it does, produce that illiberal sauciness which we see sometimes in men of letters.

The Spartan boy who suffered the fox (which he had stolen and hid under his coat) to eat into his bowels, I daresay had not half the wit or petulance which we learn at great schools among us; but the glorious sense of honor, or rather fear of shame, which he demonstrated in that action, was worth all the learning in the world without it.

It is, methinks, a very melancholy consideration, that a little negligence can spoil us, but great industry is necessary to improve us; the most excellent natures are soon depreciated, but evil tempers are long before they are exalted into good habits. To help this by punishments is the same thing as killing a man to cure him of a distemper: when he comes to suffer punishment in that one circumstance, he is brought below the existence of a rational creature, and is in the state of a brute that moves only by the admonition of stripes. But since this custom of educating by the lash is suffered by the gentry of Great Britain, I would prevail only that honest heavy lads may be dismissed from slavery sooner than they are at present, and not whipped on to their fourteenth or fifteenth year, whether they expect any progress from them or not. Let the child's capacity be forthwith examined, and he sent to some mechanic way of life, without respect to his birth, if nature designed him for nothing higher; let him go before he has innocently suffered, and is debased into a dereliction of mind for being what it is no guilt to be, a plain man. I would not here be supposed to have said that our learned men of either robe who have been whipped at school are not still men of noble and liberal minds; but I am sure they would have been much more so than they are, had they never suffered that infamy.

I

THE ART OF STORY-TELLING

From the Guardian

HAVE often thought that a story-teller is born, as well as a poet. It is, I think, certain that some men have such a peculiar cast of mind, that they see things in another light than men of grave dispositions. Men of a lively imagination and a mirthful temper will represent things to their hearers in the same manner as they themselves were affected with them;

and whereas serious spirits might perhaps have been disgusted at the sight of some odd occurrences in life, yet the very same occurrences shall please them in a well-told story, where the disagreeable parts of the images are concealed, and those only which are pleasing exhibited to the fancy. Story-telling is therefore not an art, but what we call a "knack"; it does not so much subsist upon wit as upon humor; and I will add that it is not perfect without proper gesticulations of the body, which naturally attend such merry emotions of the mind. I know very well that a certain gravity of countenance sets some stories off to advantage, where the hearer is to be surprised in the end: but this is by no means a general rule; for it is frequently convenient to aid and assist by cheerful looks and whimsical agitations. I will go yet further; and affirm that the success of a story very often depends upon the make of the body, and formation of the features, of him who relates it. I have been of this opinion ever since I criticized upon the chin of Dick Dewlap. I very often had the weakness to repine at the prosperity of his conceits, which made him pass for a wit with the widow at the coffee-house, and the ordinary mechanics that frequent it; nor could I myself forbear laughing at them most heartily, though upon examination I thought most of them very flat and insipid. I found, after some time, that the merit of his wit was founded upon the shaking of a fat paunch, and the tossing up of a pair of rosy jowls. Poor Dick had a fit of sickness which robbed him of his fat and his fame at once; and it was full three months before he regained his reputation, which rose in proportion to his floridity. He is now very jolly and ingenious, and hath a good constitution for wit.

Those who are thus adorned with the gifts of nature are apt to show their parts with too much ostentation: I would therefore advise all the professors of this art never to tell stories but as they seem to grow out of the subject-matter of the conversation, or as they serve to illustrate or enliven it. Stories that are very common are generally irksome; but may be aptly introduced, provided they be only hinted at, and mentioned by way of allusion. Those that are altogether new should never be ushered in without a short and pertinent character of the chief persons concerned, because by that means you make the company acquainted with them; and it is a certain rule, that slight and trivial accounts of those who are familiar to us administer more mirth than the brightest points of wit in unknown characters.

LAURENCE STERNE

(1713-1768)

HE life of the Reverend Laurence Sterne was as inconsistent with his profession as with his writings. Reading these, no one would for a moment believe that he was a clergyman. Such a career as his would not be possible to-day; but to a Church of England parson of the eighteenth century, extraordinary moral latitude was allowed, and toward him extraordinary tolerance was exercised. Although Sterne's sermons were clever, they were very peculiar. His contemporaries thought of him only as a literary man, and it is doubtful if he took himself seriously as a cleric. He was a humorist to the marrow, and had all the vagaries of his natural predilection. Although in his day the English Church was chosen for a calling, like the army, the navy, or the law, and the revenue from a benefice was fitly named a living, it is not likely that he voluntarily selected his profession.

He was the great-grandson of Dr. Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York; and the recollection of his distinguished ancestor, with considerations of family influence, must have decided his vocation. His father, a younger son, was an ensign of the 34th Regiment, with which he served in Flanders, taking part in the sieges of Lisle and Douay. His mother was Agnes Hebert, widow of a captain of good connections. The ensign and his wife went to Clonmel, in Ireland, at the close of the war; and there, in barracks, Laurence was born, November 24th, 1713; his parents and all his progenitors being English. His father having been recalled into active service, the child was carried from barracks to transport, from Ireland to England, and was familiar with the shifts, hardships, and vulgarities of a vagabond military life, until he reached his tenth year. This happy-go-lucky existence, with its fun, its extravagance, and its pinching poverty, no doubt influenced his character, and affected his ways of thinking. At the age of ten he was fortunately rescued from it by a goodnatured cousin, Squire Sterne, and sent first to school at Halifax, and then to Jesus College, Cambridge, of which the archiepiscopal great-grandfather had been master. He was entered as a sizar; and in exchange for his free commons and free tuition, had to render such services as Goldsmith gave a few years later,-sweeping the courts, carrying up the dishes to the fellows' dining-hall, and pouring the ale. The position involved some mortifications, and the little