by the Attorney General against the publisher, Mr. Bourge Keursley,

The caria of Egremont and Halifax, and G. Grenville, Esq.

so spirited a people, and with the terrors of parliament before "their eyes, have ever been cautious, no less with regard to "the matter, than to the expressions, of speeches, which they "have advised the sovereign to make from the throne, at the "opening of each session. They well knew, that an§ honest "house of parliament, true to their trust, could not fail to "detect the fallacious arts, or to remonstrate against the "daring acts of violence, committed by any minister. The "Speech at the close of the session has ever been considered

as the most secure method of promulgating the favourite "court creed among the vulgar; because the parliament, "which is the constitutional guardian of the liberties of the "people, has in this case no opportunity of remonstrating, " or of impeaching any wicked servant of the crown.

"This week has given the public the most abandoned in"stance of ministerial effrontery ever attempted to be imposed "on mankind. The minister's speech of last Tuesday, is not "to be paralleled in the annals of this country. I am in "doubt, whether the imposition is greater on the sovereign, " or on the nation. Every friend of his country must lament "that a prince of so many great and amiable qualities, whom "England truly reveres, can be brought to give the sanction " of his sacred name to the most odious measures, and to the "most unjustifiable, public declarations, from a throne ever "renowned for truth, honour, and unsullied virtue." I am sure, all foreigners, especially the king of Prussia, will hold the minister in contempt and abhorrence. He has made our sovereign declare, My expectations have been fully answered by the happy effects which the several allies of my crown have derived from this salutary measure of the definitive Treaty. The powers at war with my good brother the King of Prussia have been induced to agree to such terms of accommodation as that great prince has approved; and the success which has attended my negotiation, has necessarily and immediately diffused the

Anno 14 G. II. 1740. Duke of Argyle.

The King's Speech is always in this House considered as the Speech of the Ministers. LORDS Debates, vol. 7, p. 413.

Lord Carteret.

When we take his Majesty's Speech into consideration, though we have heard it from his own mouth, yet we do not consider it as his Majesty's speech, but as the speech of his ministers, p. 425,

Anno 7 Geo. II. 1733. Mr. Shippen.

I believe it has always been granted, that the speeches from the Throne are the compositions of ministers of state; upon that supposition we have always thought ourselves at liberty to examine every proposition contained in them; even without doors people are pretty free in their remarks upon them: I believe no Gentleman here is ignorant of the reception the speech from the Throne, at the close of last session, met with from the nation in general, CoMMONS Debates, vol. 8, p. 5.

Anno 13 Geo. II. 1739. Mr. Pulteney, now earl of Bath.

His Majesty mentions heats and animosities. Sir, I don't know who dreme up this speech; but whoever he was, he should have spared that expression: I wish he had drawn a veil over the heats and animosities that must be owned ONCE subsisted upon this head; for I AM SURE NONE NOW SUBSIST, vol. 11, p. 96.

§ The House of Commons in 1715 exhibited, Articles of impeachment of high treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanors, against Robert Earl of OXFORD, and Earl MORTIMER. Article 15 is for having corrupted the sacred fountain of truth, and put falsehoods into the mouth of Majesty, in several speeches made to parliament. Vide Vol. III. and Journals of the House of Commons, vol. 18, p. 214,

blessings of peace through every part of Europe. The infamous fallacy of this whole sentence is apparent to all mankind: for it is known, that the King of Prussia did not barely approve, but absolutely dictated, as conqueror, every article of the terms of peace. No advantage of any kind has accrued to that magnanimous prince from our negotiation, but he was basely deserted by the Scottish prime minister of England. He was known by every court in Europe to be scarcely on better terms of friendship here, than at Vienna; and he was betrayed by us in the treaty of peace. What a strain of insolence, therefore, is it in a minister to lay claim to what he is conscious all his efforts tended to prevent, and meanly to arrogate to himself a share in the fame and glory of one of the greatest princes the world has ever seen? The king of Prussia, however, has gloriously kept all his former conquests, and stipulated security for all his allies, even for the elector of Hanover. I know in what light this great prince is considered in Europe, and in what manner he has been treated here; among other reasons, perhaps, from some contemptuous expressions he may have used of the Scot expressions which are every day echoed by the whole body of Englishmen through the southern part of this island.

