a spirit naturally cheerful," he says in his second year of residence, "I should be very much discontented at a thousand things. Pray God preserve MD's health, and Pdfr's, and that I may live far from the envy and discontent that attends those who are thought to have more favor at court than they really possess. Love Pdfr, who loves MD above all things." And then the letter winds off into those cryptic epistolary caresses of which a specimen has been already quoted.

Upon Stella's reputed rival, and Swift's relations with her, the scope of this paper dispenses us from dwelling. Indeed, though Swift's visits to Miss Vanhomrigh's mother are repeatedly referred to, Esther Vanhomrigh herself (from motives which the reader will no doubt interpret according to his personal predilections in the famous Vanessa-frage) is mentioned but twice or thrice in the entire journal, and then not by name. But we are of those who hold with Mr. Henry Craik that, whatever the relations in question may have been, they never seriously affected or even materially interrupted Swift's lifelong attachment to the lady to whom a year or two later, he was or was not (according as we elect to side with Sir Walter Scott or Mr. Forster) married by the Bishop of Clogher in the garden of Sir Patrick's Deanery. For one thing which is detachable from the network of tittletattle and conjecture encumbering a question already sufficiently perplexed in its origin is that Swift's expressions of esteem and admiration for Stella are as emphatic at the end as at the beginning. Some of those in the journal have already been reproduced. But his letters during her last lingering illness, and a phrase in the Holyhead diary of 1727, are, if anything, even more poignant in the sincerity of their utterance. "We have been perfect friends these thirty-five years," he tells Mr. Worrall, his vicar, of Mrs. Johnson; and he goes on to describe her as one whom he "most esteemed upon the score of every good quality that can possibly commend a human creature. ever since I left you my heart has been so sunk that I have not been the same man, nor ever shall be again, but drag on a wretched life, till it shall please God to call me away." To another correspondent, speaking of Stella's then hourly-expected death, he says, “as I value life very little, so the poor casual remains of it, after such a loss, would be a burden that I beg God Almighty to enable me to bear; and I think there is not a greater folly than that of entering into too strict and particular a friendship, with the loss

of which a man must be absolutely miserable.

Besides,

this was a person of my own rearing and instructing from childhood, who excelled in every good quality that can possibly accomplish a human creature." The date of this letter is July, 1726; but it was not until the beginning of 1728 that the blow came which deprived him of his "dearest friend." Then, on a Sunday in January, at eleven at night, he sits down to compile that (in the circumstances) extraordinary "character" of "the truest, most virtuous, and valuable friend that I, or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed with." A few passages from this strange finis to a strange story began while Stella was lying dead, and continued after her funeral (in a room to which he had not moved in order to avoid the sight of the light in the church), may be copied here. "Never," he says, "was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversation. Her advice was always the best, and with the greatest freedom, mixed with the greatest decency. She had a gracefulness somewhat more than human in every motion, word, and action. Never was so happy a conjunction of civility, freedom, easiness, and sincerity. She never mistook the understanding of others; nor ever said a severe word, but where a much severer was deserved. She never had the least absence of mind in conversation, nor was given to interruption, nor appeared eager to put in her word, by waiting impatiently till another had done. She spoke in a most agreeable voice, in the plainest words, never hesitating, except out of modesty before new faces, where she was somewhat reserved; nor among her nearest friends, ever spoke much at a time. Although her knowledge from books and company was much more extensive than usually falls to the share of her sex, yet she was so far from making a parade of it that her female visitants, on their first acquaintance, who expected to discover it by what they call words and deep discourse, would be sometimes disappointed, and say they found she was like other women. But wise men, through all her modesty, whatever they discoursed on, could easily observe that she understood them very well, by the judgment shown in her observations as well as in her questions."

