he sterling original portraits
are those of Mr. Shandy, the country gentleman, controversial and
consequential; Mrs. Shandy, the nonentity,--the Amelia Osborne and Mrs.
Nickleby of her day; Yorick, the lukewarm, time-serving priest--Sterne
himself: and these are only supplementary characters.

The sieges of towns in the Low Countries, then going on, are pleasantly
connected with that most exquisite of characters, _my Uncle Toby_, who has
a fortification in his garden,--sentry-box, cannon, and all,--and who
follows the great movement on this petty scale from day to day, as the
bulletins come in from the seat of war.

The _Widow Wadman_, with her artless wiles, and the "something in her
eye," makes my Uncle Toby--who protests he can see nothing in the
white--look, not without peril, "with might and main into the pupil." Ah,
that sentry-box and the widow's tactics might have conquered many a more
wary man than my Uncle Toby! and yet my Uncle Toby escaped.

Now, all these are real English characters, sketched from life by the hand
of genius, and they become our friends and acquaintances forever. It seems
as though Sterne, after a long and close study of Rabelais and Burton, had
fancied that, with their aid, he might write a money-making book; but his
own genius, rising superior to the plagiarism, took the project out of his
venal hands; and from the antique learning and the incongruities which he
had heaped together, bright and beautiful forms sprang forth like genii
from the mine, to subsidize the tears and laughter of all future time.
What an exquisite creation is my Uncle Toby!--a soldier in the van of
battle, a man of honor and high tone in every-day life, a kind brother, a
good master to Corporal Trim, simple as a child, benevolent as an angel.
"Go, poor devil," quoth he to the fly which buzzed about his nose all
dinner-time, "get thee gone; why should I hurt thee? This world is surely
wide enough to hold both thee and me!"

And as for Corporal Trim, he is a host in himself. There is in the English
literary portrait-gallery no other Uncle Toby, there is no other Corporal
Trim. Hazlitt has not exaggerated in saying that the _Story of Le Fevre_
is perhaps the finest in the English language. My Uncle Toby's conduct to
the dying officer is the perfection of loving-kindness and charity.

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.--Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_, although
charmingly written,--and this is said in spite of the preference o