or even in prospect, certain regiments were disbanded, and the nation had the pain of seeing wounded or disabled soldiers, who had fought for their country, begging their bread. Officers with small private means were reduced to great straits. It was not in the power of all of them to frequent the Tilt-yard Coffee House in London, the great resort of military men, and over a pipe vent their grievances against the General, who, slighting men of merit and preferring those of interest, had made them quit the service.

In the closing years of Queen Anne's reign the new Tory ministers, Harley and St. John, finding themselves masters of the new Parliament, were induced to conclude a peace with France. The result of the Peace of Utrecht was to reduce the English army, and on this changed footing of a peace establishment Handyside's regiment disappeared from the Army Lists. Upon this Lieutenant Sterne betook himself with his wife and children to the family seat at Elvington near York, where his mother, who had inherited the property from her father, Sir Roger Jaques, resided, her husband having died there years before. Here they all remained ten months. Afterwards Roger Sterne had the good fortune to obtain a commission in Chudleigh's or the 34th regiment of foot, now the 1st battalion of the Border Regiment of the line, and set out to join it in Dublin, whence the lieutenant being ordered to Exeter his wife and her two infants followed him thither. They remained a twelvemonth in England, and then the subaltern with his family increased by another boy, born at Plymouth, had to turn his face once more to Ireland. This must have been about the year 1715, if the chronology of the Memoir is to be depended upon. Having got to Dublin, they remained there till 1719, which would be for about three years, instead of only a year and a half as Sterne seems to state. In that year, he says, 'all unhinged again.' With Queen Anne's death and the accession of George I a great change in home politics was brought about; the Tory Ministry was replaced by the Whigs. Abroad the Whigs aimed strictly at the maintenance of peace by a faithful adhesion to the Treaty of Utrecht. The one obstacle was Spain. To resist the efforts of the King of Spain, Philip of Anjou, England and France at once drew together, and

were joined by Holland in a triple alliance, concluded in 1717. The triple alliance became a quadruple alliance by the accession of the Emperor, whose Italian possessions the three powers had guaranteed. In retaliation for Spain having backed up the Pretender by a fruitless expedition to Scotland, the English Government determined to send a strong squadron with 4,000 men on board to operate on the Spanish coasts. The expedition was placed under the command of Sir Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, to whom Alexander Pope addressed his 'Essay on the knowledge and characters of men.' Roger Sterne's regiment was ordered to the Isle of Wight to take part in this expedition about the end of September, 1719.

The lieutenant's wife and children accompanied him on their voyage to the Isle of Wight. They who have seen the arrangements made for the wives and children of the regiments in our own magnificent troopships can picture to themselves the horrors of a passage in the close and fetid atmosphere of a cabin in a transport vessel at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We,' writes Laurence Sterne, who was of the party, and who tells the story of it afterwards in his Memoir, were driven into Milford Haven on the voyage from Dublin, but afterwards landed at Bristol, and hence again to Plymouth and the Isle of Wight, losing on the expedition poor Joram, a pretty boy, who died of the small-pox.' Sterne adds that poor Joram's loss was replaced by the birth of a girl, Anne, a pretty blossom, destined to fall at the age of three years.' After the grim, sardonic manner which marks the style of his Memoir Sterne observes, my father's children were not made to last long.'

6

I have searched the Registers of Carisbrooke to see if perchance I could discover the baptism of this 'pretty blossom,' Anne Sterne, but no entry of it is to be found. Possibly, if search were made, it might be found elsewhere in the Isle of Wight, where Roger Sterne left his wife and children till the regiment got back from Vigo on the coast of Spain to Wicklow in Ireland, whither he sent for them. It does not appear how long Mrs. Sterne and her children remained in the Isle of Wight, but the Memoir says that they were in

barracks in Dublin in 1721, the year in which Sterne tells us he learned to write.

