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self. Adieu, once more, Eliza! May no an-
guish of heart plant a wrinkle on thy face till I
behold it again.
Yorick is thy friend

for ever! Adieu, adieu, adieu !'”

Eliza's departure brought on a fit of despondency. Mrs. James, too, for whom Sterne had the warmest regard, was unwell, and he was anxious about her. He wrote on the 9th of April to Lydia, to say how unhappy he was. "Thy mother and thyself are at a distance from me, and what can compensate for such a destitution ?" He begs them to return. Life, he said, was too short to waste in separation. "Whilst she lives in one country, and I in another, many people will suppose it proceeds from choice. Besides, I want thee near me, thou child and darling of my heart." Such an appeal could not be refused. Sterne had gone down to Coxwould in May, utterly worn out, “lying in the bottom of the chaise the most of the route, upon a large pillow," and there, in the month of September, his wife and daughter joined him.

1767, soon after Sterne's arrival in town for the season. His chief friends in London were now Commodore James and his wife. At their house in Gerrard-street it is probable that he first met the celebrated "Eliza." Mrs. Sterne and Lydia were still abroad; "Kitty" had disappeared; the post of Yorick's "Dulcinea was empty, and Eliza filled it. She was the wife of Mr. Daniel Draper, a counselor of Bombay, and had been sent by him to Europe for her health. In appearance she was far from handsome, but she had an intelligent and interesting face, and a singular sweetness of expression. She fairly captivated the susceptible sentimentalist, and he began to write her a series of let ters which would have made the counselor of Bombay stare if he had seen them. They are in his most rapturous style. Swift never wrote more tenderly to Stella. He signs himself "Tristram," "Yorick," "Thy Bramin." If we were to look only at the words, we should have to acknowledge that Warburton was not far wrong in calling the writer a "scoundrel," and that Thackeray's indictment against him, which is founded chiefly on these letters, was proven. But the facts show that the relationship between the pair was innocent. Mrs. James was aware of the sentimental friendship from its beginning to its end, and accepted it as harmless. Great allowance must be made for Sterne's extravagance of phrase. In approaching women he invariably adopted a tender euphuism which Sir Piercie Shafton might have envied. He did not mean half "She is a dear, disinterested girl. he said. And his years made the idea of proof of it, when she left Coxwould, and I bade love ludicrous. He was nearly sixty, and, her adieu, I pulled out my purse, and offered as he says himself, "ninety-five in consti- her ten guineas for her private pleasures, her tution." Half the letters, too, were writ-answer was pretty, and affected me too much: ten after "Eliza" had started on her voy- from France may have straitened you; I would 'No, my dear papa, our expenses in coming age back to India. "Il s'occupa de cette rather put a hundred guineas in your pocket dame," writes M. Jules Janin, "avec une than take ten out of it.' I burst into tears." tendresse infinie, mais, il s'en occupa bien plus quand elle fut absente que lorsqu'elle était près de lui." On the 3d of April she sailed in the Earl of Chatham from the Downs. Sterne's adieux pursued her till the sails were set.

"The wind, I find, is fair. If so, blessed woman! take my last, last farewell. Cherish the remembrance of me; think how I esteem, nay, how affectionately I love thee!

Adieu, adieu! and with my adieu, let me give thee one straight rule of conduct, that thou hast heard from my lips in a thousand forms— but I can center it in one word-reverence thy

Feeble as he was in body, his genius was as bright as ever, He was now engaged on the Sentimental Journey, and in December had two volumes ready. It was arranged that he should come to London to superintend their publication, and that Mrs. Sterne and Lydia should take a house for the winter at York. It cost him a struggle to part with his fondly-cherished child, whose praises he was always ready to sing.

As a

And thus, with tears on his side, and no doubt on hers, the father and daughter kissed each other for the last time. They were never to meet again.