The Preliminary Articles of Peace were such as have drawn the contempt of mankind on our wretched negotiators. All our most valuable conquests were agreed to be restored, and the East-India company would have been infallibly ruined by a single article of this fallacious and baneful negotiation. No hireling of the minister has been hardy enough to dispute this; yet the minister himself has made our sovereign declare, the satisfaction which he felt at the approaching re-establishment of peace upon conditions so honourable to his crown, and so beneficial to his people. As to the entire approbation of parliament, which is so vainly boasted of, the world knows how that was obtained. The large debt on the Civil List, already above half a year in arrear, shews pretty clearly the transactions of the winter. It is, however, remarkable, that the minister's speech dwells on the entire approbation given by Parliament to the Preliminary Articles, which I will venture to say, he must by this time be ashamed of; for he has been brought to confess the total want of that knowledge, accuracy and precision, by which such immense advantages both of trade and territory, were sacrificed to our inveterate enemies. These gross blunders are, indeed, in some measure set right by the Definitive Treaty; yet, the most important articles, relative to cessions, commerce, and the FISHERY, remain as they were, with respect to the French. The proud and feeble Spaniard too does not RENOUNCE, but only DESISTS from all pretensions, which he may have formed, to the right of Fishing-where? only about the island of NEWFOUNDLAND-till a favourable opportunity arises of insisting on it, there, as well as elsewhere.

"The minister cannot forbear, even in the King's Speech, "insulting us with a dull repetition of the word economy. "I did not expect so soon to have seen that word again, "after it had been so lately exploded, and more than once, " by a most numerous audience, hissed off the stage of our "English theatres. It is held in derision by the voice of the "people, and every tongue loudly proclaims the universal con"tempt in which these empty professions are held by this "nation. Let the public be informed of a single instance of

œconomy, except indeed in the household." Is a regiment, which was completed as to its compliment of officers on the Tuesday, and broke on the Thursday, a proof of economy ? Is the pay of the Scottish Master Elliot to be voted by an English parliament, under the head of economy? Is this, among a thousand others, one of the convincing proofs of a firm resolution to form government on a plan of strict aconomy ? Is it not notorious, that in the reduction of the army, not the

least attention has been paid to it. Many unnecessary expenses have been incurred, only to increase the power of the crown, that is, to create more lucrative jobs for the creatures of the minister? The staff indeed is broke, but the discerning part of mankind immediately comprehended the mean subterfuge, and resented the indignity put upon so brave an officer, as marshal Ligonier. That step was taken to give the whole power of the army to the crown, that is, to the minister. Lord Ligonier is now no longer at the head of the army; but lord Bute in effect is: I mean that every preferment given by the crown will be found still to be obtained by his enormous influence, and to be bestowed only on the creatures of the Scottish faction. The nation is still in the same deplorable state, while he governs, and can make the tools of his power pursue the same odious measures. Such a retreat, as he intends, can only mean that personal indemnity, which, I hope, guilt will never find from an injured nation. The negotiations of the late inglorious peace, and the excise, will haunt him, wherever he goes, and the terrors of the just resentment, which he must be to meet from a brave and insulted people, and which must finally crush him, will be for ever before his eyes.

"In vain will such a minister, or the foul dregs of his "power, the tools of corruption and despotism, preach up "in the speech that spirit of concord, and that obedience to the "laws, which is essential to good order. They have sent the " spirit of discord through the land, and I will prophecy, that "it will never be extinguished, but by the extinction of their "power. Is the spirit of concord to go hand in hand with the "PEACE and EXCISE thro' this nation? Is it to be expected "between an insolent EXCISEMAN, and a peer, gentleman, free"holder, or farmer, whose private houses are now made liable "to be entered and searched at pleasure? Gloucestershire, "Herefordshire, and in general all the Cyder countries, are "not surely the several counties which are alluded to in the "speech. The spirit of concord hath not gone forth among "them; but the spirit of liberty has, and a noble opposition "has been given to the wicked instruments of oppression. "A nation as sensible as the English, will see that a spirit "of concord, when they are oppressed, means a tame submis"sion to injury, and that a spirit of liberty ought then to "arise, and I am sure ever will, in proportion to the weight " of the grievance they feel. Every legal attempt of a contrary "tendency to the spirit of concord will be deemed a justifiable " resistance, warranted by the spirit of the English constitution.

