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Spenser, Edmund, the English poet, author of the Faerie Queene, resided for a considerable time in Ireland. He was born in London in 1552, and came over as Secretary to Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton, probably in August 1580. In the following March he obtained the lucrative post of Clerk of Decrees and Recog­nizances in the Irish Court of Chancery. He was given a lease on beneficial terms of the abbey and manor of Enniscorthy. About 1586 he was granted 3,028 acres in the County of Cork, including the manor and Castle of Kilcolman; and in June 1588 was appointed Secretary of the Council of Munster. On the nt h June 1594, he married, at Cork, the daughter of a mer­chant of that city. It is believed that he wrote much of the Faerie Queene at Kilcolman. The beautiful and interest­ing references to the Irish rivers in that work (Book iv. Canto 11., vv. 40-44), were doubtless written from personal observa­tions. Spenser's important political tract, A View of the State of Ireland, written Dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Irenaeus, was probably composed in 1596, during a visit to England. It was not printed till 1633, at the cost of Sir James Ware. It is an extremely interesting and thoughtful survey of the state of Ireland and its relations with England, and contains much that is applicable to the present day. His low estimate of the character of the inhabitants of the country, and his heartless incentives to further sweeping confiscations of the lands of the Irish were so irritating, that it is not surprising he was one of the first sufferers from the effort of the Sugan Earl of Desmond, in 1598, to repossess himself of the estates of his forefathers. Early in October, upon the breaking out of hostilities, Kilcolman was attacked and set on fire. Spenser, his wife, and family with difficulty escaped, leaving behind an infant, who probably perished in the flames. He died in poverty in London, three months after­wards, 16th January 1599, aged 46. His widov,who married again before 1603, was granted a small estate by the Government. It has been difficult to trace the history of the poet's sons, Sylvanus and Pere­grine, who remained in or returned to Ireland. Edmund, the eldest son of Syl­vanus, is understood to have died unmarried; while Hugoline, Peregrine's son, suffered outlawry and loss of property for joining the Irish side in the Wars of 1641-'52 and 1689-'91. It was contended by Sir William Betham that Spenser left two other children, Lawrence and Katherine; but diligent search has failed to establish anything concerning them, or to trace his descendants beyond the second generation.

Spratt, James, inventor of the "homo­graph," a commander in the Royal Navy, ivas born at Harold's Cross, near Dublin, 3rd May 1771. He entered the navy in 1796, and in 1805 was a master's-mate at the battle of Trafalgar, where he distin­guished himself on board the Defiance, 74, and was consequently promoted to the rank of lieutenant. He served with credit in many parts of the world, saving the lives of fellow-seamen upon several occasions. He received a small pension in 1817; and in 1838 was gazetted a retired commander. In 1809 he was presented with a silver medal by the Society of Arts for his invention of the "homograph," or mode of signalling by a handkerchief, the groundwork of the semaphore now in universal use on railway lines in this coun­try. Commander Spratt was living in 1849.

Spratt, John, D.D., a philanthropist, was born in 1797, in Dublin, where he re­ceived his early education. At eighteen he was sent to a Carmelite College in Spain, at which he remained four years, and entered the Carmelite order, of which he became Provincial in Ireland. He was the prime mover in the foundation of many Catholic buildings and institutions in Dublin. The Carmelite Church in Whitefriar-street, the St. Peter's Orphanage, the St. Joseph's Night Refuge, the Catholic Asylum for the Female Blind, were amongst his most useful foundations. He was one of the first to join Father Mathew in his crusade against intemperance; and to the cause of total abstinence he devoted his most untiring energies for many years, working almost daily in conjunction with his friend James Haughton. Together they held Sunday evening meetings; and was on all occasions ready to administer the total abstinence pledge. In 1871, four months before his death, he consulted two eminent physicians respecting symptoms of gan­grene in the toe, the result of languid circulation. The doctors prescribed alcohol. He reflected for a moment, and said: "I have spent my life in denouncing the use of alcohol, and it is better that I should now die than live a little longer by its help." He was struck down suddenly by heart disease while administering the pledge in Whitefriar-street Church, 27th May, 1871, aged 74, and was buried at Glasnevin.

Stanyhurst, Richard, Rev., an emi­nent author, was born in Dublin about 1545. [His father, James Stanyhurst, author of Pias Orationes, and other works, was Recorder of Dublin and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. He died in 1573.] Richard was educated at Oxford; studied law at Lincoln's Inn; returned to Ireland, married, and became a Catholic; removed to the Continent, where he lost his wife; and subsequently took orders, and became chaplain to the Archduke Albert of Austria. He died at Brussels in 1618. He was the author of several theological treatises, and translated the first four books of Virgil's AEneid into heroic verse; but the work with which his name is chiefly connected is his De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis, which, with an appendix out of Cambrensis, and some annotations, he published at Antwerp in 1584. It has been several times reprinted. Keating says the book abounds in errors, not to say malicious misrepresentations, but that he lived to repent the injustice thus done to the character of his country­men, and when he entered into orders promised to recant publicly. The trans­lation of Virgil has been generally con­demned. His brother Walter is mentioned in Harris's Ware as the translator of a Latin work; and his son William, born in Belgium, who, like himself, became a Jesuit, wrote some works in Latin, enume­rated by the same authority. Richard Stanyhurst was uncle of Archbishop Ussher.

Staunton, Sir George Leonard, Bart., an Indian administrator, was born at Cargin, County of Galway, 19th April 1737. In consequence of ill-health, he was, at sixteen, sent to Montpelier, France, where he completed his education and took out his medical degree. In 1760 he repaired to London. His literary abili­ties soon secured him an introduction to Johnson and other eminent men. In 1762 he removed to the West Indies. There he practised medicine, and held several official situations. Having ac­quired a competency, he returned to Eng­land in 1770. He married, went back to the West Indies, and having studied law was appointed Attorney-General of Grenada. In 1779 the island was taken by the French, and with the Governor, Lord Macartney, he was sent as prisoner of war to France. After being ex­changed, he went to India as private secretary to Lord Macartney, who had been appointed Governor of Madras. His talents had now full play, and he was engaged in a series of missions of great importance. "On a very critical oc­casion, when the civil and military authori­ties of Madras were at issue, he undertook the delicate and possibly hazardous office of executing an order of the Government, placing under arrest the commander-in-chief of the army, Major-General Stuart; and he thus preserved, by his vigour and promptitude, both the tranquillity of the settlement and the supremacy of the civil governor. But the transaction in which his diplomatic abilities were chiefly displayed, was the negotiation of a treaty of peace with Tippoo Sultan in 1784, by which the safety of our Indian possessions was secured at a crisis of great difficulty and peril. For this service he was imme­diately raised to a baronetcy, and the East India Company conferred on him a pension of £500 a year for life. On his return to England he also received the honorary degree of Doctor-of-Laws from the Uni­versity of Oxford." In 1792 he accom­panied Lord Macartney as joint minister plenipotentiary on a mission to Pekin. His health was sacrificed to his exertions on this occasion, and a few months after his return to England he was prostrated by an attack of paralysis. Retaining the full vigour of his intellect, he undertook the publication of a narrative of the proceed­ings of the Chinese embassy, a work of great interest, which was read with avidity at the time, and is referred to as one of the first authorities on all matters con­nected with China. Sir George died in London, 14th January 1801, aged 63, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument by Chantrey has been erected to his memory. He was, in the early part of his career at least, a decided Liberal in politics. [His son, Sir George T. Staunton, Bart., born in England, an eminent Oriental and Chinese scholar, died in 1859.]

Stearne, John, Dr., founder of the College of Physicians, Dublin, was born at Ardbraccan, Meath, in the house of his grand-uncle, Archbishop Ussher, 26th No­vember 1624. He entered Trinity College when but fifteen; in 1641 obtained a scholarship; in 1643 was elected a fellow; afterwards became lecturer on Hebrew; and in 1660 a senior fellow. The War of 1641 interrupted his studies, and he retired to Cambridge. After spending there seven years of "peculiar felicity and quiet" he removed to Oxford. On the return of peace his private practice as a physician in Dublin occupied most of his attention. In 1660, Trinity Hall (standing or the ground now occupied by Trinity-place), belonging to Trinity College, was set apart as a medical school, and Stearne was constituted president for life. In 1667 he obtained a charter, and the present Col­lege of Physicians was formally organized. Dr. Stearne, and thirteen other doctors of medicine, of whom Sir William Petty was one, were constituted Fellows. "Dr. Stearne had now seen the favourite project of his life accomplished, and was the ac­knowledged head of the medical profession in Ireland. Nothing further can be learned of his public life after this." He died 18th November 1669, aged 45, and was buried in Trinity College, beneath the College chapel of that day, near the present belfry, most of the Library Square being then a cemetery surrounding the old chapel. "He was an Admirable Crichton in his way, and it may be said of him, in well-worn phrase, he touched nothing that he did not adorn. He excelled as a philoso­pher and physician, and equally so as a theologian, in an intensely theological age. Presuming his epitaph to have been written by Henry Dodwell, who knew him long and intimately, it may be maintained that with truth the pupil styled the master, `Philosophus medicus summusque the­ologus idem.' Most of his writings were on theological subjects."

Stearne, John, Bishop of Clogher, son of the preceding, was born in Dublin in 1660. He was the predecessor of Swift in the deanery of St. Patrick's; was cre­ated Bishop of Dromore in 1713, and was translated to Clogher in 1717. He ex­pended large sums on the cathedrals and palaces of the dioceses he presided over, built the College Printing-office, Dublin, at a personal cost of £1,200, and bequeathed £30,000 for various charitable uses. Swift corresponded with him for many years on the most intimate and friendly terms; but in 1733 the Dean is said to have sent him a "letter full of bitter sarcasm and re­proach, to which the Bishop returned an answer that marks a superior command of temper; but it appears.. that his lordship deserved much of what Swift imputed to him." Stearne died 6th June 1745. He left an estate for charitable purposes, which now produces £2,000 a year, and is administered by a body of trustees. Lawrence Sterne, the author, is said by some to have been descended from him.

