"In life," said he, "is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy or imbecility of age. We are long before we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting. The true period of human existence may be reasonably estimated at forty years, of which I have mused away the four and twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come, who can assure me?"

The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was long before he could be reconciled to himself. "The rest of my time," said he, “has been lost by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my country; I remember it with disgust, yet without remorse: but the months that have passed since new light darted into my soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been squandered by my own fault. I have lost that which can never be restored; I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven; in this time the birds have left the nest of their mother, and committed themselves to the woods and to the skies; the kid has forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the rocks in quest of independent sustenance. I only have made no advances, but am still helpless and ignorant. The moon, by more than twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that rolled before my feet upbraided my inactivity. I sat feasting on intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the earth and the instructions of the planets. Twenty months are passed who shall restore them?"

These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he passed four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark that what cannot be repaired is not to be regretted.

This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he had not discovered it having not known, or not considered, how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, hurried by her own ardor to distant views, neglects the truths that lie open before her. He for a few hours regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the Valley of Happiness.

THE SHANDY FAMILY AT BOBBY'S DEATH.

BY LAURENCE STERNE.

(From "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.")

[LAURENCE STERNE, an English novelist, was born at Clonmel, Ireland, November 24, 1713; died at London, March 18, 1768. He was the great-grandson of Dr. Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York. After attending Jesus College, Cambridge, he was ordained a minister of the Church of England, and received the living of Stillington, near Sutton. In January, 1760, he published two volumes of "Tristram Shandy," under the pen name of Yorick. The book took the public by storm, and Sterne was immediately ranked with the greatest novelists of the day. He was given the living of Coxwold by Lord Falconbridge, and was the eager and delighted recipient of all the honors that the English could bestow. "Tristram Shandy" was completed in nine volumes (1760-1767), and steadily increased in popularity. He also published "A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy” (1768), “The Sermons of Mr. Yorick” (1760), and "Letters to his Most Intimate Friends," posthumous (1775).]

WHEN my father received the letter which brought him the melancholy account of my brother Bobby's death, he was busy calculating the expense of his riding post from Calais to Paris, and so on to Lyons.

When the letter was brought into the parlor which contained the news of my brother's death, my father had got forwards again upon his journey to within a stride of the compasses of the very same stage of Nevers. By your leave, Mons. Sanson, cried my father, striking the point of his compasses through Nevers into the table, and nodding to my uncle Toby to see what was in the letter-twice of one night is too much for an English gentleman and his son, Mons. Sanson, to be turned back from so lousy a town as Nevers. What think'st thou, Toby? added my father in a sprightly tone. Unless it be a garrison town, said my uncle Toby - for thenI shall be a fool, said my father, smiling to himself, as long as I live. So giving a second nod, and keeping his compasses still upon Nevers with one hand, and holding his book of the post-roads in the other, half calculating and half listening, he leaned forwards upon the table with both elbows, as my uncle Toby hummed over the letter.

=

-he's gone! said my

uncle Toby-Where? Who? cried my father.— My nephew,

said my uncle Toby. - What, without leave, without money, without governor? cried my father in amazement. - No he is dead, my dear brother, quoth my uncle Toby. Without being ill? cried my father again. I dare say not, said my Uncle Toby, in a low voice, and fetching a deep sigh from the bottom of his heart, he has been ill enough, poor lad! I'll answer for him: for he is dead.

When Agrippina was told of her son's death, Tacitus informs us, that, not being able to moderate the violence of her passions, she abruptly broke off her work. My father stuck his compasses into Nevers but so much the faster. What contrarieties! his, indeed, was matter of calculation! Agrippina's must have been quite a different affair; who else could pretend to reason from history?

How my father went on, in my opinion, deserves a chapter to itself.

--And a chapter it shall have, and a devil of a one too so look to yourselves.

"Tis either Plato, or Plutarch, or Seneca, or Xenophon, or Epictetus, or Theophrastus, or Lucian-or some one perhaps of later date- either Cardan, or Budæus, or Petrarch, or Stella -or possibly it may be some divine or father of the church, St. Austin, or St. Cyprian, or Bernard, who affirms that it is an irresistible and natural passion to weep for the loss of our friends or children and Seneca (I'm positive) tells us somewhere that such griefs evacuate themselves best by that particular channel. And accordingly we find that David wept for his son Absalom; Adrian for his Antinous; Niobe for her children; and that Apollodorus and Crito both shed tears for Socrates before his death.