"A despotic minister will always endeavour to dazzle his "prince with high-flown ideas of the prerogative and honour "of the crown, which the minister will make a parade of "firmly maintaining. I wish as much as any man in the "kingdom to see the honour of the crown maintained in a "manner truly becoming Royalty. I lament to see it sunk "even to prostitution. What a shame was it to see the "security of this country, in point of military force, compli"mented away, contrary to the opinion of Royalty itself, and "sacrificed to the prejudices and to the ignorance of a set of "people, the most unfit from every consideration to be con"sulted on a matter relative to the security of the house of "Hanover?" I wish to see the honour of the crown religiously asserted with regard to our allies, and the dignity of it scrupulously maintained with regard to foreign princes. Is it possible such an indignity can have happened, such a sacrifice of the honour of the crown of England, as that a minister should already have kissed his majesty's hand on being appointed to the most insolent and ungrateful court in the world, without a previous assurance of that reciprocal nomination which the meanest court in Europe would insist upon, before she proceeded to an act otherwise so derogatory to her honour ? But Electoral Policy has ever been obsequious to the court of Vienna, and forgets the insolence with which count Colloredo left England. Upon a principle of dignity and æconomy, lord Stormont, a Scottish peer of the loyal house of Murray, kissed his majesty's hand, I think, on Wednesday in the Easter week; but this ignominious act has not yet disgraced the nation in the London Gazette. The ministry are not ashamed of doing the thing in private; they are only afraid of the publication. Was it a tender regard for the honour of the late king, or of his present majesty, that invited to court lord George Sackville, in these first days of Peace, to share in the general satisfaction, which all good courtiers received in the indignity offered to lord Ligonier, and on the advancement of ? Was this to shew princely gratitude to the eminent services of the accomplished general of the house of Brunswic, who has had so great a share in rescuing Europe from the yoke of France; and whose nephew we hope soon to see made happy in the possession of the most amiable princess in the world? Or, is it meant to assert the honour of the crown only against the united wishes of a loyal and affectionate people, founded in a happy experience of the talents, ability, integrity, and virtue of those, who have had the glory of redeeming their country from bondage and ruin, in order to support, by every art of corruption and intimidation, a weak, disjointed, incapable set of - I will call them any thing but ministers-by whom the Favourite still meditates to rule this kingdom with a rod of iron.

The Stuart line has ever been intoxicated with the slavish doctrines of the absolute, independent, unlimited power of the crown, Some of that line were so weakly advised, as to endeavour to reduce them into practice: but the English nation was too spirited to suffer the least encroachment on the ancient liberties of this kingdom. "The King of England " is only the first magistrate of this country; but is invested "by law with the whole executive power. He is, however, " responsible to his people for the due execution of the royal "functions, in the choice of ministers, &c. equally with the "meanest of his subjects in his particular duty." The personal character of our present amiable sovereign makes us easy and happy that so great a power is lodged in such hands; but the favourite has given too just cause for him to escape the general odium. The prerogative of the crown is to exert the constitutional powers entrusted to it in a way, not of blind favour and partiality, but of wisdom and judgment. This is the spirit of our constitution. The people too have their prerogative, and, I hope, the fine words of DRYDEN will be engraven on our hearts,

Freedom is the English subject's Prerogative.

It was in the first year of the reign of George III. that Rousseau, in France, published his "Nouvelle Héloise," and in 1762 appeared his "Contrat Social" and his "Emile." These books energetically represented one side of the reaction that grew yearly in power until, in 1789, the great French Revolution gave warning to Europe of the force it had acquired. Impatience of authority supported by and supporting dead forms of social, political, and even religious life, became in fervid minds an impatience of all authority as force from without controlling impulses of nature from within. An unsubstantial sentiment served

* In the first speech of James I. to his English parliament, March 22, 1603, are the following words, That I am a SERVANT is most true-I will never be ashamed to confess it. My principal honour, to be the GREAT SERVANT of the commonwealth. Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. I. p. 145.

for the life of no small part of literature. Its origin was a disease of the soul in men of genius that became epidemic, spread like the Black Death in the Middle Ages, prostrated the weak minds, and laid hold especially upon the young. Like epidemics of a physical disease, its cause was to be found in

unwholesome conditions of life. The cleverest man

in England who became a victim to this epidemica clever man morally weak-was Laurence Sterne, whose "Sentimental Journey" appeared in the year of his death, 1768, and is clearly a product of those tendencies of thought which had been represented partly by the writings of Rousseau. Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" was appearing in the first year of the reign of George III., and in its whimsical irregularities Sterne followed a rule of his time by defying rule.