Steele, Sir Richard, essayist and dramatist, the son of a lawyer who was private secretary to the Duke of Ormond, was born in Dublin early in 1671. He lost his father when still a child, and at twelve years of age, through the influence of the Duke, was admitted into the Charter-house School, London. There he formed an intimacy with Addison, who was one year his junior. In 1689 he matricu­lated at Oxford; but left without taking his degree. He had a passion for mili­tary life, and greatly to the dismay of his friends, entered the army as a private. As he afterwards expressed it, he thereby "lost the succession to a very good estate in the County of Wexford, in Ireland, from the same humour, which he has preserved ever since, of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune." His talents and social qualities were not long in pro­curing him a commission - first as ensign, then as captain. He was also appointed secretary to Lord Cutts, his commanding officer. In 1701 he astonished his gay companions by the publication of a little book, The Christian Hero, designed to prove that "no principles but those of religion are sufficient to make a great man." The contrast between its pre­cepts and the author's free-and-easy life was too great to escape general notice, and he was subjected to much raillery by his companions. In the following year he published his first comedy, The Funeral, and soon afterwards The Tender Husband. It has been remarked that "they were the first that were written expressly with a view, not to imitate the manners, but to reform the morals of the age.. Nothing can be better meant or more inefficient. It is almost a misnomer to call them comedies; they are rather homilies in dialogue." On the advent to power of his friends, the Whigs, in Queen Anne's reign, he was appointed (May 1707), chiefly through Addison's influence, editor of the Gazette, and one of the gentlemen ushers of the Prince Consort. Scarcely anything is known concerning his first wife, who died a few months after their marriage. His profusion and generosity dissipated her fortune, and his income of £300 a year as Gazetteer was soon heavily forestalled. On the 7th September 1707 he married his second wife, Miss Scurlock, of Llangunnor, in Caermarthenshire, a lady of great per­sonal attractions, and possessed of an estate of about £400 a year. Steele continued de­votedly attached to her through life. The most characteristic portions of his memoirs are the hundreds of short notes she re­ceived from him, which generally com­mence "Dear Prue," and abound with tender expressions on the most trivial oc­casions. He wrote constantly of their chil­dren. Mr. Forster says: "He writes to her on the way to the Kit-Kat, in waiting on my Lord Wharton or the Duke of Newcastle. He coaxes her to dress well for the dinner to which he has invited the Mayor of Stockbridge, Lord Halifax, and Mr. Addison. He writes to her in the brief momentous interval [to be afterwards referred to] when, having made his defence in the House of Commons, he was waiting for the final judgment which Addison was to convey to him. He writes to her when he has the honour of being received at dinner by Lord Somers; and he writes to her from among the `dancing, singing, hooping, hallooing, and drinking' of one of his elections for Boroughbridge. He sends a special despatch to her for no other purpose than to tell her she has nothing to do but be a darling. He sends her as many as a dozen letters in the course of his journey to Edin­burgh; and when, on his return, illness keeps them apart, one in London, the other at Hampton Court, her happen­ing to call him 'Good Dick,' puts him in so much rapture, that he tells her he could almost forget his miserable gout and lame­ness, and walk down to her." Mrs. Steele was often sorely tried by his irregularities, extravagance, and convivial habits; and although considered by some of his friends stiff and prudish, she was acknowledged by all to be good-hearted, forbearing, and true. She even took to her home and heart Steele's illegitimate daughter, of whose existence, prior to her marriage, she had been ignorant. The Steeles commenced life in much style, with a town and country house, a chariot and pair, riding-horses, and a large establishment of servants. These expenses necessitated a loan of £1,000 from Addison, the non-payment of which eventually led to a breach between the friends. On 12th April 1709, Steele com­menced the publication of the Tatler, the first of that series of periodicals with which his name is imperishably united. His biographer says: “They formed a new era, and added an additional depart­ment to the national literature, which has commonly been designated by the title of the British Classics or Essayists. They produced such important effects for good in their own age, have had such a beneficial influence in giving a tone to the tastes and manners of successive generations since, have afforded mingled delight and in­struction to such multitudes of readers, .. and have left such an impress upon our language and literature, that it is difficult to speak justly of their various claims without appearing to exaggerate." The Tatler, price one penny per number, appeared thrice a week. Like the Spec­tator and other periodicals of which it was the forerunner, each number was a small folio leaf containing about 2,500 words, and generally comprising but one article or essay. Steele commenced the paper on the strength of his own resources; but he had proceeded only as far as the seven­teenth number when Addison came to his aid. After publishing 271 numbers, extending over twenty-one months, he brought the Tatler to a close in the very height of its reputation, and to the great regret of his readers. "If less regular in its plan, and less elaborate in a literary point of view than its immediate or more celebrated successor, the Spectator, it has certainly at least a spirit more fresh and racy, if less dignified and elaborate." Before the Tatler came to an end, he was appointed Commissioner of Stamps. He lost the position of Gazetteer, in con­sequence of some papers in which it was supposed he showed hostility to the Tory ministry. Swift accounted for his giving up the paper by saying that "he was so lazy and weary of the work." On 1st March 1711, the Spectator made its appearance. Steele was the re­sponsible writer and conductor of the paper. Of the thirty numbers which con­tain the account of "Sir Roger de Coverly," Addison wrote about twenty, and Steele the rest. The Spectator comprised altogether 635 papers, of which 274 are attributed to Addison, and about 238 to Steele. The original series was brought to a close in December 1712. In March 1713, Steele commenced the Guardian. His biographer says: "We cannot regret the dropping of the different papers, and resuming his labours under a new title. It has con­tributed greatly to their variety, and each successive effort stimulated his invention to fresh sketches of character and clubs, and developed in new social combinations his wonderful knowledge of human nature and of life." The aim of the Guardian was narrower than that of its predecessor. In its publication he was aided by Addison, Berkeley, Gay, Ambrose Philips, Tickell, Rowe, and other eminent literary men. It was brought to a conclusion on the 1st October 1713, after an issue of 175 num­bers. Steele's papers number eighty-two, Addison's fifty-one. On the 4th of June 1713, having, as he expressed it, "an am­bition to serve in the ensuing Parliament," he resigned his commissionership of stamps, and in August was elected member for Stockbridge. The political fever with which he was seized displayed itself in the commencement of the Englishman a few days after the termination of the Guardian. It lived through seventy-two numbers, to 15th February 1714. When Parliament met in March, a complaint was made that some paragraphs in the Englishman of the previous January reflected upon the Queen's government. On the 18th Steele was arraigned at the bar of the House, and defended himself in an able and tem­perate speech of about three hours' dura­tion. On a division it was resolved, by 245 votes to 152, "That Richard Steele, Esq., for his offence in writing and publishing the said scandalous and seditious libels, be expelled this house." Hallam ob­serves: "This was perhaps the first instance wherein the House of Commons so identi­fied itself with the executive administration, independently of the sovereign's person, as to consider itself libelled by those who impugned its measures." In addition to An Apology for himself and his writings, Steele about this time gave to the world a volume of Poetic Miscellanies, and a collection of poetry in three volumes, entitled the Ladies' Library. He also engaged in publishing the Lover, the Reader, and similar small periodicals. On the accession of George I., Steele, recommended to his notice as a zealous friend of his house, was appointed Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, and Governor of the Royal Com­pany of Comedians, deriving from the latter appointment alone, some £1,000 a year. He was also made a Deputy-Lieutenant, and received the honorary degree of LL.D. In February 1715 he re-entered Parlia­ment for Borough bridge, in Yorkshire, and was shortly afterwards knighted. After the suppression of the rising of 1715, he was appointed one of the Commissioners of forfeited estates in Scotland. In 1718 he entered upon an unfortunate speculation - the "fish-pool" - a project by which he hoped to bring fish alive to London, from remote parts of Ireland and Scot­land, salmon then selling in London at 5s. per lb. In the same year he lost his wife. Her remains were interred in Westminster Abbey. In 1719 Steele was for a time deprived of most of his offices, because of his determined opposition to the Peerage Bill - a Government measure. In 1720 he wrote strongly against the South Sea scheme; but his judgment in his own affairs was not sound enough to keep him clear of debt and dif­ficulty, the consequences of extravagance. In 1724, broken down in health, he retired to Llangunnor, in Wales, an estate that had belonged to his wife. An adverse decision in a lawsuit was followed by an attack of paralysis. He abandoned literary pursuits, and lingered on, enjoying a quiet country life, until 1st September 1729, when he died, aged 58. He was buried by his own desire in the chancel of St. Peter's Church, Carmaerthen. The Encyclopaedia Britannica sums up his character in the following terms: "Sir Richard was a man of undissembled and extensive benevolence, a friend to the friendless, and, as far as his circumstances would permit, the father of every orphan. His works are chaste and manly. He was a stranger to the most distant appearance of envy or malevolence, never jealous of any man's growing reputation, and so far from arrogating any praise to himself from his conjunction with Addison, that he was the first who desired him to distinguish his papers. His great fault was want of economy; and it has been said of him he was certainly the most agreeable and the most innocent rake that ever trod the rounds of dissipation." Thackeray, in his Lectures on the English Humourists, thus concludes his remarks on Steele: " We are living in the 19th century, and poor Dick Steele stumbled and got up again; and got into jail and out again; and sinned and repented; and loved and suffered; and lived and died, scores of years ago. Peace be with him! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle; let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with human kindness.... The great charm of Steele's writing is its naturalness. He wrote so quickly and carelessly, that he was forced to make the reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He had a small share of book learning, but a vast acquaintance with the world... Women especially are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them." There are several references to Steele in Notes and Queries.

Steele, Thomas, M.A., a prominent Repealer, was born 3rd November 1788, at Derrymore, County of Clare. He was educated at Cambridge, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1820. He soon after­wards became a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers. An uncle's death placed him in possession of the family property in Clare. Of an enthusiastic and adventurous temperament, he entered the Spanish service at 1823, and dis­tinguished himself at the defence of Cadiz, and in other warlike operations. On his return to Ireland he became one of O'Connell's most strenuous supporters, and earned the title of "Head Pacifi­cator," from his efforts in putting down the faction fights and local differences through­out Ireland which so materially weakened the popular cause. He seconded O'Connell's nomination for Clare. Sir Bernard Burke says that Steele used to prefer the old ruin of Craggan Tower, upon his property, to his comfortable house, and meditated its restoration; but his extra­vagance and utter recklessness regarding money matters prevented the carrying out of this and other fancies. Sir Bernard Burke continues: "He seemed utterly in­capable of rationally estimating the value of money in his own case. Finance was with him a consideration wholly subor­dinate to the accomplishment of any pro­ject that seized on his fancy. In his mind there was no due proportion. He was as enthusiastic about the most trivial as the most important affairs. But he was in­tensely true and staunch to the political cause he espoused, and this quality of earnest sincerity, united with his unques­tionable readiness to hazard his life at any moment in defence of his principles, or of his mighty leader, justly earned for him the name "by which friends and foes alike agreed to designate him - 'Honest Tom Steele.' In his private circle he was very popular; his eccentricities furnished mat­ter of amusement, and his sterling worth was appreciated." It may be added that he was as careless of other people's money as of his own. His speeches were rhapsodi­cal and romantic. Mr. Daunt thus describes his latter days: "When O'Connell died, life lost all its savour for Tom Steele. His heart and soul had been wrapped up in the movement of which his departed chief was the leader. To him there seemed no­thing now worth living for. The hideous visitation of famine laid waste the land he loved so well. His private means had been long since exhausted; and it is painful to record that he tried to put an end to the existence which had now become a bur­den, by leaping into the Thames from one of the bridges of London. He was taken up alive, but greatly injured by his rash attempt. A benevolent Englishman, the proprietor of Peele's Coffee House in Fleet-street, received the ill-fated agitator into his house, where he ministered with the utmost generosity and delicacy to the wants of poor Steele during the short remainder of his life." Lord Brougham and many political opponents generously came forward with offers of aid, which the dying man declined. He breathed his last on the 15th June 1848, aged 59. His re­mains were brought to Ireland, waked in Conciliation Hall, Dublin, and buried in Glasnevin. The Standard concluded its notice of his death with the words: "Fare thee well, noble, honest Tom Steele! A braver spirit, in a gentler heart, never left earth -let us humbly hope for that home where the weary find rest." In person Steele was tall and well-proportioned, and had a somewhat martial appearance, to which his military cap and frock-coat not a little contributed. His bronzed countenance wore an expression of resolute determination.