Sterne took the same lodgings he had occupied on his last visit. They were at 41 Old Bond-street, on the first floor of a wigmaker's shop. For a few weeks he was able to share in the familiar round of dinners and assemblies; but, at the beginning of March, the "vile influenza," of which he had complained a fortnight before in a letter to Lydia, struck him down

finally. Like the good Archbishop Leigh- | ton, he had once expressed a wish to die, not in his own house, but " rather in some decent inn." That wish was to be fulfilled, too nearly for his comfort. Lydia and Mrs. Sterne were far away, and for the last few days of his life, his friends, the Jameses, do not appear to have been able to be near him. On Tuesday, the 15th, with the hand of death upon him, he wrote a last letter to Mrs. James:

Do

"My spirits are fled-'tis a bad omen. not weep, my dear lady; your tears are too precious to be shed for me-bottle them up, and may the cork never be drawn. Dearest, kindest, gentlest, best of women! may health, peace, and happiness prove your handmaids. If I die, cherish the remembrance of me, and forget the follies which you so often condemned, which my heart, not my head, betrayed me into. Should my child, Lydia, want a mother, may I hope you will (if she is parentless) take her to your bosom? Mr. James will be a father to her. Commend me to him, as I now commend you to that Being who takes under his care the good and kind part of the world. Adieu! all grateful thanks to you

and Mr. James."

With this touching appeal for the daughter, who was always uppermost in his mind, Sterne laid down his busy pen for ever.

On the Friday following the end came. A strange incident marked his dying moments. In a street close by, "Fish" Crawford, a companion of the dying humorist's giddiest hours, and "one of the gayest young gentlemen, and the greatest gambler that ever belonged to Scotland," was entertaining a party of friends at dinner. Some one mentioned Sterne's illness, and it was determined to send to inquire how he was. The footman charged with the errand could learn nothing from the landlady in Bond-street, but was told that he might, if he pleased, walk up-stairs and ask the nurse for the latest news. He did so, and on entering the room found the brilliant Yorick totally exhausted and just expiring. The sick man's glazing eye may perhaps have rested for a moment on the liveried emblem of the glittering vanities he had loved too well. A hired attendant was chafing his frozen feet, and for a time he seemed relieved; but soon the cold rose higher, and while the nurse was still rubbing his legs and ankles, and the messenger from the

gay party near still stood upon the threshold, he lifted his wasted arm as if to ward off a blow, and murmuring, "Now it is come," passed away without a groan.

"The gentlemen at the dinner," says the footman, "were all very sorry, and lamented him very much." They soon forgot him, however, for not one of them followed his body to the grave, and not one of them would lift a finger to help his wife and daughter. Garrick wrote a few lines to commemorate him, but for years no memorial marked his burial-place. Perhaps it was felt difficult to write an epitaph that should be both kind and truthful. We should now feel a similar difficulty, if we were to make a formal effort to sum up his virtues and vices, and strike a fair balance between them. In his writings and in his life what a maze of inconsistencies and contradictions this poor Yorick was! An original genius, yet a frequent plagiarist; intolerably af fected, yet able, when he chose, to write with perfect simplicity of style; a "fellow of infinite jest," yet a master of the deepest springs of pathos. And his character is as perplexing a mixture as his books. When we think of his London frivolities, his sentimental attachments, his entire forgetfulness of the cloth he wore, and to which he was, beyond all question, a disgrace, we are inclined to turn away in disgust, and join with a good-will in Thackeray's heartiest invectives. But presently we find there is some excuse for him. We remember his mercurial temperament, and the ease with which, having no strength of body or of mind, he took the impress of the licentious age in which he lived. We find, too, that he was not without a heart; that he could be genial and faithful to his friends, and loving to his child, generous to the distressed, and always ready to sympathize with the sorrowful. These qualities are some atonement for many faults, and form a fair ground for passing a judgment, as charitable as may be, on the chequered life of Sterne. We believe him to have been neither a hero nor a rogue. The most indiscreet of men and reckless of writers, he always wore his heart upon his sleeve, thus courting the censure he often deserved. He committed iunumerable follies, but, upon the whole, was rather weak than wicked.

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WALTER

HILLIARD

BIDWELL,.

EDITOR OF THE ECLECTIC MAGAZINE.