Laurence Sterne was born in Clonmel Barracks on the 24th of November, 1713. Roger, his father, was a lieutenant in the 34th Foot, and grandson to Richard Sterne, who died Archbishop of York in 1683. Laurence's grandfather had been eldest son of the archbishop, a Simon Sterne, who married Mary Jaques, heiress of Elvington, five miles from York. Roger Sterne was the seventh child of Simon. His eldest brother, Richard, was heir of Elvington, and lived at Woodhouse, also his property, a mile and a half out of Halifax. The second son of the family was Jaques Sterne, who throve by church interest, and died an archdeacon in 1759. In 1711, when he was with the army in Flanders, Roger Sterne, then an ensign with 3s. 24d. a day for his pay, married Agnes, widow of Captain Hebert, and daughter of an Irish army sutler. The first child of the marriage, Mary, was born at Lisle in July, 1712. Then followed Laurence, in November, 1713, when the regiment was in barracks at Clonmel. It was the year of the Peace of Utrecht. All regiments raised since the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, except two, were broken. Roger Sterne's regiment was disbanded, and he went home with his two babies to Yorkshire. After a few months the regiment was established again, and Ensign Sterne, with his family, joined it at Dublin in the winter of 1714. Presently they moved with the regiment to Exeter. A third child, named Joram, was born. After about a year at Exeter, they returned to Dublin, and Roger Sterne there ceasing to live in barrack, furnished a house, and occupied it three years. He was then ordered to join the Vigo expedition. Joram died of small-pox; a girl, Anne, was born. The family was for a time in the Isle of Wight, then went to Wicklow Barracks, where, in 1720, a son, Devisher, was born. For six months the family lived with a relation of Mrs. Sterne's who was vicar of Anamoe, seven miles from Wicklow. In 1721 they were for a year in Dublin Barracks, where the child Anne died. In 1724 a Catherine was born, who survived, with Mary and Laurence, the youngest and two eldest. Mary afterwards married a scamp, of whom her brother tells that he "used her unmercifully, spent his subsistence, became a bankrupt, and left my poor sister to shift for herself, which she was able to do but for a few months; for she went to a friend's house in the country, and died of a broken heart;" that is to say, died unhappy. In 1725 Ensign Sterne got leave of absence to take his son Laurence, then eleven or twelve years old, to school at Halifax, near which town Richard, the eldest of Laurence's uncles, lived at Woodhouse as head of the family, a gentleman of means. In 1727 Laurence's father went to Jamaica, and his son saw him no more. While in Jamaica he died of yellow fever, in March, 1731. In 1732 Laurence's uncle Richard sent him, aged eighteen or nineteen, to Jesus College, Cambridge, as a sizar. While at Cambridge there was the first distinct evidence of that disease of the lungs which thenceforth sapped his life. He was small and thin, he spat blood at college, and a cough afterwards stuck by him. Having taken his B. A. degree, Laurence Sterne was ordained deacon in 1736, priest in August, 1738, and in the same month, through family influence, as great-grandson of a preceding Archbishop of York, he obtained the vicarage of Sutton-on-the-Forest, which was in the gift of the Archbishop of that day. His uncle Jaques was then Canon Residentiary, Prebendary, and Precentor of York Minster, and held two small Yorkshire rectories. He had at York a bachelor house in the Minster Yard, and Laurence's uncle Richard had also a house in Castlegate. In 1740 Laurence Sterne graduated as M.A., and in 1741, after two years' courtship, he married Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Mr. Lumley, rector of Bedal, Staffordshire. Sterne was then in his twentyeighth year. His bride had been lodging in York, and was in ill-health. In the same year he obtained one of the twenty-six prebends in York Minster, with £40 a year and a house in Stonegate. His wife had also £40 a year, and a friend with the gift of York preferment in his power. Sterne had a taste for playing the bass viol, and for drawing. In 1743 came the gift from his wife's friend of the prebendal stall and living of Stillington, worth about £50 a year. In 1745 a first daughter was born, and named Lydia. She was born and baptised on the 1st of October, and died on the 2nd. Laurence Sterne