Steevens, Dr. Richard and Grissel, brother and sister, founders of the Dublin hospital bearing their name, were born in England the latter part of the 17th century. Their father, a royalist Church clergyman, for preaching against Oliver Cromwell, was obliged to seek refuge in Ireland, bringing with him his wife and twin infants, Richard and Grissel. He gave the former a good education, and at his decease in 1682 left his daughter a portion of £800. Richard, after proceeding so far in his divinity course as to be admitted to deacon's orders, devoted himself to the study of physic, and became a doctor. Impressed with the condition of the Dub­lin sick poor, he, when dying in 1710, left the whole of his property, consisting of real estate in the County of Westmeath and Queen's County, worth then £604 a year, in the hands of trustees, for the benefit of his sister during her life, and after her death to be devoted to the foundation of a hospital. Grissel, de­siring to see her brothers good intentions carried into effect during her own life­time, surrendered the income bequeathed to her, reserving only £150 a year for her maintenance, and apartments in the proposed institution. She also contributed £2,000 of her own savings. Additional funds were collected, an Act of Parliament was procured, and a board of governors incorporated at Madame Steevens's desire, of which, Swift was a member. Among the endowments was one from Esther Johnson, to continue only so long as the Episcopal Church remained in connexion with the state in Ireland. The building of the hospital was commenced in 1720 and completed in 1733, at a cost of £16,000; and it has ever since continued one of the most important and beneficial of Dublin charities. It was very generally believed amongst the poor that Madame Steevens had the face of a pig; to dissipate which absurd idea she was accustomed to sit in one of the corridors of the hospital with her veil up, for some hours once a week. Grissel Steevens died at an advanced age, in March 1747. Her portrait occupies a prominent position in the board-room of the institution.

Sterne, Lawrence, Rev., author of Tristram Shandy, was born at Clonmel, on the 24th November 1713. His father, Roger Sterne, grandson of an Archbishop of York, was an ensign. His mother, Agnes Nuttle, a native of Clonmel, was the daughter of a sutler. They married during the campaign in Flanders. Sterne gives the following picture of his father: "My father was a little, smart man, act­ive to the last degree in all exercises, most patient of fatigue and disappointments, of which it pleased God to give him a full measure; he was in his temper somewhat rapid and hasty; but of a kindly, sweet, disposition, void of all design, and so in­nocent in his own intentions, that he sus­pected no one; so that you might have cheated him ten times a day, if nine had not been sufficient for your purpose." Law­rence was born shortly after their return from the Continent. "My birth-day," he continues, "was ominous to my poor father, who was, the day after our arrival, with many other brave officers, broke, and sent adrift into the world, with a wife and two children." Much of his early life was passed in the different gar­rison towns. When seven years of age Mrs. Sterne and her family lived for a time with a relation at Annamoe, in the County of Wicklow. "It was in this parish," says Sterne, "during our stay, that I had that wonderful escape, in fall­ing through a mill-race while the mill was going, and being taken up unhurt; the story is incredible, but known for truth in all that part of Ireland, where hundreds of the common people flocked to see me." At eleven years of age he was sent to England, and put to school near Halifax, at the expense of his father's relatives. His father died in Jamaica in 1731, from the effects of a duel fought at Gibraltar a few years before. The widow, though harassed with the care of a large family, survived him twenty-seven years. Law­rence made good progress at school, and in 1733 was sent, through the bounty of a relation and namesake, to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1736, and M.A. in 1740. He is de­scribed at this period as "a thin, spare, hollow-chested youth, with joints and members but ill kept together, with curiously bright eyes, and a Voltairean mouth. About the mouth and eye there was no very special air of sanctity." His uncle (a prebendary of Durham and of York) procured for him the small living of Sutton in Yorkshire. In 1741 he ob­tained a prebend, and on 30th March was married in York Minster to Elizabeth Lumley. The courtship had lasted for several years. The marriage was by no means a happy one, and the wife was often treated with the coldest neglect - Sterne perpetually falling into violent love fevers with one lady and another. Some years were now passed in attending to the duties of his cure. "I had then," he says, "very good health; books, painting, fiddling, and shooting were my amusements." He and his uncle had a quarrel shortly after his marriage, "because I would not write paragraphs in the newspapers: though he was a party man, I was not, and detested such dirty work, thinking it beneath me;" yet Sterne did go on doing this dirty work for his uncle for twenty years afterwards. A friend of Mrs. Sterne's presented him with the living of Stillington, near Sut­ton; and he remained nearly twenty years at Sutton doing the duty of the two places, not more than a mile and a half apart. In 1747 he published a charity sermon - Elijah and the Widow of Zare­phath; in 1750 another sermon - The Abuses of Conscience. This last he subse­quently introduced in the second volume of Tristram Shandy. Towards the close of 1759 appeared at York the first two volumes of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. Sterne had been unable to induce any London book­seller to run the risk of its publication. The work proved an immediate success, and raised him at once from obscurity to literary fame. Shortly after its appear­ance he repaired to London to enjoy the popular applause and other advan­tages in store for the author of so bril­liant a work. He was offered £700 for the copyright of the first two volumes, and the expectation of two more, which he promised. The poet Gray wrote to a friend in June 1760: "Tristram Shandy is still a greater object of admiration - the man as well as the book; one is invited to dinner, when he dines, a fortnight be­fore. As to the volumes yet published, there is much good fun in them, and humour sometimes hit, and sometimes missed. Have you read his Sermons, with his own comick figure, from a painting by Reynolds, at the head of them? They are in a style I think most proper for the pulpit, and show a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of his audience." These sermons, which eventually ran to seven volumes, had a large sale, due to Sterne's reputation as the author of Tristram Shandy. "Any man who has a name, or who has the power of pleasing, will be very generally invited," observed Dr. Johnson; "the man Sterne, I have been told, has had engagements for three months... I did read them [the Sermons], but it was in a stage-coach. I should never have deigned even to look at them had I been at large." The remaining volumes of Tristram Shandy were published as follows: iii. and iv., in 1761; v. and vi., 1762; vii. and viii., 1765; ix., 1767. Sterne received the additional prefer­ment of the curacy of Coxwold, in York­shire, from his friend Lord Falconbridge; he took a house in York for his wife and his child, Lydia, spending most of his own time in London and on the Continent. He resided much at Skelton Castle, or "Crazy Castle," as he called it, the seat of his friend, Mr. Hall. In 1762, he visited France, with his wife and daughter. He returned to England alone, and in 1764 went to Italy for the benefit of his health, then much impaired. We do not find him again in England until 1767, when lie resided with his wife and daughter at York until he had written all that we have of his Sentimental Journey, which appeared in February 1768. Horace Wal­pole in writing to a friend, characterized this work as "very pleasing, though too much dilated, and infinitely prefer­able to his tiresome Tristram Shandy, of which I could never get through three volumes. In these there is great good nature and strokes of delicacy." Thackeray thus concludes a notice of the Sentimental Journey: "And with this pretty dance and chorus the volume artfully concludes. Even here one can't give the whole de­scription. There is not a page in Sterne's writing but has something that were better away - a latent corruption - a hint as of an impure presence." Sterne was in miserable health when the Sentimental Journey appeared, and survived but a few days. He died in a poor lodging in New Bond-street, London, in presence of a hired nurse and a footman who had been sent by a friend to enquire for him, 18th March 1768, aged 54. His last words were: "Now it is come." His remains, followed by only two mourners, were laid in the burying-ground of Hanover-square church. Disinterred and sold to the surgeons, they were a few days afterwards recognized by a friend, when too late for decent preserva­tion, on the dissecting table in the medical school at Cambridge. A subscription of £1,000 and the proceeds of the sale of his sermons kept his widow and daughter from want. The former survived about four years. The latter married a Mr. De Medaille, and lived until the year 1790. In 1775 she published three vol­umes, containing letters and a short auto­biography of her father. Some of the letters are of an extraordinary character to have been preserved by a wife and published by a daughter. Sterne was at times a plagiarist. He drew upon Rabe­lais, Burton, and other authors little read at the time. But this cannot dim the bril­liancy and the originality of his genius. His "Uncle Toby," "Corporal Trim," and "Yorick " stand out as real personages, almost next to Shakspere's creations. The English Cyclopaedia contains the follow­ing discriminating criticism: "In the mere art of writing, also, his execution, amid much apparent extravagance, is sin­gularly careful and perfect; it will be found that every touch has been well con­sidered, has its proper purpose and mean­ing, and performs its part in producing the effect; but the art of arts, the ars celare artem, never was possessed in a higher degree by any writer than by Sterne. His greatest work, out of all com­parison, is undoubtedly Tristram Shandy; although, among foreigners, the Senti­mental Journey seems to stand, in the highest estimation." Coleridge thus re­prehends his moral laxity: "Sterne can­not be too severely censured for using the best dispositions of our nature as the panders and condiments for the basest." Sir Walter Scott dwells on his inequality of workmanship: "In the power of approaching and touch­ing the finer feeling of the heart, he has never been excelled, if, indeed, he has ever been equalled, and may at once be re­corded as one of the most affected and one of the most simple of writers - as one of the greatest plagiarists, and one of the most original geniuses whom England has produced." "If I were requested," wrote Leigh Hunt, in a somewhat similar strain, "to name the book of all others which combined wit and humour under their highest appearance of levity with the profoundest wisdom, it would be Tristram Shandy." Thackeray was the most unsparing of Sterne's critics: "I suppose Sterne had.. artistical sensi­bility; he used to blubber perpetually in his study, and, finding his tears infec­tious, and that they brought him a great popularity, he exercised the lucrative gift of weeping, he utilized it, and cried on every occasion. I own that I don't value or respect much the cheap dribble of those fountains. He fatigues me with his per­petual disquiet and his uneasy appeals to my risible or sentimental faculties. He is always looking in my face, watching his effect, uncertain whether I think him an impostor or not - posture-making, coaxing, and imploring me. 'See what sensibility I have - own now that I'm very clever - do cry now, you can't resist this.' The humour of Swift and Rabelais, whom he pretended to succeed, poured from them as naturally as song does from a bird; they lose no manly dignity with it, but laugh their hearty great laugh out of their broad chests as nature bade them. But this man, who can make you laugh, who can make You cry, too - never lets his reader alone, or will permit his audience repose: when you are quiet, he fancies he must rouse you, and turns over head and heels, or sidles up and whispers a nasty story. The man is a great jester, not a great humourist." There are numerous references to Sterne in all the series of Notes and Queries.

