and progress, with the boundless freedom and sportive extravagance, the unimpassioned, unabashed adoration of something warmer than a father, more indulgent, more admiring than a brother, yet brother, father, lover, and friend all in one. Only to a woman could such letters have been addressed, and few women reading them will be disposed to pity Stella or think her life one of blight or injury. Without these the life of the dean would not have touched our human sympathies at all, but now that time has let us thus fully into his confidence, and opened to our sight what was never intended for any but hers and those of her shadow, her guardian, the humble third in this profound and perfect union, it is with moistened eyes that we read the ever living record. There is nothing in the coarse and struggling potency of those books which critics applaud, that comes within a hundred miles of the delightful life and ease of these outpourings of Swift’s innermost soul. The “Tale of a Tub,” the “Battle of the Books,” retain a sort of galvanic existence, but are for the greater part insupportable to the honest readers who have no tradition of superior acumen and perception to maintain. But when we turn to the “Journal,” the clean and wholesome pages smile with a cordial life and reality. If there is here and there a phrase too broad for modern ears, it is nothing more than the language of the time, and has not a ghost of evil meaning in it. The big arrogant wit--not unused to bluster and brag, to act like a tyrant and speak like a bully--meets us there defenseless, with the tenderest light upon his face, in his nightcap and without his wig, smiling over little M. D.’s letter in the wintry mornings, snatching a moment at bedtime when he is already “seepy,” and can do nothing but bid “nite deelest dea M. D. nite deelest loques,” making his mouth, he says, as if he were saying the broken, childish words, retiring into the sanctuary of the little language with an infinite sense of consolation and repose. Outside it may be he swaggered and defied all men, even his patrons; but here an exquisite softness comes over him. However he may be judged or mistaken in the world, he is always understood by the women in that secret world where they make their comments on whatever happens, and merrily answer back again with their criticisms, their strictures, no more afraid of that impetuous, angry genius than if he had been the meekest of rural priests. It is this that has got Swift his hold upon many a reader, who, beginning by hating him, the coarse and bitter wit, the scorner of men and crusher of women’s hearts, has suddenly found his own heart melt in his breast to see the giant lay by his thunders and prattle like an old gossip, like a tender mother, father, all in one, in the baby-talk that first had opened to him the knowledge of all that is sweetest in life. We do not understand the man, much less the woman, who can read without forgiving