IN connection with a portrait at the head of this number, from a photograph recently taken from life and engraved for its present use, a brief personal record may not be devoid of interest to some of the many patrons of this work, which has now reached the goodly number of sixtytwo volumes. The present editor has sustained that relation to this work for more than eighteen years, requiring the watch ful care and almost constant supervision of all its concerns during that period.

WALTER HILLIARD BIDWELL was born at Farmington, Connecticut, June 21st, 1798. His father, William Bidwell, was a farmer. He spent the first twenty-two years of his life chiefly at home engaged in the labors incident to farming life. His paternal ancestor, a native of the north of England, having married Mary Beckwith, of Scotland, emigrated to Hartford, Connecticut, many years anterior to the American Revolution. His maternal ancestor, Ithamer Pelton, was a native of France, who came over and settled at Saybrook, Connecticut, many years anterior to the Revolution. His grandson, Ithamer Pelton, was employed in the public service, in some hazardous and responsible duties, during the war of the Revolution. Both branches of the family lost heavily by the depreciation of Continental money at the close of the

war.

failure of his voice, after a pastorate of some four years, he removed to the milder climate of Philadelphia. In the beginning of 1841 he began editorial life as the conductor of the American National Preacher, which, with the omission of some years, he has continued to conduct; and during this period, more than seventeen hundred thousand copies of sermons have been published in this monthly periodical, from nearly five hundred ministers of all evangelical denominations. The series of thirty-eight volumes forms a mass of sermon literature which, for variety, interest, and value, it would be difficult to overrate.

In 1843 he became the proprietor and conductor of the New-York Evangelist, a weekly religious journal which has served, and is still serving, its generation with ability and usefulness. After twelve years of laborious service in conducting it, he relinquished it on the temporary failure of his health. In the mean time (1846) he became also the proprietor and conductor of the American Biblical Repository, one of the oldest and most cel ebrated of our religious quarterlies; and at the same time likewise the proprietor of THE ECLECTIC MAGAZINE, in which this notice appears. From pecuniary claims upon it he was compelled to add another to the list, making five periodicals at one time, which he managed for a number of years, with needful literary aid.

In 1849, suffering from exhausted strength, he went abroad, visiting England, France, Switzerland, and Italy; walked over the demolished walls of Rome, and among the sad ruins of beautiful palaces, caused by the terrible bombardment of the French army, to drive

The subject of this notice entered Yale College in 1824, and graduated in the class of 1827. The two subsequent years were employed in efforts to pay off the incurred expenses of college life. He studied theology in the seminary of Yale College, and was licensed to preach the gospel in the spring of 1833. He had married Miss Susan M. Duryea, of New-out the hero Garibaldi and reconquer York, a descendant of a Huguenot family; and, on account of her feeble health, spent with her a year in England and France. In the autumn of 1833 he was ordained and installed pastor of the Congregation al church in Medfield, Mass. On the

the Eternal City to the power of the pope. He spent a night on the summit of Vesuvius, when it was belching forth streams of melted lava, presenting a scene of indescribable grandeur. He returned home by way of Scotland and Ireland.

In the summer of 1851 he went abroad | gion, he returned over the mountains to again for a brief season, spending ten Malaga and Gibraltar, and thence to Pordays in surveying the vast treasures in tugal, stopping some time in Lisbon on the Crystal Palace, gathered from the rich the Tagus. He then took passage in the countries and governments of Europe, and British Peninsular steamer to Southampfrom the distant climes of India. He vis- ton and London, and reached New-York ited Holland; passed up the Rhine; spent after an absence of ninety-five days, having some time at Munich, that wondrous city traveled a distance of over eleven thouof art, thence down the Danube to Vien- sand miles. Since 1853 he has been alna; passed through Bohemia and Sax- most constantly occupied with his editoon Switzerland to Dresden, Berlin, and rial and other duties. Hamburg, and returned home by way of Paris and London, to resume his labors.

In the autumn of 1860 he became the proprietor and publisher of the American Theological Review, the editorial depart ment of which was under the direction of Professor Henry B. Smith. After two years this work was united with the Presbyterian Quarterly Review, and passed into the hands of Rev. J. M. Sherwood, its present proprietor and editor, in conjunction with Professor H. B. Smith and other scholars eminent in theological literature.