Stevenson, Sir John Armstrong, musical composer, was born in Crane-lane, Dublin, in the summer of 1762. His father and mother died when he was nine years old, and he was taken home by Mr. Gibson, a musical instrument maker, and was procured a place in the choir of St. Patrick's Cathedral. He early developed considerable musical talents, and showed a wonderful facility for composi­tion. While yet a mere lad he gave music lessons and supported himself indepen­dently, and he early obtained musical engagements in both the Dublin Cathedrals. In 1800 the degree of Doctor of Music was conferred upon him by the University of Dublin, and in 1803 he was knighted. He composed glees, operas, and sacred music; but he will ever be best remembered by his arrangement of Irish airs for Moore's Melodies. Yet it has been objected that these settings are sometimes too elaborate for Irish music. Sir Jonah Barrington used to say that they reminded him of the Rev. Mark Hare's whitewashing the Rock of Cashel, to give it a genteel appearance against a visitation. The Biographie des Musiciens says: “The fault of this collec­tion, as of all others of a similar character, is that the original style of the melodies is destroyed by the modern accompaniment." Moore shields his friend from such accusa­tions: "Whatever charges of this kind may have been ventured upon (and they are few and slight), the responsibility for them rests solely with me, as, leaving the harmonist's department to my friend Stevenson, I re­served to myself the selection and arrange­ment of the airs." Stevenson considered that his symphonies and accompaniments should ever be held subordinate to the melodies for which they were written, and he once remarked to Dr. Petrie: "I would recommend any person who means to sing them to purchase a piano about the value of £5, for it will be then likely that one may have a fair chance of hearing very little of the instrument and something of the melody and the poetry." The round of festivities in which Stevenson took part, would have left him little leisure for work, but that, according to his own account, he could do with only three hours' sleep. He was slight, and of middle height, and dressed in the pink of the fashion. His manners were somewhat pompous, yet he was at heart unaffected and kindly. He died at the seat of his son-in-law, the Marquis of Headford, in the County of Meath, 14th September 1833, aged 70. The orphan son of a poor coachmaker, he lived to see one daughter married to a marquis, another to an estated gentleman; one of his sons a rector, and another an officer in the army. An inscription to his memory has been erected in Christ Church Cathedral. One of the Melodies (" Silence is in our festal halls") was written by Moore on the occasion of his death.

Stewart, Alexander Turney, a wealthy New York merchant and capital­ist, was born near Lisburn, 12th October 1803. He lost both parents before he was many days old, and was placed under the guardianship of Thomas Lamb, a member of the Society of Friends. The death of his grandfather interrupted his studies at Trinity College. He emigrated to the United States, and supported himself by teaching until he was of age, when he re­turned to Ireland, to receive his fortune of £2,000, with which he opened a drapery shop on Broadway, New York. His clear head, straightforwardness in business transactions, and his rule of never misrepresenting the quality of goods made him successful from the first, and after some changes he established his business in a splendid marble structure, occupying a full "block" on Broadway. He had agents for the purchase of goods in the leading European markets, and branch establishments in several minor cities and towns of the United States. His yearly sales are said latterly to have amounted to £10,000,000. During the Irish famine he sent an entire cargo of provisions for the relief of his suffering fellow country­men. One of the most important of his permanent benefactions was the erec­tion of an extensive residence in New York for working women. Mr. Stewart was strongly identified with the Repub­lican party and the Federal cause during the war with the Southern States, and contributed largely to the Sanitary Com­mission. He was one of the United States representatives at the Paris Ex­hibition of 1867. In March 1869, he was nominated by President Grant for Secretary of the United States Treasury, but was found to be ineligible because of being engaged in business on his own account. He died in New York, 10th April 1875, aged 71, leaving his fortune of some £15,000,000 almost entirely to his wife.

Stewart, Sir Robert, was made Governor of Londonderry and Culmore by Charles I., in 1643. On 13th June of the same year he defeated Owen Roe O'Neill at Clones, taking prisoner several foreign officers who had accompanied O'Neill to Ireland. Soon afterwards he embraced the Scottish engagement against the Par­liament, and in his well-fortified stronghold of Culmore, prevented access by sea to Londonderry. In 1648 he was inveigled into attending a private baptism in London­derry, seized by Coote, and compelled to give an order for the surrender of Culmore. By direction of Monk, he was removed to London, where he lay immured in the Tower for some years. After the Restora­tion he was reinstated in his honours, and died Governor of Londonderry in 1661.

Stewart, Sir William, Viscount Mountjoy, was born in 1653. In 1682 he was raised to the peerage, and appointed Master-General of the Ordnance and colonel of a regiment of foot. In 1686 he served in Hungary at the siege of Breda. On his return to Ireland he was made a brigadier-general. Macaulay styles him "a brave soldier, an accomplished scholar. .. At Dublin he was the centre of a small circle of learned and ingenious men, who had, under his presidency, formed themselves into a Royal Society." In 1688 he commanded a portion of the royal army stationed at Londonderry. But as he was a Protestant, Tirconnell, fearing his in­fluence in favour of William, sent him, at the outbreak of hostilities, on a diplomatic mission to France, secretly intimating that his detention would be desirable. He was accordingly thrown into the Bastile, and kept confined there until 1692. On his re­lease, he joined King William's army in Flanders, and lost his life at the battle of Steenkirk, 24th August 1692, aged about 39.

