caressing his own sensibilities; and the result of this was always to set him upon one of those attempts to be pathetic of malice prepense of which Maria of Moulines is one example, and the too celebrated dead donkey of Nampont another.  “It is agreeably and skilfully done, that dead jackass,” writes Thackeray; “like M. de Soubise’s cook on the campaign, Sterne dresses it, and serves it up quite tender, and with a very piquante sauce.  But tears, and fine feelings, and a white pocket-handkerchief, and a funeral sermon, and horses and feathers, and a procession of mutes, and a hearse with a dead donkey inside!  Psha!  Mountebank!  I’ll not give thee one penny-piece for that trick, donkey and all.”  That is vigorous ridicule, and not wholly undeserved; but, on the other hand, not entirely deserved.  There is less of artistic trick, it seems to me, and more of natural foible, about Sterne’s literary sentiment than Thackeray was ever willing to believe; and I can find nothing worse, though nothing better, in the dead ass of Nampont than in Maria of Moulines.  I do not think there is any conscious simulation of feeling in this Nampont scene; it is that the feeling itself is overstrained—­that Sterne, hugging, as usual, his own sensibilities, mistook their value in expression for the purposes of art.  The Sentimental Traveller does not obtrude himself to the same extent as in the scene at Moulines; but a little consideration of the scene will show how much Sterne relied on the mere presentment of the fact that here was an unfortunate peasant who had lost his dumb companion, and here a tender-hearted gentleman looking on and pitying him.  As for any attempts to bring out, by objective dramatic touches, either the grievousness of the bereavement or the grief of the mourner, such attempts as are made to do this are either commonplace or “one step in advance” of the sublime.  Take this, for instance:  “The mourner was sitting upon a stone bench at the door, with his ass’s pannel and its bridle on one side, which he took up from time to time, then laid them down, looked at them, and shook his head.  He then took the crust of bread out of his wallet again, as if to eat it; held it some time in his hand, then laid it upon the bit of his ass’s bridle—­looked wistfully at the little arrangement he had made—­and then gave a sigh.  The simplicity of his grief drew numbers about him,” &c.  Simplicity, indeed, of a marvellous sort which could show itself by so extraordinary a piece of acting as this!  Is there any critic who candidly thinks it natural—­I do not mean in the sense of mere every-day probability, but of conformity to the laws of human character?  Is it true that in any country, among any people, however emotional, grief—­real, unaffected, un-selfconscious grief—­ever did or ever could display itself by such a trick as that of laying a piece of bread on the bit of a dead ass’s bridle?  Do we not feel that if we had been on the point of offering comfort or alms to the mourner, and saw him go through