“And now, my dear girl, let me assure you of the truest friendship for you that ever man bore towards a woman—­wherever I am, my heart is warm towards you, and ever shall be, till it is cold for ever.  I thank you for the kind proof you gave me of your desire to make my heart easy in ordering yourself to be denied to you know who—­while I am so miserable to be separated from my dear, dear Kitty, it would have stabbed my soul to have thought such a fellow could have the liberty of coming near you.—­I therefore take this proof of your love and good principles most kindly—­ and have as much faith and dependence upon you in it, as if I was at your elbow—­would to God I was at this moment—­for I am sitting solitary and alone in my bedchamber (ten o’clock at night after the play), and would give a guinea for a squeeze of your hand.  I send my soul perpetually out to see what you are a-doing—­wish I could convey my body with it—­adieu, dear and kind girl.  Ever your kind friend and affectionate admirer.

“I go to the oratorio this night.  My service to your mamma.”

LETTER V.

“My dear Kitty,—­Though I have but a moment’s time to spare, I would not omit writing you an account of my good fortune; my Lord Fauconberg has this day given me a hundred and sixty pounds a year, which I hold with all my preferment; so that all or the most part of my sorrows and tears are going to be wiped away.—­I have but one obstacle to my happiness now left —­and what that is you know as well as I.[A]

“I long most impatiently to see my dear Kitty.  I had a purse of guineas given me yesterday by a bishop—­all will do well in time.

“From morning to night my lodgings, which by the bye are the genteelest in town,[B] are full of the greatest company.—­I dined these two days with two ladies of the bedchamber—­then with Lord Buckingham, Lord Edgcumb, Lord Winchelsea, Lord Littleton, a bishop, &c. &c.

“I assure you, my dear Kitty, that Tristram is the fashion.—­Pray to God I may see my dearest girl soon and well.—­Adieu.

“Your affectionate friend,

“L.  STERNE.”

[Footnote A:  Can this allude to the death of his wife?—­that very year he tells his daughter he had taken a house at York, “for your mother and yourself.”]

[Footnote B:  They were the second house from St. Alban’s Street, Pall Mall.]

* * * * *

HUME, ROBERTSON, AND BIRCH.

The rarest of literary characters is such an historian as Gibbon; but we know the price which he paid for his acquisitions—­unbroken and undeviating studies.  Wilkes, a mere wit, could only discover the drudgery of compilation in the profound philosopher and painter of men and of nations.  A speculative turn of mind, delighting in generalising principles and aggregate views, is usually deficient in that closer knowledge, without which every step we take is on