Stewart, Robert, Viscount Castle­reagh, 2nd Marquis of Londonderry, was born, probably at Mount-Stewart, in the County of Down, 18th June 1769. [His father, Robert Stewart, represented the County of Down in two Parliaments, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Stewart in 1789, advanced to be Viscount Castle­reagh in 1795, Earl of Londonderry in 1796, and Marquis of Londonderry in 1816.] Robert Stewart is said to have in­herited all his father's benevolence of heart and sweetness of disposition, united to a firmness and resolution of character which nothing could ruffle or intimidate. He re­ceived his early education at the Royal School of Armagh, and at seventeen entered St. John's College, Cambridge. He there devoted himself assiduously to study, taking good places at the half-yearly examinations; but left after that in December, 1787, when he was first in the first class. In the two following years he made the grand tour, visiting the prin­cipal cities of Europe. Evincing an ardent desire to engage in politics, in 1790 he was put in nomination by his father for a vacancy in the representation of Down, and was elected after a struggle of two months' duration, and an outlay of £60,000. This enormous expense obliged his father to abandon the intention of building a family mansion, and to reside for the re­mainder of his life in "an old barn, with a few rooms added." In 1793 he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of the Lon­donderry militia, and in the following year married the youngest daughter of the Earl of Buckingham, "a lady whose con­genial disposition, amiability, and talents made her his constant partner in every act of kindness or bountiful charity to which his generous nature incessantly prompted him." His career in the House of Com­mons was successful from the first. He sided with the popular party, and advo­cated, among other liberal measures, that which gave Catholics the vote in 1793. His opinions were so radical that he once pre­sided at a public dinner where the toast, "Our sovereign lord, the people," was drunk. Gradually, however, his views underwent a complete change, in common with those of many of his contemporaries, influenced, probably, by the excesses of the French Revolution - and from an ultra Liberal he became the most strenuous supporter of conservative British influence in Ireland. This change must have taken place very soon after the passing of the Irish Reform Bill, as in the same year (1793) he advocated the suppression of the Volun­teers, and the establishment of an Irish militia upon the same footing as that of Great Britain. Writing to his grandfather, Earl Camden, at this period, he says: "My opinion has invariably been that the country could never have any security against sedition as long as volunteering was tolerated, nor its internal peace be firmly established till a militia took its place." His letters and papers, relating to home and foreign politics, even at this early stage in his career, evince extraordinary foresight and sagacity. On the advancement of his father in the peerage in October 1795, he succeeded to the courtesy title of Viscount Castlereagh, by which he has been since known in history. In 1797 Lord Camden appointed him Keeper of the Privy Seal, and it was arranged that during Mr. Pelham's retirement in England, he should discharge the duties of Chief-Secretary of Ireland. He was thus at once introduced into active public life, from which he never withdrew till his dying hour. Pelham resigned in April 1799, from a conscien­tious objection to any further concession to the Catholics, and on the recommenda­tion of Lord Cornwallis, the rule theretofore observed, that the Chief-Secretary should be an Englishman, was broken through, and Lord Castlereagh was given the office. From the time of his appointment as Lord-Keeper, however, he had discharged the whole duties of Secretary, and they were of a most arduous kind - covering the period of the Insurrection. Whilst he ad­vocated the sternest measures of suppres­sion, his private despatches clear his character from the charge of vindictiveness of motive. The acerbity of Irish parties during the struggle, the extent of dis­affection, and the narrow escape the Em­pire had of dismemberment, confirmed Lord Cornwallis and Lord Castlereagh in the belief that some change in the govern­ment of the country was absolutely necessary, and they both threw themselves with the utmost energy into Pitt's project of a union between Ireland and Great Britain. The following extracts from Lord Castlereagh's papers embody the reasons that influenced him in differing from the vast body of his countrymen on such a vital question: "The times require that we should, if possible, strengthen the Empire as well as this Kingdom. We at present require, and shall continue, I fear, to require, a larger military force than our own resources can supply. There can be little doubt that a union, on fair and liberal principles, effected with the good will of both Kingdoms, would strengthen the Empire; and there can be as little question that Ireland would be more secure were the resources of England pledged to her by incorporation than, as they are at present, but as a favour. The complexion of our internal system is most unpleasant; it is strongly tinctured with religious ani­mosity, and likely to become more so. United with England, the Protestants, feeling less exposed, would become more confident and liberal; and the Catholics would have less inducement to look beyond that indulgence which is consistent with the security of our establishments... A provincial legislature and a deputive executive want that policy of union, that weight and energy, necessary to contrive wise measures, but principally to carry them into effect against the powerful im­pulse of such combustible materials. The united strength and wisdom of the Empire alone, acting on a constant plan, and far removed from the little party squabbles that divide the inhabitants of this country, are adequate to command obedience, and impose silence on such jarring elements. Both the Parliament and people of Ireland have, for the seventeen years past, been almost entirely engaged in lessening, by degrees, their dependence on Great Britain, in weakening the con­nexion, and paving the way for the separation of the two countries. It sig­nified nothing to say that their views were honourable and patriotic; that Ireland was held in chains by the sister kingdom; and that they had a right to seize the moment of her depression and generosity, or what else you choose to call it, to rescue themselves from this indignant situation. . The connexion between the two countries is reduced by them almost to a single thread - the unity of the executive power, and a negative on the laws passed in the Irish Parliament... I do not say that the present members of the Irish legislature are at all inclined to come to these extremities; their conduct has been in the highest degree loyal, and their attachment to England sincere. But who can answer for their successors; nay, who can even answer for themselves, in case the rebellion should acquire a firm consistence, and be so powerfully supported by Gallic force or machinations as to seem in a fair way of succeeding?.. When the political existence of one country is so dependent on the protection of another, as that she needs only to be deserted for a single moment in order to fall into the most miserable state of anarchy and dis­order, surely the protecting country has a right to demand that the subordinate one should adopt every means for her own preservation that justice and equity may prompt her to offer. Though the pre­ponderating country may not find it convenient or even safe to desert the other on account of her refusing to adopt these means, yet is the refusal itself an act of the most manifest and downright injustice that can possibly be conceived." As far as Great Britain was concerned, the question was decided without difficulty, on 31st January 1799, when eight resolutions in favour of the Union, moved by Mr. Pitt, were carried by 140 to 5 in the Commons, agreed to without a division in the Lords, and endorsed by a joint address of both Houses to the King. But it was in Ireland the real difficulty lay. On the morning of 23rd January, after a debate lasting twenty-one hours, the address in which the question was mentioned was carried by a majority of one (106 to 105); but next night the Union paragraph was expunged by 109 to 104, and the greatest rejoicings ensued throughout Ireland. The measure was abandoned for that session; Cornwallis was despondent as to the ulti­mate issue; but Pitt and Castlereagh were only the more confirmed in their resolution to let no obstacles prevent the accomplishment of their design. "The measure neither is nor never will be abandoned," wrote the Duke of Portland. Lord Castlereagh and his colleagues now bent themselves to bring about the Union by every means within their power. The story of their operations, from the point of view of their political opponents, will be best read in the Life of Grattan by his Son, and in Barrington's Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation; and as told by themselves, in the Cornwallis Correspondence and the Castlereagh Papers. The characters of the two leaders in the movement are strikingly exhibited in these works. Cornwallis con­tinually shows his detestation of what he believes to be the unavoidable duty of bribery and violence imposed upon him - he longs to kick out of his presence the men with whom he traffics; whilst Castle­reagh sets about his work in a cool and business-like manner, without compunc­tions of any kind. Yet the former was sixty-one years of age, and the latter only thirty. Some members of Parliament were brought over by fair argument. The country was overawed by the presence of a large army. The Catholics were buoyed up with promises of Emancipation after the Union; and a State provision for their clergy was planned. Protestants were told that a union was the only means of preserving the Protestant establishment, and were terrified by the possible results of Catholic ascendency in an Irish Parlia­ment. Bribery was openly resorted to; and promises of place and peerages, or elevations in the peerage ("refined species of seduction," as Alison calls them), were freely made. All legitimate reforms, such as might render a union less likely to be called for, were opposed in Parliament. The wavering were brought over by declar­ations that the Government would never lose sight of the measure until it was carried. Opponents were dismissed from office. Officers in the army, who held seats in Parliament, and were likely to vote against the measure, were refused permis­sion to return home. Means were resorted to, but with little success, to get up petitions in favour of the Union; and every effort was made to discourage adverse petitions. No stronger admission can be cited as to the means it was found necessary to em­ploy to carry the measure, than a passage in Lord Castlereagh's memoirs (vol. ii. p. 13), where he endorses Cornwallis's opin­ion, that the event of the question of Union was altogether dependent on the continu­ance of the English militia in Ireland. The difficulties these statesmen had to wade through were complicated by the necessity of concealing from Lord Clare and others of their colleagues, the prospects of speedy emancipation and possible endowment that were privately held out to the Catholics as the price of their tacit concurrence. After another year of un­wearied and unflinching labour on the part of the Irish executive, the preliminary motion in favour of the Union was carried in the Commons, about one o'clock on the morning of 6th February 1800, by a vote of 158 to 115; and thenceforward all was easy work for Castlereagh and his friends. The Irish House of Lords was from the first largely in favour of the measure. The only matter of surprise is that, in view of threats and arguments, lavish pro­mises of place and title, and boundless resources for "compensation" and bribery, in the face of the recent insurrection, and of the revolutionary troubles in France, so 498 many members of the Irish House of Commons stood out to the last, and refused to make terms with those who sought the extinction of the autonomy of their country. Thomas De Quincey, who was present, thus concludes, in his Autobiographic Sketches, a vivid account of the last act in the drama: "The Bill received the royal assent without a muttering, or a whispering, or the pro­testing echo of a sigh... One person only I remarked whose features were suddenly illuminated by a smile, a sarcastic smile, as I read it; which, however, might be all a fancy. It was Lord Castlereagh, who, at the moment when the irrevocable words were pronounced, looked with a penetrating glance amongst a party of ladies. His own wife was one of that party; but I did not discover the particular object on whom his smile had settled. After this I had no leisure to be interested in anything which followed. 'You are all,' thought I to my­self, 'a pack of vagabonds henceforward, and interlopers, with actually no more right to be here than myself. I am an in­truder, so are you.' "The last Act of the Irish Parliament was 40 George III. cap. 100, "For the better regulation of the Butter Trade of Cork." The Act of Union is 40 George III. c. 38 (1st August 1800) of the Irish Statutes, and 39 & 40 George III. c. 67 (2nd July 1800) of British Statutes. It came into operation on 1st January 1801. Its chief provisions were: (1) That the two islands should be united as "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland;" that the affairs of the Empire should in future be carried on in that name, as they had been under that of "England" before the union with Scotland in 1707, and under that of "Great Britain " subsequently. By royal proclamation the red "saltier" cross of St. Patrick was added to the Union Jack, "interfused" with the white cross of St. Andrew, which had been added after the Scotch union. (2) The Parliaments of the Kingdoms were to be united; Ireland sending 100 members to the Commons, and 4 spiritual and 28 temporal peers to the Lords. (3) The Churches of England and Ireland were united, and "the continuance and pre­servation" of the Established Church of England and Ireland was "deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union." (4) The subjects of both countries were placed on the same footing regarding foreign trade. (5) The public debts of the two countries were to be kept separate, and for twenty years the relative contributions for imperial pur­poses were to be two shares by Ireland to fifteen by Great Britain. After twenty years, under certain contingencies, the ex­chequers of the countries might be united. Mr. Lecky says: "The Union was em­phatically one of that class of measures in which the scope for statesmanship lies not in the conception but in the execution. Had Pitt carried it without offending the national sentiment - had he enabled the majority of the Irish people to look back on it with affection or with pride - had he made it the means of allaying discontent or promoting loyalty - he would indeed have achieved a feat of consummate states­manship. But in all these respects he utterly failed. There was, it is true, no small amount of dexterity of a somewhat vulpine order displayed in carrying the bill; but no measure ever showed less of that enlightened and far-seeing states­manship which respects the prejudices and conciliates the affections of a nation, and thus eradicates the seeds of disaffection and discontent... The manner in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship." Lord Corn­wallis and Lord Castlereagh experienced almost as much difficulty in redeeming their promises as to the granting of peerages as they had in passing the mea­sure. The English cabinet stood aghast at the list presented; and it was only by threatening to resign office that the Lord-Lieutenant and Chief-Secretary were able to secure the fulfilment of their pledges. The Catholics, however, found themselves completely betrayed. Their tacit assent, or at least quiescence, without which it would have been all but impossible to succeed, had been secured by assurances that the measure would be speedily fol­lowed by Emancipation. Pitt had astutely omitted to make this part of the negotia­tion known to George III.; and when, after the Union, the King was approached on the subject, it was found he would never agree to such a change in the constitution - the very mention of it caused him to shed copious floods of tears, and unbalanced his mind for some time. To save appearances, Pitt resigned, and with him Lords Castlereagh and Cornwallis. In order not to further embarrass the Govern­ment, Lord Castlereagh refrained from seeking immediate advancement for him­self in recognition of his services in bring­ing about the Union. He represented the County of Down in the United Parliament, where his administrative powers were soon recognized; but he was, not un­naturally, regarded by the great majority of his fellow-countrymen and the English liberals with feelings of the deepest ran­cour. Although he was nominally out of office, he gave every assistance to the Gov­ernment in carrying on its Irish policy. There are in his Correspondence some re­markable memoirs penned by him at this period for the guidance of the Ministry - urging the necessity of Catholic Emancipa­tion, the payment of the Catholic clergy, the substitution of a charge upon land for tithe, and the erection of military works of defence in Ireland. In July 1802 he was appointed President of the Board of Control, and Mr. Alison says: "From this time forward his main attention was directed to foreign affairs; and his bio­graphy becomes the diplomatic history of Europe, down to the period of his death, twenty years afterwards." Lord Wel­lesley bears this testimony to his Indian administration: "The whole course of my public service, as far as it was connected with the public acts of that most excellent and able personage, affords one connected series of proofs of his eminent ability, spotless integrity, high sense of honour, comprehensive and enlarged views, sound practical knowledge, ready despatch of business, and perfect discretion and tem­per, in the conduct of the most arduous public affairs... He never interfered in the slightest degree in the vast patronage of our Indian empire; and he took espe­cial care to signify this determination to the expectants by whom he was sur­rounded." He retained the Presidency of the Board of Control after Pitt's return to power in May 1804, and a year later was transferred to the head of the War Depart­ment. He lost this position on the death of Pitt in January 1806, but was re-instated on the return of the Tories to power in April 1807, and remained in office until September 1809. Mr. Alison thus eulogizes his administration: “He entered upon the direction of the War Office in April 1807... When removed from office in September 1809, he had succeeded, by his unaided efforts, not only in securing the independence of his country, and arresting the torrent of Napoleon's victories, but he had set in motion that chain of events which in their final results produced his decline and fall... He had resusci­tated the contest on the Continent. He had fitted out an army, and appointed a commander whose exploits had already recalled the days of Crecy and Agincourt. .. He had established a military system for the defence of the country... Never was a minister who in so short a time had conferred such benefits on his country, or so quickly raised it from a state of imminent danger to one of comparative security and imperishable glory. .. If Lord Castlereagh had not broken through the usual routine of military pro­motion, and given Wellington the com­mand in Portugal, and supported him and urged the continuation of the Penin­sular war, when both were violently as­sailed by a violent opposition, and Govern­ment had only a slender majority,.. the campaign of Torres Vedras would have never encouraged the Russians to resist French invasion, and furnished a model on which their system of defence was to be framed. If he had not, in the same year, strenuously combated the re­commendation of the Bullion Committee, national bankruptcy would have prostrated Great Britain at the very crisis of the war. If he had not withstood the loud clamour against the Peninsular war, if he had failed in feeding Wellington with adequate supplies, the battle of Vittoria would never have caused Joseph's crown to drop from his head, or brought Austria at the decisive moment into the field, after the armistice of Pleswitz." On the 4th of April 1809, in consequence of disagreements between Lord Castlereagh and Mr. Canning as to the conduct of the war, it was resolved, at a private meeting of the Cabinet, at which the former was not present, that his lordship should be called upon to resign. This resolution was not communicated to him until the 7th of September. The result was a duel between Castlereagh and Canning, in which the latter was wounded, and the resignation of both of them. As a member of the House of Commons, he continued to take the keenest interest in public affairs, and upon Lord Wellesley's resignation in February 1812, he was appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs, a post he held until his death. He is said soon to have commu­nicated the impress of his mind to the whole Ministry, and to have gained an as­cendency over his colleagues in forwarding an active and energetic war policy against France-occupying in this, as in many other respects, the position formerly held by Pitt. In December 1813, he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary with the allied Sovereigns; and although not actually a member of the Chatillon Con­gress of the following February, exercised, through his brother, a preponderating in­fluence upon its proceedings and in the settlement of Europe at the period of Napoleon's retirement to Elba. For these services he was decorated with the order of the Garter. Alison says that he ear­nestly sought to bring about the formation of a strong German Confederation, and, as a curb upon the ambition of Russia, the restoration of Poland as an independent monarchy. He also strenuously advo­cated the abolition of the slave trade. When Castlereagh made his first appear­ance in Parliament after his return from the Congress of Vienna, the whole house spontaneously rose, and received him with cheers. During the Hundred Days he was indefatigable in his exertions to keep together the Grand Alliance and prepare the means of resisting Napoleon, and after the battle of Waterloo he went to Paris to conduct in person the negotiations then pending for the settlement of the affairs of Europe. There he seconded Wellington's efforts to restrain the extreme mea­sures threatened by Blucher against the capital of France; while, on the other hand, he had a large share in compelling the restoration of the works of art - the plunder of Europe - with which Paris had been enriched. After these events his attention was mainly directed to home politics, and the course he took was one of uncompromising opposition to all mea­sures of reform and all efforts to satisfy the political aspirations of the people. Not being a man to shun danger, or to shirk the responsibility of the policy he believed right, he did not in any way seek to conciliate opposition. In 1821, on the death of his father, he became Marquis of Londonderry. The arduous nature of his duties in connexion with the congresses of Troppau, Laybach, and Verona, which assembled between 1820 and 1822, pressed very heavily upon a mind already overtaxed with public affairs, and produced a state of febrile excitement similar to what he had experienced after the passing of the Act of Union. The King and Wellington separately remarked a change coming over him. The family and his physician were put upon their guard, a watch was set upon him, and even his razors were removed from within reach. On the morning of 12th August 1822, after pass­ing a restless night, he went into his dressing-room, and desired his physician to be sent to him. Dr. Bankhead hurried in and found him standing facing the window, with his hands above his head, his throat cut and bleeding profusely. He had managed to conceal a penknife. Castlereagh threw his arms round the doctor's neck, and, saying in a feeble voice, "Bankhead, let me fall on your arm; I have opened my neck; it is all over" - sank on the ground and expired. He was then 53 years of age. No words can express the varied feelings of grief, horror, and delight that pervaded the country at the news of this catastrophe. The funeral procession to Westminster Abbey was attended by an immense con­course of people, who, while the coffin was being removed from the late peer's residence to the hearse, and again from the hearse to the Abbey, vented their joy at his death in shouts of exultation. The feel­ings of the masses in Ireland, so far as they found expression, were not more re­spectful to the memory of the deceased statesman. Lord Castlereagh was greatly beloved by his family; he was munifi­cent to the poor, and encouraged letters both in Ireland and England. He de­lighted in field sports. The statue over his remains in Westminster Abbey almost looks down upon the simple flagstone that marks the grave of Henry Grattan. Sir Robert Peel bears testimony to Castlereagh's abilities: "I doubt whether any public man (with the exception of the Duke of Wellington) who has appeared within the last half century, possessed that combination of qualities, intellectual and moral, which would have enabled him to effect under the same circum­stances what Lord Londonderry did effect in regard to the Union with Ireland, and to the great political transactions of 1813, 1814, and 1815. To do these things required a rare union of high and generous feelings, courteous and prepossessing man­ners, a warm heart and a cool head, great temper, great industry, great fortitude, great courage, moral and personal, that command and influence which makes other men willing instruments, and all these qualities combined with the disdain for low objects of ambition, and with spotless integrity." Barrington says: "In private life, his honourable conduct, gentlemanly habits, and engaging demeanour were ex­emplary. Of his public life, the com­mencement was patriotic, the progress was corrupt, and the termination criminal. His first public essay was a motion to reform the Irish Parliament, and his last was to corrupt and annihilate it by bribing 154 of its members. It is impossible to deny a fact so notorious. History, tradi­tion, or the fictions of romance contain no instance of a minister in Ireland who so fearlessly deviated from all the principles which ought to characterize the servant of a constitutional monarch, or the citizens of a free country." Lord Brougham thus sums up Lord Castlereagh's character: "His capacity was greatly underrated from the poverty of his discourse; and his ideas passed for much less than they were worth, from the habitual obscurity of his expressions... Scarce any man of any party bore a more important place in public affairs, or occupies a larger space in the history of his times... He was a bold and fearless man; the very courage with which he exposed himself unabashed to the most critical audience in the world, while incapable of uttering two sentences of anything but the meanest matter in the most wretched language; the gallantry with which he faced the greatest difficul­ties of a question;.. all this made him upon the whole rather a favourite with the audience whose patience he was taxing mercilessly, and whose gravity he ever and anon put to a very severe trial. .. In council he certainly had far more resources. He possessed a considerable fund of plain sense, not to be misled by any refinement of speculation, or clouded by any fanciful notions... The com­plaints made of his Irish administration were well grounded as regarded the cor­ruption of the Parliament by which he accomplished the Union;.. but they were wholly unfounded as regarded the cruelties practised during and after the rebellion. Far from partaking in these atrocities, he uniformly and strenu­ously set his face against them... Lord Castlereagh's foreign administration was as destitute of all merit as possible. No enlarged views guided his conduct; no liberal principles claimed his regard; no generous sympathies, no grateful feel­ings for the people whose sufferings and whose valour had accomplished the restoration of their national independence, prompted his tongue... He flung him­self at once and for ever into the arms of the sovereigns." The Marquis of London­derry was succeeded in his honours by his brother Charles. The Memoirs and Cor­respondence, edited by the latter, appeared in twelve volumes, between 1848 and 1853. Sir Archibald Alison's Lives of Lord Castle­reagh and Sir Charles Stewart, 3 vols. 1861, embrace in reality a history of Europe during his lifetime, from a very conserva­tive point of view.

