“There is something strange in it,” says Sterne, “that life should appear so short _in the gross_, and yet so long _in the detail_. Misery may make it so, you'll say;—but we will exclude it,—and still you'll find, though we all complain of the shortness of life what numbers there are who seem quite overstocked with the days and hours of it, and are constantly sending out into the highways and streets of the city, to compel guests to come in, and take it off their hands: to do this with ingenuity and forecast, is not one of the least arts and business of life itself; and they who cannot succeed in it, carry as many marks of distress about them, as bankruptcy itself could wear. Be as careless as we may, we shall not always have the power,—nor shall we always be in a temper to let the account run thus. When the blood is cooled, and the spirits which have hurried us on through half our days before we have numbered one of them, are beginning to retire;—then wisdom will press a moment to be heard,—afflictions, or a bed of sickness will find their hours of persuasion:—and should they fail, there is something yet behind:—old age will overtake us at the last, and with its trembling hand, hold up the glass to us.” CHAPTER CXCII. MORE OF THE DOCTOR'S PHILOSOPHY, WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BE LIKED BY THE LADIES, AND SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BY THE GENTLEMEN. THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO COUNT CASTIGLIONE, AND TO SIR JOHN CHEKE. _Ou tend l'auteur à cette heure? Que fait-il? Revient-il? Va-t-il? Ou s'il demeure?_ L'AUTEUR. _Non, je ne reviens pas, car je n'ai pas été; Je ne vais pas aussi, car je suis arrété; Et ne demeure point, car, tout de ce pas même Je pretens m'en aller._ MOLIERE. The passage with which the preceding Chapter is concluded, is extracted from Sterne's Sermons, one of those discourses in which he tried the experiment of adapting the style of Tristram Shandy to the pulpit;—an experiment which proved as unsuccessful as it deserved to be. Gray however thought these sermons were in the style which in his opinion was most proper for the pulpit, and that they showed “a very strong imagination and a sensible head. But you see him, he adds, often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his perriwig in the face of his audience.” The extract which has been set before the reader is one of those passages which bear out Gray's judgement; it is of a good kind, and in its kind so good, that I would not weaken its effect, by inserting too near it the following Epigram from an old Magazine, addressed to a lady passionately fond of cards.