Again, in 1853, he sought relaxation in foreign travel. After a brief visit to North Wales, he went to London, to Paris, and thence to southern France, crossing the Pyrenees from San Sebastian to Valladolid, and over the Gaudarama mountains to Madrid. After various detours, and visiting places of historic interest, he passed through central and southern Spain to Seville and Cadiz ; thence through the straits to Gibraltar, by way of Tangiers, and to Malaga; and over the mountains to Granada and the Alhambra, the ancient and last home of the Moors of Spain. After a brief sojourn in that most interesting historic re-ably at St. Petersburg.

This sketch is necessarily imperfect, and personal; but we trust it will answer the end designed by it.

Impaired health rendering rest needful once more, Mr. Bidwell left early in July for the north of Europe, and is now prob

POETRY.

From Tennyson's Enoch Arden.

THE ISLET.

"WHITHER O whither love shall we go,
For a score of sweet little summers or so,"
The sweet little wife of the singer said,
On the day that followed the day she was wed,
"Whither Ŏ whither love shall we go?"
And the singer shaking his curly head
Turned as he sat, and struck the keys
There at his right with a sudden crash,
Singing, "and shall it be over the seas
With a crew that is neither rude nor rash,
But a bevy of Eroses apple-cheeked,
In a shallop of crystal ivory-beaked,
With a satin sail of a ruby glow,

To a sweet little Eden on earth that I know,
A mountain islet pointed and peaked;
Waves on a diamond shingle dash,
Cataract brooks to the ocean run,
Fairily-delicate palaces shine
Mixed with myrtle and clad with vine,
And overstreamed and silvery-streaked
With many a rivulet high against the sun
The facets of the glorious mountain flash
Above the valleys of palm and pine."

"Thither O thither, love, let us go."
"No, no, no!

For in all that exquisite isle, my dear,
There is but one bird with a musical throat,
And his compass is but of a single note,
That it makes one weary to hear."

"Mock me not! mock me not! love, let us go."
"No, love, no.

For the bud ever breaks into bloom on the tree,
And a storm never wakes on the lonely sea,
And a worm is there in the lonely wood,
That pierces the liver and blackens the blood,
And makes it a sorrow to be."

From Tennyson's Enoch Arden.
IN THE VALLEY OF CAUTERETZ.
ALL along the valley, stream that flashest white,
Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night,
All along the valley, where thy waters flow,

I walked with one I loved two and thirty years ago.

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FLOWERS AND CHILDREN.

BY CHARLES MACKAY.

On, the flowerets, the bonnie wee flowerets,
Glinting and smiling and peeping through the grass!
And oh, the children, the bonnie little children,

I see them and love them and bless them as I pass! I bless them-but I'm sad for them

I wish I could be glad for them,

For who, alas! can tell me the fate that shall befall?

The flowerets of the morning,

The greenwood path adorning,

May be scattered ere the noontide by the wild wind's sudden call;

Or plucked because they're beautiful,
By rudest hands, undutiful;

Or trampled under foot by the cattle of the stall; And the smiling little children, the bonnie little children,

That sport like happy moths in the sunny summer sheen,

May perish ere the daytime

Of their sweet expected May-time,

And sleep beneath the daisies and the long grass growing green;

Or a worse, worse fate may light on them,
And cast more fatal blight on them,

The bonnie little maiden may be wooed and cast

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From the London Eclectic. THE BOATMAN.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

"No rest on the river-that's past for thee;
The beacon but shines as a guide to the sea.

One chime of the oar, ere it halt evermore,
Muffled and dirge-like, and sternly steady;
And the beacon illuming the last of the shore
Shall flash on the sea to thy murmur—' Al-
ready!'

"Then seems there to float

Down the length of the way-
From the sedges remote-
From the rose-garden bay-

From the town and the mart-
From the river's deep heart-
From the heart of the land-
From the lips of the bride,
Through the darkness again
Stealing close to my side,
With her hand in my hand-

From the gamesters in vain
Staking odds on the main

Of invisible dies-

An echo that wails with my wailing and sighs,

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