Stewart, Sir Charles William Vane, 3rd Marquis of Londonderry, younger brother of preceding, was born in Ireland, 18th May 1778. At six years of age he was sent by his grandfather, Lord Camden, to Eton. He entered the army in 1791, and received a company, and when but sixteen was Assistant Quartermaster-General in an expedition to Flanders, where he was wounded. In 1796 he was Major of the 5th Dragoons, and served in Holland, and in 1803 was promoted to a colonelcy, and appointed Aide-de-camp to the King and Under-Secretary of State for Ireland. In 1808 he married Lady Catherine Bligh, daughter of the Earl of Darnley. He served through the Peninsular war, and had numerous honours conferred upon him. Shortly before his return home, early in 1812, his wife died, leaving an only son. In March 1813 he was appointed Minister at the Court of Prussia, and during the campaign of 1814 acted as Military Commissioner in the armies of the allied sovereigns. Shortly afterwards he was called to the peerage as Lord Stewart. He was British representative at the Congress of Chatillon in 1814, and was actively engaged in many of the operations, both civil and military, that led to the Peace of Paris, and, after Waterloo, to the second Treaty of Paris, in November 1815. From 1814 to 1822 he held the position of British Minister at Vienna. In 1819 he married Lady Frances Anne Vane-Tempest, a young lady of wealth and beauty, by whom he had a numerous family. On his marriage he added the surname and arms of Vane to his own. In 1822, upon the death of his brother, to whom he was warmly attached, he suc­ceeded to the title of Marquis of Londonderry, when he resigned his appointment, and returned home. In the same year he acted with the Duke of Wellington as pleni­potentiary at the Congress of Verona. Although, after that congress, his official career came to an end, he continued to take an active part in the proceedings of the House of Lords. He devoted much atten­tion to the improvement of his estates at Wynyard and Seaham. He supported Catholic Emancipation, but offered a steady opposition to the Reform Bill. In 1835 Sir Robert Peel gave him the appointment of Ambassador at St. Petersburg; and in 1839 he fought a duel with Henry Grattan, junior, on account of some political differ­ences. In 1828 he published Narrative of Events in Spain and Portugal, and in 1841, a more important work, The War in Germany and France in 1813-'14. Be­tween 1848 and 1852, he devoted himself to the collection and arrangement of his brother's papers, and the publication of that invaluable work, the Castlereagh Cor­respondence, in twelve volumes. He was the warm friend and admirer of Louis Na­poleon Bonaparte, who frequently enjoyed the hospitalities of Wynyard Park. Lord Londonderry died at Holdernesse House, London, 6th March 1854, aged 75, and was interred in the family vault at Wyn-yard Park. Besides the vast revenues of his wife's estates in Durham, he left a personalty of £300,000. Sir Archibald Alison praises him in an almost extra­vagant manner, as "a Christian," "the idol of his family," "chivalrous," "equally fitted to lead a headlong charge of horse, and to combine the military movements which were essential to the success of a great campaign; " "a statesman," "one who reared the princely halls of Wyn-yard," and "bridled the Northern Ocean amidst the rocks of Seaham;" but liberal politicians form a different estimate of his character. Carpenter says in his Peer­age for the People: "As a military officer, Lord Londonderry has managed to acquire a reputation for great valour; but, if discretion be the better part of valour, the title to this distinction must be very de­fective. There are few men in public life who evince so little judgment, or who exhibit so much intemperance of feeling and manner. Even the Tory party, to which he is so thoroughly devoted, would be glad to be rid of one who perpetually places their projects in such jeopardy by his folly and his passion; and in private life he is little better than in public."

