every one has in his head some feeble image of Europe and the world. Sterne showed the delicate docility which belongs to a sensitive and experiencing nature. He understood and enjoyed very much of this new and strange life, if not the whole. The proof of this remains written in the _Sentimental Journey_. There is no better painting of first and easy impressions than that book. After all which has been written on the _ancien régime_, an Englishman at least will feel a fresh instruction on reading these simple observations. They are instructive _because_ of their simplicity. The old world at heart was not like that; there were depths and realities, latent forces and concealed results, which were hidden from Sterne’s eye, which it would have been quite out of his way to think of or observe. But the old world _seemed_ like that. This was the spectacle of it as it was seen by an observing stranger; and we take it up, not to know what was the truth, but to know what we should have thought to be the truth if we had lived in those times. People say _Eöthen_ is not like the real East; very likely it is not, but it is like what an imaginative young Englishman would _think_ the East. Just so, the _Sentimental Journey_ is not the true France of the old monarchy, but it is exactly what an observant quick-eyed Englishman might fancy that France to be. This has given it popularity; this still makes it a valuable relic of the past. It is not true to the outward nature of real life, but it is true to the reflected image of that life in an imaginative and sensitive man. Here is the actual description of the old chivalry of France; the ‘cheap defence of nations,’ as Mr. Burke called it a little while afterwards: ‘When states and empires have their periods of declension, and feel in their turns what distress and poverty is—I stop not to tell the causes which gradually brought the house d’E—— in Brittany into decay. The Marquis d’E—— had fought up against his condition with great firmness; wishing to preserve, and still show to the world, some little fragments of what his ancestors had been—their indiscretions had put it out of his power. There was enough left for the little exigencies of _obscurity_. But he had two boys who look’d up to him for _light_—he thought they deserved it. He had tried his sword—it could not open the way—the _mounting_ was too expensive—and simple economy was not a match for it—there was no resource but commerce.