If the child be father of the man, it is to be feared that Sterne was a dirty little boy, but when he was in the Isle of Wight he was too young a child for those corrupt communications,' which defile the writings of Sterne, the fullgrown man, 'to proceed out of his mouth.' Children are good judges of character. With his sharp, keen insight the little fellow was beginning those studies of military life in which Sterne's chief reputation as an author lies. Mr. Thackeray has remarked, in the very brilliant and just estimate which he has drawn of Sterne in his English Humorists, that a good picture of military life, the most picturesque and delightful part of Sterne's writings, belongs to those military wanderings when the child beat time with his little feet to the fifes of Ramillies, and played in barrackyards with the halberds of Malplaquet. Trim's Montero cap, Lefevre's wound, and Uncle Toby's roquelaure, are memories of the time when the Sterne family wandered from pillar to post, following the drum. Mr. Rudyard Kipling has of late won considerable repute by his portraiture of Mulvaney and his two comrades in arms, but that gifted writer has not yet attained to the wonderful charm with which Sterne brings before our eyes Captain Shandy. In that finished picture every touch has been well considered, has its proper purpose and meaning, and performs its part in producing the general effect. Sterne's undoubted fame as an author borders closely on infamy. Tristram Shandy is an ignoble book, from which no reader rises wiser or better, with the exception of what relates to Captain Shandy and Corporal Trim. These two live like actual existences in our memories, and the former of them, Uncle Toby, draws our sympathies towards him. Along with the Vicar of Wakefield, he is one of the most homely and familiar figures in English fiction. Of Tristram Shandy Professor Morley has said with his accustomed gentleness of censure that it had no end or aim beyond amusement.' When the last volume of that book appeared in 1767 Sterne was upwards of fifty years old. It was a disgrace to a man of his age and his calling in life to provoke mirth among minds of

a baser sort by these 'wrinkled legends of unworthy things.' This foul stain is so engrained in the whole composition that it discolours all his delineations. The whole story of Sterne's life and death is dreary enough; the pleasantest and most wholesome part of it belongs to those years of vagrant childhood and boyhood in which the Isle of Wight has its share. No trace of that short story in the Island remains except the bare notice of it in his Memoir.

In 1719 the Isle of Wight was little known as a place of resort for visitors from the mainland. Military officers and soldiers were coming and going. People of note were living in the Island-Worsleys, Oglanders, and Holmeses-of whom their neighbours thought a great deal; but the name of not one of these and other inhabitants of the Island was to be so widely known hereafter as that of the small child, Laurence Sterne, who lived with his mother in some cottage or obscure lodging-house of the Isle of Wight, while his father was taking his part with his regiment in what the newspapers of that day called the glorious victory of the siege of Vigo. For my part,' says Professor Henry Rogers, in Greyson's Letters, I should not grieve if all mankind died in its fourth year. As far as we can see, it would not seem to be a thing much to be lamented.' As a general assertion this surely is a libel on the loving-kindness of our Father in heaven. In the case of poor Laurence Sterne, it might have been better for him had he followed his brother Joram and sister Anne to an early grave in the Isle of Wight.

November 28, 1891.

COWES, A. D. 1745-1795.

THROUGH the kindness of Mr. Bailey of Newport, and of Mr. John P. Rubie of Cowes, I have been allowed to study an old document in the possession of the latter gentleman. This document is labelled To be taken great care of. Old history of Cowes. From late Mrs. Thorold's papers.'

Within the cover thus labelled are two MSS., the earlier consisting of six sheets of paper, on three of which only is there any writing. This MS. is headed Sketch of the rise and beginning of the seaport town of Cowes, October 7, 1745,' and was written, as internal evidence proves, by Mr. R. Thorold, who was Surveyor of the Customs at Cowes. It contains various entries, the last of which is dated July, 1763. The second MS., which consists of a single sheet of paper, contains entries ranging from February 1, 1775, to May 1, 1795, and is written evidently in a different hand from that of the former MS., and has nothing to point out the writer except that he was of the Thorold family.

From this it will be seen that these old papers cover a ground of fifty years, fifteen of which belong to the reign of that little, choleric, redfaced sovereign, George II, while the remaining thirty-five years comprehend the beginning of the long reign of the grandson of the second Prince of the House of Brunswick, good George III. That last half of the eighteenth century is one of the most interesting periods in our history. A new world was coming into existence at this time in the very midst of old England. When, in 1743, Mr. Thorold began to jot down his notes about the history of Cowes, Charles Edward Stuart (who was called the young Pretender, or the young Chevalier, to distinguish him from his father, James, the old Pretender), the darling Charlie of the Scotch Jacobites, had advanced with his Highlanders, to the great dismay of the English Government, as far as Derby. Some years before these papers came to a close that same Charles Edward, old, tipsy, and childless, was dying at Rome. In India an Empire was being gained by the great victory which Clive won over Suraj-ad-dowla, at Plassy, June 23, 1757, and a handful of our countrymen, separated from home by an immense ocean, were subjugating one of the most powerful and ancient dynasties in the world, and laying the foundation of our vast Oriental dominion. In September, 1759, James Wolfe, a young general of the elder Pitt's choosing, having scaled with his forces the almost inaccessible heights on which Quebec stands, completely defeated the French, and fell in the moment of victory. Within a year