Stokes, Whitley, M.D., was born in 1763. He was grandson of Gabriel Stokes, Deputy-Surveyor of Ireland, and son of Gabriel Stokes, a fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. Educated at the Endowed School in Waterford, he entered Trinity College, obtained a scholarship in 1781, a fellow­ship in 1788, and took out his degree as Doctor of Medicine in 1793. Of known nationalist tendencies, he was summoned before Lord Clare at his visitation in April 1798, which was held for the purpose of with the United Irishmen. Dr. Stokes ad­mitted having been a member of the Society before, but not since, 1792; having visited professionally an insurgent who was sick and in distress; and having furnished information to Lord Moira relative to the atrocities and tortures inflicted on the people in the south of Ireland; but he em­phatically denied having taken any part in the revolutionary movement, and was believed by all who knew him. Neverthe­less, he was suspended from his teaching functions for three years. Tone writes in his journal, under date 20th May 1798: "With regard to Stokes, I know he is acting rigidly on principle, for I know he is in­capable of acting otherwise; but I fear very much that his very metaphysical unbending purity, which can accommodate itself neither to men, times, nor circumstances, will always prevent his being of any service to his country, which is a thousand pities: for I know no man whose virtues and whose talents I more sincerely reverence. I see only one place fit for him and, after all, if Ireland were independent, I believe few enlightened Irishmen would oppose his being placed there - I mean at the head of a system of national education." When the passions of the time had worn themselves out, Stokes regained his former position. In 1805 he was co-optated a senior fellow; in 1816 he was appointed Lecturer on Natural History; and in 1830, became Regius Professor of Physic to the University, which appointment he held until 1842, when he was succeeded by his more distinguished son. He died at his residence in Harcourt-street, Dublin, 13th April, 1845, aged 82.

Stokes, William, M.D., an eminent physician, son of preceding, was born in Dublin in 1804. He was never at school or at college; and was educated chiefly by the Rev. John Walker. He took his diploma, along with Sir Dominic Corrigan, in Edinburgh, in 1825, and in 1828 married, and commenced his career in Dublin, where he attained to one of the largest practices ever enjoyed in Ireland, and for fifty years held a prominent position in the medical profession. He was the author of numerous medical treatises. The first, on The Application of the Stethoscope, which appeared in 1828, immediately at­tracted the attention of the faculty, and laid the foundation of his fame. He was appointed physician to the Meath Hospital, and there, in conjunction with his friend, Dr. Graves, initiated a general medical reform, and commenced the system of clinical lectures. In 1837 he published his masterly work on The Diagnosis and Treatment of Diseases of the Chest, which brought him many honours and honorary degrees at home and abroad. In 1839 Trinity College conferred on him the degree of M.D., and in the same year he was elected a Fellow of the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland, of which on three separate oc­casions he was president. His statue, by Foley, was placed in the hall of the insti­tution in 1876. In 1845, on the death of his father, he was chosen Regius Professor of Physic to Dublin University. In 1849 he produced the most important of his medical works - The Diseases of the Heart and Aorta. As remarked by Dr. Haughton at the time of his death, "His medical treatises on the stethoscope, the chest, and the heart would be his monument for ever - a monument more lasting than brass. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that he could have been only a physician. Those who were honoured with his immediate friend­ship and intercourse knew that he was so keen an observer of nature that the verv qualities which made him a great clinical physical physician would, if directed into other channels, have made him not second to Darwin himself. His keen appreciation of nature and his love of its study, extend­ing from the highest to the lowest animals, and at the same time the profound rever­ence and awe with which he regarded all the phenomena of nature, as coming from a high spiritual power, would have rendered Dr. Stokes, had he cultivated natural science, second to none that he was acquainted with, living or dead, amongst the students of nature." In 1865 Oxford gave him its honorary D.C.L., and Cam­bridge its honorary LL.D. in 1874. Edin­burgh also conferred upon him its honorary LL.D.. 18th May 1866, at the same time as the Rev. W. Reeves, and John Fors­ter, the biographer. In 1875 the German Emperor presented him with the envied Prussian Order of Merit. Dr. Stokes was remarkably successful as a teacher. Much of his attention was devoted to Irish history and antiquities; he was an ardent disciple of George Petrie, whose Life he wrote; and he accompanied the Earl of Dunraven in several of his archaeological tours in Ire­land. Dr. Stokes was a man of affectionate and sociable disposition, and to the last was surrounded by a large circle of devoted relatives and friends. His professional residence was in Merrion-square, Dublin; but he delighted in his country seat at Carrig Breac, on the side of Howth, in view of Dublin bay and the mountains. There he died. 7th January 1878, aged 76, and was buried on Howth, beside the ancient ruined chapel of St. Fintan. The following remarks form part of a bril­liant personal sketch, by the Rev. J. P. Mahaffy, which appeared in Macmillan's Magazine for February 1878: "William Stokes.. was indeed the greatest physician in Ireland, whose books on the chest and heart have been, for a gene­ration, standard books all over the world, but who was a far greater man than all these things signify, and whom strangers will never know and estimate at his true value... He represented, moreover, another combination, which now-a-days might be thought a contradiction, but which was the leading feature in the very remarkable society about him: I mean the society led by Graves, Todd, Ferguson, Petrie, Wilde, and Reeves. These men were thorough patriots, who spent all their leisure studying their country and pro­moting her interests, while at the same time they were the most loyal subjects, and had no sympathy, or rather had a pro­found contempt, for the noisy policy of ex­hibiting a love of Ireland by railing against England... Though Stokes was all his life a staunch Tory, even the men of '48 - Davis and Mangan, and their comrades - all knew him and loved him, and felt that they had, in some respects, his sincere sympathy. There were indeed few people who were not attracted by the largeness of his heart, and the quick response of his overflowing sympathy."

Sullivan, Francis S., an eminent legal writer, was born in the south of Ireland early in the 18th century, and graduated in Trinity College, Dublin, where he was elected a fellow in 1738. He died about 1775. His principal works were, a Treatise on Feudal Law, and Lectures on the Consti­tution and Laws of England. Of the first, an eminent legal writer, quoted by Alli­bone, says: "We know of no work on feudal learning and the first principles of the English constitution, equal in merit or interest... Copious in detail, and exhibiting ably, among other topics, the influence of the feudal system upon the modern law of tenures."

Sullivan, Sir Richard Joseph, Bart., the author of numerous works, was born in Ireland about the middle of the 18th century. He spent part of his early life in India in the service of the East India Company, and on his return made a tour of Great Britain. His first work appears to have been The Political History of India, London, 1779. Next year followed A Tour through England, Scotland, and Wales. His other writings were of a minor character, except a View of Nature, in Letters to a Traveller among the Alps, 6 vols. 1794. "The last volume alone," says the Gentleman's Magazine, "is in any degree worthy of a philosophic pen." He entered Parliament in 1802, was cre­ated a baronet in 1804, and died at his seat in Surrey, 17th July 1806.

Sullivan, Robert, LL.D., the author of a number of educational works, was born at Holywood, County of Down, in January 1800. He was educated at the Belfast Academical Institution, graduated in Trinity College, Dublin, in 1829, and, on the introduction of the system of National Education into Ireland in 1831, was ap­pointed an inspector. He was afterwards transferred to the Training Department, as Professor of English Literature. His Geography, Spelling Book, Literary Class Book, Grammar, and Dictionary, have gone through numerous editions, and are constantly being reprinted. The touch­ing expressions he received from time to time of the gratitude of those whom his sympathy had encouraged or his generosity had aided, showed the kindliness of his nature, and his success in communicat­ing knowledge. He died in Dublin, 11th July 1868, aged 68, and was buried at Holywood. The most important of his works, his Dictionary of the English Lan­guage, has been improved in recent editions by the labours of Dr. P. J. Joyce.

Sweetman, John, a leading United Irishman, a Dublin brewer, and a con­nexion of Lord Cloncurry, was born in 1752. He took an active part on the Catholic Committee, and was one of the delegates to the Catholic Convention, the proceedings of which resulted in the partial Relief Act of 1793. He was greatly be­loved and trusted by the leading United Irishmen, and assisted the escape of Ham­ilton Rowan to France. In March 1798 he was arrested, and after an incarceration of some months was sent to Fort George, Scotland, with the other state prisoners, and was deported to the Continent in 1802. He was afterwards permitted to return to Ireland. He died in May 1826, aged 74, and was buried at Swords. Dr. R. R. Madden describes him as "a man of high intelligence, sound judgment, and sober, well-considered opinions, strongly attached to the rights and interests of his country, as they were understood, and acted on conformably. Of his integrity there seems to have been but one opinion entertained - all his associates placed en­tire confidence in him." Wolfe Tone writes in his Journal on 1st March 1798, on receiving a report of his death: "A better and a braver heart, blood never warmed; I have passed some of the plea­santest hours of my life in his society. If he be gone my loss is unspeakable, but his country will have a much severer one; he was a sincere Irishman, and if ever an exertion was to be made for our emancipation, he would have been in the very foremost rank; I had counted upon his military talents."