earthly goddess is so much this and that and t'other, that I cannot eat my breakfast for her, and that she careth not three-halfpence whether I eat any breakfast or no, curse on her; and so I send her to Tartary, and from Tartary to Terra del Fuego, &c. But as the heart is tender, and the passions in those tides ebb and flow ten times in a minute, I instantly bring her back again." In 1758, also, there broke out at York a controversy as to the right of a Dr. Topham's son to the inheritance of a patent office in the cathedral. The Rev. Laurence Sterne took part in the controversy with a humorous pamphlet that figured the office in question as "The Good Warm Watch-coat." It was published in 1759. In the same year he had begun "Tristram Shandy." On the 77th page of the first volume thereof he speaks of a remark as struck out "on this very rainy day, March 26, 1759, between nine and ten in the morning." At the end of December, 1759, Sterne's age then being 46, the first section of "Tristram Shandy" was published at York in two volumes for five shillings. There was much local satire, and in a couple of days two hundred copies were sold in the town. Sterne sent copies to London, took what measures he could to make his book known to the larger public, and in March, 1760, went himself to London to look after it. He took lodgings in Pall Mall, which he described as "the genteelest in town," and wrote letters to Miss Fourmentelle as "Dear, dear Jenny." "Tristram Shandy" rose into fame, and gave its name to a new game of cards. Sterne was to be seen at Ranelagh Gardens, sat for his portrait to Sir Joshua Reynolds, made friendly acquaintance with David Garrick, and with Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, who called him the English Rabelais. The poet Gray wrote "one is invited to dinner where he dines a fortnight beforehand." But Oliver Goldsmith, who was then writing the "Citizen of the World," condemned the large alloy of base metal that is in "Tristram Shandy" blended with the true. Many of Sterne's readers in those days enjoyed as wit what

to a shifty home-life and imperfect training in his earlier years, and partly to the weakness of his body. He yielded himself to the influences of his time, and in this earlier part of his career, when there was open way for him in the Church, one of his chief friends was Hall Stevenson, of Skelton Castle, near Guisbro', who in the name of wit defied decency. Sterne's letters show that he weakly accommodated his own wit to the tone of his friend's. It was the price paid for the flattery he prized. Sterne's mother, who kept a school, was ruined by the extravagance of her daughter Catherine, and saved from gaol by a subscription among parents of pupils. Sterne was estranged from his sister. In December, 1747, a daughter was again born to Sterne, and again named Lydia. She was his only child, and she survived him. In 1758 Sterne's mother was at York, and he was helping to arrange her affairs. At the same time he was weakly sentimentalising with a Miss Catherine de Fourmentelle. His was a very weak form of the sentimental epidemic, as writing of his like this may show: "Whenever it falls out that an

ness, and it still needs more thought than commonly goes with the act of reading to distinguish the wheat from the chaff where both abound. Sterne failed through weakness of character to make the best use of his talent. Through the same weakness of character his life became a wreck. He craved for the wretched flatteries of the frivolous, sunk to the position of a piece of fashionable dinner furniture, and having taken to himself out of Hamlet the name of Yorick, and written a fancy sketch of himself under that name in his first volumes of "Tristram Shandy," he announced, together with the second edition of those volumes, "The Sermons of Mr. Yorick." This is Sterne's suggestion of an ideal for himself as

YORICK.

Yorick was this parson's name, and what is very remarkable in it, (as appears from a most antient account of the family wrote upon strong vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt for near, -I was within an ace of saying, nine hundred years;-but I would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however indisputable in itself; -and therefore I shall content myself with only saying, it had been exactly so spelt, without the least variation or transposition of a single letter, for I do not know how long; which is more than I would venture to say of one-half of the best surnames in the kingdom; which, in a course of years, have generally undergone as many chops and changes as their owners. -- Has this been owing to the pride, or to the shame of their respective proprietors? -In honest truth, I think sometimes to the one and sometimes to the other, just as the temptation has wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one day so blend and confound us all together, that no one shall be able to stand up and swear, "that his own great-grand-father was the man who did either this or that."

This evil had been sufficiently fenced against by the prudent care of the Yorick family, and their religious preservation of these records I quote, which do further inform us, that the family was originally of Danish extraction, and had been transplanted into England as early as in the reign of Horwendillus, king of Denmark, in whose court it seems, an ancestor of this Mr. Yorick's, and from whom he was lineally descended, held a considerable post to the day of his death. Of what nature this considerable post was, this record saith not, it only adds, That for near two centuries, it had been totally abolished as altogether unnecessary, not only in that court, but in every other court in the Christian world.