My father managed his affliction otherwise; and indeed differently from most men either ancient or modern; for he neither wept it away, as the Hebrews and the Romans-or slept it off as the Laplanders - or hanged it, as the English, or drowned it, as the Germans-nor did he curse it, or damn it, or excommunicate it, or rhyme it, or lillabullero it.—

-He got rid of it, however.

Will your worships give me leave to squeeze in a story between these two pages?

When Tully was bereft of his dear daughter Tullia, at first he laid it to his heart; he listened to the voice of nature, and

modulated his own unto it. O my Tullia! my daughter! my child! — still, still, still, 'twas O my Tullia! - my Tullia! Methinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I talk with my Tullia. But as soon as he began to look into the stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent things might be said upon the occasion - nobody upon earth can conceive, says the great orator, how happy, how joyful, it made me.

My father was as proud of his eloquence as Marcus Tullius Cicero could be for his life, and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength and his weakness too. His strength for he was by nature eloquent; and his weakness for he was hourly a dupe to it; and, provided an occasion in life would but permit him to show his talents, or say either a wise thing, a witty, or a shrewd one (bating the case of a systematic misfortune) he had all he wanted. A blessing which tied up my father's tongue, and a misfortune which let it loose with a good grace, were pretty equal: sometimes, indeed, the misfortune was the better of the two; for instance, where the pleasure of the harangue was as ten, and the pain of the misfortune but as fivemy father gained half in half, and consequently was as well again off as if it had never befallen him.

This clew will unravel what otherwise would seem very inconsistent in my father's domestic character; and it is this, that, in the provocations arising from the neglects and blunders of servants, or other mishaps unavoidable in a family, his anger, or rather the duration of it, eternally ran counter to all conjecture.

My father had a favorite little mare, which he had consigned over to a most beautiful Arabian horse, in order to have a pad out of her for his own riding: he was sanguine in all his projects; so talked about his pad every day with as absolute a security, as if it had been reared, broke, and bridled and saddled at his door ready for mounting. By some neglect or other in Obadiah, it so fell out that my father's expectations were answered with nothing better than a mule, and as ugly a beast of the kind as ever was produced.

My mother and my uncle Toby expected my father would be the death of Obadiah and that there never would be an end of the disaster.

See here! you rascal, cried my father, pointing to the mule, what you have done! — It was not me, said Obadiah. — How do I know that? replied my father.

Triumph swam in my father's eyes, at the repartee, the Attic salt brought water into them, and so Obadiah heard no more about it.

Now let us go back to my brother's death.

Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.

For Death

it has an entire set; the misery was, they all at once rushed into my father's head, that 'twas difficult to string them together, so as to make anything of a consistent show out of them. He took them as they came.

"'Tis an inevitable chance the first statute in Magna Chartait is an everlasting act of parliament, my dear brother, · All must die.

"If my son could not have died, it had been matter of wonder, not that he is dead.

"Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us.

"To die, is the great debt and tribute due unto nature: tombs and monuments, which should perpetuate our memories, pay it themselves; and the proudest pyramid of them all, which wealth and science have erected, has lost its apex, and stands obtruncated in the traveler's horizon." (My father found he got great ease, and went on)—"Kingdoms and provinces, and towns and cities, have they not their periods? and when those principles and powers, which at first cemented and put them together, have performed their several evolutions, they fall back." - Brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby, laying down. his pipe at the word evolutions Revolutions, I meant, quoth my father; by heaven! I meant revolutions, brother Toby; -evolutions is nonsense. 'Tis not nonsense, said my uncle Toby. But is it not nonsense to break the thread of such a discourse upon such an occasion? cried my father do not, dear Toby, continued he, taking him by the hand, do not, do not, I beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis. My uncle Toby put his pipe into his mouth.

"Where is Troy and Mycenæ, and Thebes and Delos, and Persepolis and Agrigentum?" continued my father, taking up his book of post-roads, which he had laid down. "What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of Cizicum and Mitylenæ ? The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon are now no more; the names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piecemeals to decay, and in length of time will be forgotten, and involved with everything in a perpetual night: the world itself, brother Toby, must-must come to an end.