for my services were so seldom, that I sometimes apprehensively pressed in upon his privacy, to suggest what I thought might divert his melancholy. He used to smile at my well-meant zeal, and, I could see, was happy to be relieved. At others, he seemed to have received a new soul-he launched into the levity natural à mon pays, and cried gaily enough. Vive la Bagatelle! It was in one of those moments that he became acquainted with the Grisette at the glove shop-she afterwards visited him at his lodgings, upon which La Fleur made not a single remark; but on naming the fille-de-chambre, his other visitand, he exclaimed: "It was certainly a pity she was so pretty and petite ". ... 66 Poor Maria was, alas! no fiction. When he came up to her, she was grovelling in the road like an infant, and throwing the dust upon her head-and yet few were more lovely. Upon Sternc's accosting her with tenderness, and raising her in his arms, she collected hersef, and resumed some composure-told him her tale of misery, and wept upon his breast.-My master sobbed aloud said La Fleur. I saw her gently disengage herself from his arms, and she sung him the service to the Virgin. My poor master covered his face with his hands, and walked by her side to the cottage were she lived; there he talked earnestly to the old woman. Every day while we stayed there, I carried them meal and drink from the hotel, and whem we departed from Moulines, my master left his blessings and some money with the mother. How much, added he, I know not-he always gave more than he could' afford. At many of our stages, my master has turned upon me with tears in his eyes: "These poor people oppress me, La Fleur; how shall I relieve them?" "The dead ass was no invention. The mourner was as simple and affecting as Sterne has related. La Fleur recollected the circumstance perfectly. » To monks, Sterne never exibited any particular sympathy. La Fleur remembered several pressing in upon him, to all of whom. his answer was the same: " Mon père, je suis occupé. Je suis pauvre comme vous." ... Sterne was tall and thin, with a hectic and consumptive appearance. His feature, though capable of Expressing with peculiar effeat the sentimental emotions by which he was often affected, had also a shrewd, humorous and sarcastic expression, proper to the wit and the satirist... The style employed by Sterne is fancifully ornamented, but at the same time vigorous and masculine, and full of that animation and force which can only be derived by an intimate acquaintance with the early English prose-writers. In the power of approaching and touching the finer feelings of the heart, he has never been excelled, if indeed he has ever been equalled; and may be at once recorded as one of the most affected, and one of the most simple writers, as one of the greatest plagiarists, and one of the most original geniuses, whom England has produced. --THEY order, said I, this matter better in France. You have been in France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me, with the most civil triumph in the world.Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with myself, that one-and-twenty miles' sailing, for 'tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights :I'll look into them so, giving up the argument,-I went straight to my lodgings, put up half-a-dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches ;-" the coat I have on," said I, looking at the sleeve, “will do;”—took a place in the Dover stage; and, the packet sailing at nine the next morning,-by three I had got set down to my dinner upon a fricaseed chicken, so incontestably in France that, had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the efforts of the droits d'aubaine; *--my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches, portmanteau and all, must have gone to the King of France :-even the little picture which I have so long worn, and so often told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me into my grave, would have been torn from my neck!--Ungenerous! to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your subjects have beckoned to their coast!-by Heaven! Sire, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me 'tis the monarch of a people so civilized and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with! But I have scarce set a foot in your dominions— All the effects of strangers (Swiss and Scots excepted) dying in France are seized, by virtue of this law, though the heir be upon the spot;-the profit of these contingencies being farmed, there is no redress. WHEN I had finished my dinner, and drunk the King of France's health, to satisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but, on the contrary, high honour for the humanity of his temper,-I rose up an inch taller for the accommodation. -No, said I, the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may be misled, like other people; but there is a mildness in their blood. As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of a finer kind upon my cheek, more warm and friendly to man than what Burgundy (at least of two livres a bottle, which was such as I had been drinking) could have produced. -Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as we do by the way? |