It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than that of the king's chief Jester; - and that Hamlet's Yorick in our Shakespeare, many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon authenticated facts,-was certainly the very

man.

I have not the time to look into Saxo Grammaticus's Danish history, to know the certainty of this;-but if you have leisure, and can easily get at the book, you may do it full as well yourself.

I had just time in my travels through Denmark with Mr. Noddy's eldest son, whom, in the year 1741, I accompanied as governor, riding along with him at a prodigious rate thro' most parts of Europe, and of which original journey performed by us two, a most delectable narrative will be given in the progress of this work. I had just time, I say, and that was all, to prove the truth of an observation made by a long sojourner in that country; --namely, "That nature was neither very lavish, nor was she very stingy in her gifts of genius and capacity to its inhabitants;-but, like a discreet parent, was moderately kind to them all; observing such an equal tenor in the distribution of her favours, as to bring them, in those points, pretty near to a level with each other; so that you will meet with few instances in that kingdom of refin'd parts; but a great deal of good plain houshold understanding amongst all ranks of people, of which every body has a share;" which is, I think, very right.

With us, you see, the case is quite different; --we are all ups and downs in this matter; -you are a great genius;

--or 'tis fifty to one, sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead; not that there is a total want of intermediate steps,-no, we are not so irregular as that comes to; -but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself, not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she.

This is all that ever stagger'd my faith in regard to Yorick's extraction, who, by what I can remember of him, and by all the accounts I could ever get of him, seemed not

to have had one single drop of Danish blood in his whole crasis; in nine hundred years it might possibly have all run out:-I will not philosophize one moment with you about it; for happen how it would, the fact was this: That instead of that cold phlegm and exact regularity of sense and humours, you would have look'd for in one so extracted, -he was on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a composition, -as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions --with as much life, and whim, and gaité de cœur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer his course in it, as a romping unsuspicious girl of thirteen: So that upon his first setting out, the brisk gale of his spirits, as you will imagine, ran him foul ten times in a-day of some body's tackling; and as the grave and more slow-paced were oftenest in his way, you may likewise imagine 'twas with such he generally had the ill luck to get the most entangled. For aught I know, there might be some mixture of unlucky wit at the bottom of such fracas -For, to speak the truth, Yorick had an invincible dislike and opposition in his nature to gravity; -not to gravity as such for where gravity was wanted, he would be the most grave and serious of mortal men for days and weeks together, --but he was an enemy to the affectation of it, and declared open war against it, only as it appeared a cloke for ignorance, or for folly; and then, whenever it fell in his way, however sheltered and protected, he seldom gave it much quarter.

Sometimes, in his wild way of talking, he would say, that gravity was an arrant scoundrel; and he would add, of the most dangerous kind too, because a sly one; and that he verily believed, more honest well-meaning people were bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelvemonth, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. In the naked temper which a merry heart discovered, he would say, there was no danger-but to itself: -whereas the very essence of gravity was design, and consequently deceit;'twas a taught trick, to gain credit of the world for more sense and knowledge than a man was worth; and that, with all its pretensions, -it was no better, but often worse, than what a French wit had long ago defined it, viz. A mysterious carriage of the body to cover the defects of the mind; - which definition of gravity, Yorick, with great imprudence, would say, deserved to be wrote in letters of gold.

But, in plain truth, he was a man unkackneyed and unpractised in the world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every other subject of discourse, where policy is wont to impress restraint. Yorick had no impression but one, and that was what arose from the nature of the deed spoken of; which impression he would usually translate into plain English without any periphrasis, and too oft without much distinction of either personage, time, or place; -so that when mention was made of a pitiful or an ungenerous proceeding, he never gave himself a moment's time to reflect who was the Hero of the piece-what his station or how far he had power to hurt him hereafter; but if it was a dirty action, without morr ado, The man was a dirty fellow-and so on. And as his comments had usually the ill fate to be terminated either in a bon mot, or to be enlivened throughout with some drollery or humour of expression, it gave wings to Yorick's indiscretion. In a word, though he never sought, yet at the same time, as he seldom shunned occasions of saying what came uppermost, and without much ceremony, --- he had but tos many temptations in life, of scattering his wit and s