As the last and only surviving Editor of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in its former shape, when it dealt with the intelligence and the literature of the age, and was a recognised organ of the educated world, I feel that it is my duty at this moment to put in a few words on behalf of a man whose literary merits have never been sufficiently acknowledged. With all his ruggedness and even “bearishness” of manner, what a contrast does he present to us, as he lives in Boswell, to the cross, crabbed, snappish, and selfish “philosopher of Chelsea,” who equalled him in nothing but in plodding industry, and surpassed him, _me judice_, in bearishness alone! And how few of the present generation are there who might not learn lessons of improvement, both moral and intellectual, by a careful and patient study of the “wit and wisdom” of Samuel Johnson! E. WALFORD. Down a Yorkshire River. _PART II._ (_Continued from p._ 218.) A FEW miles lower down, passing through Sowerby Bridge, commercially thriving but poetically poor, we come again to green fields and remnants of ancient forest, and notice on the left hand Wood Hall, where the boy Laurence Sterne, of “Tristram Shandy” fame, spent his early years. The Heath Grammar School, where he was educated, is half an hour’s walk beyond the ridge of the hill in the direction of Halifax. Formerly a rustic bridge, little better than a plank, spanned the river near Wood Hall, and it was along this plank, there is little doubt, that Lucy Gray’s footprints were tracked after she had slipped into the water. We have now reached a point where the scenery, if less wild than the glens and gorges near the border hills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, is scarcely less beautiful, and what it loses in ruggedness of natural contour it gains in historic associations and legendary romance. Copley Hall, in the eleventh century the residence of the knightly family of Copley, has long ago been turned into cottages, but the name survives in the pretty modern village and prettier church, and antiquaries love to dwell on the old stories connected with the spot, and tell how Adam de Copley fell fighting for William the Conqueror at the siege of York; how his grandson, another Adam de Copley, became rector of his parish church at Halifax; and how a third Sir Adam, for this was a favourite name, carried away a sister from Kirklees Nunnery, and afterwards joined the Crusaders and died in Palestine. This fair nun, alas! was immured in a tower seven stories high, and mysterious lights were long seen to burn in the ladye’s chamber, the ruins of which are said to have been visible some years ago. Elland, anciently and more correctly Ealand, with its fine old fane and relics of mediæval times, where the Ealands and the Saviles lived in barbaric splendour, was the scene of many a thrilling legend and bloody fray, notably the tragedy, or rather chain of tragedies, which ended in the murder of Sir John Ealand and his