In the foregoing retrospect, as in the final birthday poems to Stella, Swift, it will be gathered, dwells upon the intellectual rather than the physical charms of this celebrated woman. To her mental qualities, indeed, he had always given the foremost

place. But time, in 1728, had long since silvered those locks once "blacker than a raven," while years of failing health had sadly altered the perfect figure, and dimmed the lustre of the beautiful eyes. What she had been is not quite easy for a modern admirer to realize from the dubious Delville medallion, or the inadequate engraving by Engleheart of the picture at Ballinter, which forms the frontispiece to Sir William Wilde's deeply interesting "Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life." The more accurate photogravure of the latter given in Mr. Gerald Moriarty's recent book is much more satisfactory, and so markedly to Esther Johnson's advantage as to suggest the further reproduction of the portrait in some separate and accessible form.

Complete. From Longman's Magazine 1893.

มา

PHILIP DODDRIDGE

(1702-1751)

hilip DoddridgE, one of the most celebrated theologians of

the eighteenth century, was born in 1702, the youngest of a family of twenty children. His father, a London merchant, educated him at the best private schools, and he studied for the ministry under the impulse of a fondness for the Bible derived from stories told him by his mother in explanation of the meaning of the Scriptural scenes in Dutch tiles, which had attracted his attention. His principal prose work is "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul." His hymns are still favorites wherever English is spoken.

ON THE POWER AND BEAUTY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

THE

HE New Testament is a book written with the most consummate knowledge of human nature; and though there are a thousand latent beauties in it, which it is the business and glory of true criticism to place in a strong point of light, the general sense and design of it is plain to every honest reader, even at the very first perusal. It is evidently intended to bring us to God through Christ, in a humble dependence on the communication of his sanctifying and quickening Spirit; and to engage us to a course of faithful and universal obedience, chiefly from a grateful sense of the riches of Divine grace, manifested to us in the Gospel. And though this scheme is indeed liable to abuse, as everything else is, it appears to me plain in fact, that it has been, and still is, the grand instrument of reforming a very degenerate world; and, according to the best observations I have been able to make on what has passed about me, or within my own breast, I have found that, in proportion to the degree in which this evangelical scheme is received and relished, the interest of true virtue and holiness flourished, and the mind is formed to manly devotion, diffusive benevolence, steady fortitude, and, in short, made ready to every good word and work.

We have here the authentic records of that Gospel which was intended as the great medicine for our souls! of that character which is our pattern; of that death which is our ransom; of him, in short, whose name we bear, as we are professed Christians; and before whose tribunal we are all shortly to appear, that our eternal existence may be determined, blissful or miserable, according to our regard for what he has taught and done and endured. Let not the greatest, therefore, think it beneath their notice; nor the meanest imagine that amidst all the most necessary cares and labors they can find any excuse for neglecting or for even postponing it.

The account which the New Testament gives us of the temper and character of our Divine Redeemer is a topic of argument by no means to be forgotten. We do not, indeed, there meet with any studied encomiums upon the subject. The authors deal not in such sort of productions; but, which is a thousand times better, they show us the character itself. The sight of what is great and beautiful has another kind of effect than the most eloquent description of it. And here we behold the actions of Christ; we attend his discourses, and have a plain and open view of his behavior. In consequence of this we see in him everything venerable, everything amiable. We see a perfection of goodness nowhere in the world to be seen or to be heard; and numberless arguments plead at once to persuade the heart that it is absolutely impossible such a person should be engaged in a design founded in known falsehood, and tending only to mislead and ruin his followers.

And though it is true the character of his Apostles does not fully come up to the standard of their Master, nor is entirely free from some small blemishes; yet we see so little of that kind in them, and, on the contrary, such an assemblage of the human, divine, and social virtues, that we cannot, if we thoroughly know them, if we form an intimate acquaintance with them, entertain with patience the least suspicion that they were capable of a part so detestable as theirs must have been, if they knew Jesus to have been an impostor, and the Gospel a fable; with which they must be chargeable, if Christianity were not indeed authentic and divine.

The series of sufferings which they endured; the gentle, humble patience with which they bore them; the steady perseverance and invincible fortitude with which they pursued their scheme,