The Gothic style of building could produce nothing nobler than Mr. Allworthy's house. There was an air of grandeur in it that struck you with awe, and rivalled the beauties of the best Grecian architecture; and it was as commodious within as venerable without.

It stood on the south-east side of a hill, but nearer the bottom than the top of it, so as to be sheltered from the north-east by a grove of old oaks, which rose above it in a gradual ascent of near half a mile, and yet high enough to enjoy a most charming prospect of the valley beneath.

In the midst of the grove was a fine lawn, sloping down towards the house, near the summit of which rose a plentiful spring, gushing out of a rock covered with firs, and forming a constant cascade of about thirty feet, not

carried down a regular flight of steps, but tumbling in a natural fall over the broken and mossy stones, till it came to the bottom of the rock; then running off in a pebbly channel, that with many lesser falls winded along, till it fell into a lake at the foot of the hill, about a quarter of a mile below the house on the south side, and which was seen from every room in the front. Out of this lake, which filled the centre of a beautiful plain, embellished with groups of beeches and elms, and fed with sheep, issued a river, that, for several miles, was seen to meander through an amazing variety of meadows and woods, till it emptied itself into the sea; with a large arm of which, and an island beyond it, the prospect was closed.

FROM "THE JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE
TO LISBON."

Illustration by T. Hulett to
"Joseph Andrews"

A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was under sail, but making as will appear no great way, a kitten, one of four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into the water; an alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then upon deck, and received it with the utmost concern and many bitter oaths. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favour of the poor thing, as he called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands, as the phrase is, employed to recover the poor animal. I was, I own, extremely surprised at all this; less indeed at the captain's extreme tenderness than at his conceiving any possibility of success; for if puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded they had been all lost. The boatswain, however, had more sanguine hopes, for, having stript himself of his jacket, breeches, and shirt, he leapt boldly into the water, and to my great astonishment in a few minutes returned to the ship, bearing the motionless animal in his mouth.

Sarah Fielding (1710-1768), sister of the more celebrated novelist, was born at East Stour on the 8th of November 1710. Her first and best novel, The Adventures of David Simple, 1744, appeared anonymously, and was attributed to the author of Joseph Andrews, who contributed an interesting preface to the second edition of his sister's book. She was living in lodgings with him during the composition of Tom Jones, and when he married again she withdrew to Bath, where she became a prominent figure in society until her death in 1768. She wrote The Governess, 1749, and other works of didactic entertainment; but David Simple, composed in the company and possibly at the suggestion of her illustrious brother, is her only production of merit. Tom Jones refused admittana by the Noblemans Porter

Illustration by Rowlandson to "Tom Jones"

By LAURENCE STERNE the course of fiction was reversed a little way towards Addison and Steele in the two incomparable books which are his legacy to English literature. We call Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey novels, because we know not what else to call them; nor is it easy to define their fugitive and rare originality. Sterne was not a moralist in the mode of Richardson or of Fielding; it is to be feared that he was a complete ethical heretic; but he brought to his country as gifts the strained laughter that breaks into tears, and the melancholy wit that saves itself by an outburst of buffoonery. He introduced into the coarse and heavy life of the eighteenth century elements of daintiness, of persiflage, of moral versatility; he prided himself on the reader's powerlessness to conjecture what was coming next. A French critic compared Sterne, most felicitously, to one of the little bronze satyrs of antiquity in whose hollow bodies exquisite odours