about to retire into obscurity, addressed a letter to Swift, entreating him, if he were not tired of his former prosperous friend, "to throw away so much time on one who loved him as to attend him upon his melancholy journey." The same post brought him word that his own victory was won. Bolingbroke triumphant besought his Jonathan, as he loved his Queen, to stand by her Minister, and to aid him in his perilous adventure. Nothing should be wanting to do justice to his loyalty. The Duchess of Somerset would be reconciled, the Queen would be gracious, the path of honor should lie broad, open, and unimpeded before him. Bolingbroke and Harley were equally the friends of Swift. What could he do in his extremity? What would a million men, taken at random from the multitude, have done, had they been so situated, so tempted? Not that upon which Swift in his chivalrous magnanimity, at once decided. He abandoned the prosperous to follow and console the unfortunate. "I meddle not with Lord Oxford's faults," is his noble language, "as he was a Minister of State, but his personal kindness to me was excessive. He distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great." Within a few days of Swift's self-denying decision Queen Anne was a corpse, Bolingbroke and Oxford both flying for their lives, and Swift himself hiding his unprotected head in Ireland amidst a people who at once feared and hated him. During Swift's visit to London in 1710 he had regularly transmitted to Stella, by which name Esther Johnson is made known to posterity, an account of his daily doings with the new Government. The journal exhibits the view of the writer that his conduct invariably presents. It is full of tenderness and confidence, and not without coarseness that startles and shocks. It contains a detailed and minute account, not only of all that passed between Swift and the Government, but of his changeful feelings as they arose from day to day, and of his physical infirmities, that are commonly whispered into the ear of a physician. If Swift loved Stella in the ordinary acceptation of the term, he took small pains in his diary to elevate the sentiments with which she regarded her hero. The journal is not in harmony throughout. Toward the close it lacks the tenderness and warmth, the minuteness and confidential utterance, that are so visible at the beginning. We are enabled to account for the difference. Swift had enlarged the circle of his female acquaintance whilst fighting for his friends in London. He had become a constant visitor, especially, at the house of a Mrs. Vanhomrigh, who had two daughters, the eldest of whom was about twenty years of age, and had the same Christian name as Stella. Esther Vanhomrigh had great taste for reading, and Swift, who seems to have delighted in such occupation, condescended, for the second time in his life, to become a young lady's instructor. The great man's tuition had always one effect upon his pupils.