Swift, Jonathan, Dean of St. Patrick's, was born at 7 Hoey's-court, Dublin, 30th November 1667. [His father, an Englishman, was steward of the King's Inns, and died some months before Jonathan's birth, leaving his wife and children dependent mainly on the bounty of his brother Godwin, who, with other members of the family, had settled in Ireland.] When Jonathan was some months old, his English nurse, having occasion to cross to Whitehaven, on the death of a relative there, "stole him on shipboard unknown to his mother and uncle," as he says himself, and he was not brought back to Ireland for more than two years. In that interval she taught him to spell, and by the time he was three years old he could read any chapter in the Bible. He had a sickly childhood; at six he was placed at Kilkenny school; and in his fifteenth year, on 24th April, 1682, he entered Trinity College, Dublin. He remained at college for nearly seven years (taking his bachelor's degree in February 1685-'6), not leaving until the breaking out of the "troubles" in 1689. He acquired more than the aver­age amount of learning requisite for taking his degree. He was never a profound or exact scholar, but he attained considerable intimacy with the great writers of an­tiquity, had a command of Latin, was accomplished in French, and possessed an extensive store of general information. His uncle, Godwin Swift, at whose expense he had been educated, died shortly before he took his degree, and Jonathan would have been badly off but for his other uncle, William, who resided in Dublin. His mother and sister were then living in Leicester, where, during the remaining twenty-two years of his mother's life, he visited her seldom less frequently than once a year. She was a connexion of the wife of Sir William Temple, and when the disturbed state of Ireland, in 1689, compelled Swift to seek employment in England, he was received as companion and secretary into the family of the retired statesman, near London, and later at Moor Park, close to Farnham. His first sojourn with Temple lasted over five years, from 1689 to 1694. In May 1690 he visited Ireland for his health, and possibly in the hope of preferment from Sir Robert Southwell, but "growing worse," in his own words, "he soon went back to Sir William Temple's, with whom, growing into some confidence, he was often trusted with matters of great importance." After his return he took his master's degree at Hertford College, Oxford. When Swift went to Moor Park, he found a Mrs. John­son living there as friend and companion to Lady Gifford, Sir William Temple's sister. Her two daughters lived with her - Esther, a child of eight (born 13th March 1681), and a younger, Anne, of whose attractive appearance and modest manners mention is made in Swift's writings. He became first the playfellow, and subse­quently the volunteer teacher of Esther, and in after years reminded her how he had guided her little hand in writing, and how his spirit had given to hers its first impress. In Sir William Temple's house Swift more than once met William III., who occasionally sought that great man's advice; and, upon at least one occasion, Swift was sent to Kensington, charged per­sonally to enforce Sir William's views upon the King. In 1694 a coolness arose be­tween Swift and his patron, in consequence of Swift's desire to seek a more independ­ent position elsewhere. Temple wished to retain him permanently in his service, and even offered him a sinecure, a clerkship of £120 a year on the Irish Rolls, if he would remain. Swift's mind was, however, made up. He paid his annual visit to his mother at Leicester, passed over to Ire­land, received deacon's orders on 28th October 1694, and priest's orders three months later. Recommended by family friends to Lord Capel, then Lord-Deputy, he was presented with the prebend of Kilroot, near Carrickfergus, worth £100 a year. Swift held this living a little over eighteen months, at the end of which time he joyfully accepted Sir William Temple's invitation to return to Moor Park. Dur­ing his occupation of Kilroot, he became engaged to be married to a Miss Waring (of whom he wrote as "Varina"), sister of a college friend resident at Belfast. From this engagement both parties apparently were not sorry to be ultimately released. Swift left Kilroot in charge of a college friend, Winder, for whom, early in 1698, when it became apparent that his resi­dence with Temple would be protracted, he obtained the succession. During his second residence at Moor Park, which was only terminated by the death of Temple, in 1698-'9, he was occupied in the revision of his friend's writings, in the self-imposed task of superintending the education of Esther Johnson, now a beautiful girl of fifteen, and chiefly in study, to which he devoted nearly ten hours a day. Sir William Temple had engaged in a con­troversy regarding the comparative merits of ancient and modern authors, advocating the claims of the former; and Swift came to his assistance in his first important essay in composition - The Battle of the Books. It was widely circulated in manuscript before Sir William's death, but did not ap­pear in print until four years later. "There is," says Mr. Forster, "not a line in this ex­traordinary piece of concentrated humour, however seemingly filled with absurdity, that does not run over with sense and meaning. If a single word were to be employed in describing it, applicable alike to its wit and its extravagance, intensity should be chosen. Especially character­istic of these earliest satires is what generally will be found most aptly descrip­tive of all Swift's writing: namely, that whether the subject be great or small, everything in it, from the first word to the last, is essentially part of it; not an episode or allusion being introduced merely for itself, but every minutest point not only harmonizing or consisting with the whole, but expressly supporting and strengthening it." Sir William Temple died on 27th January 1698-'9, "and with him," writes Swift, "died all that was good and amiable among men." Then closed the quietest and happiest period in Swift's life. Sir William left him a small legacy, and committed to him "the care, and trust, and advantage, of publishing his post­humous writings." The amount ulti­mately received for the five volumes was about £40 a piece. Swift confided in King William III.'s promise of the first vacant prebend at Westminster or Canterbury, and dedicated to him his edition of Temple's works; but neither promise nor dedication brought him any preferment. In the summer of 1699, he accompanied Lord Berkeley to Ireland as chaplain and private secretary, on his appointment as one of the Lords-Justices. He was soon, however, ousted from the secretaryship, and deprived by intrigue of the expected deanery of Deny, but remained chaplain at the Castle, continuing his service, for political as well as personal reasons, under two later Viceroys. He lived upon terms of the most affec­tionate intimacy with the Berkeleys, for whose amusement some of his cleverest poetical pieces were thrown off. In February 1699-1700 Swift was made vicar of Laracor, near Trim. With this ap­pointment was united the adjacent rectory of Agher, and afterwards the living of Rathbeggan, all in the diocese of Meath. Although nothing now stands but a ruined wall of his glebe-house at Laracor - although the church has been rebuilt, and few traces remain of the garden, the willows, and the stream in which he delighted, the place will long be re­garded with interest from the fact of his having resided there. Often, when in London, his heart reverted to the spot, and he wrote as longing to be away from court and politics, and amongst his fishponds and the sylvan beauties of the locality. His income at this time was £230, or about £600 in present value. Esther Johnson had been left by Sir William Temple a legacy of lands in "Monistown, in the County of Wicklow." Her property altogether amounted to about £1,500. After the break-up of the household at Moor Park, she re­sided at Farnham with her friend Mrs. Dingley. In 1700, says Swift, "I pre­vailed with her and her dear friend and companion, the other lady, to draw what money they had into Ireland, a great part of their fortune being in an­nuities upon funds. Money was then ten per cent, in Ireland, besides the advan­tage of returning it, and all necessaries of life at half the price. They complied with my advice, and soon after came over; but I happening to continue some time longer in England, they were much discouraged to live in Dublin, where they were wholly strangers. She was at that time about nineteen years old, and her person was soon distinguished. But the adventure looked so like a frolic, the censure held for some time, as if there were a secret history in such a removal; which, how­ever, soon blew off by her excellent con­duct." He writes of her at this period: "She was sickly from her childhood until about the age of fifteen; but then grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London, only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection." Excepting visits to her friends in England in 1705 and the winter of 1707-8, Esther Johnson spent the re­mainder of her life in Ireland. When Swift was at home, she and Mrs. Dingley occupied lodgings near him in Dublin or in Trim. They kept up a comfortable establishment - two maids and a man­servant, and at times a riding-horse for Esther. When Swift was absent they occu­pied his house in Dublin, or the vicarage at Laracor. On company days she and Mrs. Dingley presided at Swift's enter­tainments. "She grew to love Ireland," says Swift, "much better than the gene­rality of those who owe both their birth and riches to it... She detested the tyranny and injustice of England in their treatment of this kingdom. She had in­deed reason to love a country where she had the esteem and friendship of all who knew her, and the universal good re­port of all who ever heard of her." It is not probable that any more reasonable explanation of the relations that subsisted between Esther and Swift will ever be given than what is advanced by Mr. Forster in his Life of Swift. Referring to a letter dated April 1704, wherein Swift had discouraged the suit of a clergyman named Tisdall, he says: "Written when Esther Johnson was in her twenty-second year and Swift in his thirty-sixth, the letter describes with exactness the relations that, in the opinion of the present writer - who can find no evidence of marriage that is at all reasonably sufficient - subsisted between them at the day of her death, when she was entering her forty-sixth year and he had passed his sixtieth. Even assuming it to be less certain than I think it, that she had never given the least favourable ear to Tisdall's suit, there can be no doubt that the result of its abrupt termination was to connect her future in­alienably with that of Swift. The limit as to their intercourse expressed by him, if not before known to her, she had now been made aware of; and it is not open to us to question that she accepted it with its plainly implied conditions, of affection, not desire. The words 'in all other eyes but mine' have a touching significance. In all other eyes but his, time would take from her lustre; her charms would fade; but to him, through womanhood as in girlhood, she would continue the same. For what she was surrendering, then, she knew the equivalent; and this, almost wholly overlooked in other biographies, will be found in the present to fill a large place. Her story has indeed been always told with too much indignation and pity. Not with what depresses or degrades, but rather with what consoles and exalts, we may associate such a life. This young friendless girl, of mean birth and small fortune, chose to play no common part in the world; and it was not a sorrowful destiny, either for her life or her memory, to be the star to such a man as Swift." The endearing epithet "Stella" does not ap­pear to have been applied to Esther John­son until about 1712. Swift visited his friends in England at least once a year; and upon each occasion took a higher place among the literary men of the time, and with the Whig statesmen, to whose service he so freely lent his pen. The publication of the Tale of a Tub, in April 1705, proved one of the most important events in his life. Mr. Forster says: "His title to take higher intellectual rank than any man then living, and his per­petual exclusion from the rank in the Church, which in those days rewarded the most commonplace ability and question­able character, were settled by "the pub­lication of this work, which he character­izes as the "earliest of the two greatest prose satires in the English language, re­maining, with Gulliver, after the test of nearly two centuries, among the unique books of the world." It was published anonymously, as were most of his other works. He gave it to the public as sailors throw a tub to a whale, to divert it from more dangerous pursuits. It recounts the adventures of three brothers - Peter (the Church of Rome), Martin (the Established Church), and John (the Presbyterian). The work abounds in coarse passages and occasionally treats religious questions with levity. These were the points which, re­ported with exaggeration to Queen Anne by his enemies, effectually shut against him the doors of Church preferment. Swift went to London in September 1710, not expecting to be absent many weeks. The visit extended until June 1713. No por­tion of his life is more fully illustrated; for, commencing with the day of his arrival at Chester, and ending with that of his reaching the same place on his return, he kept a journal letter which he transmitted every few days to Esther Johnson. In these communications, evi­dently meant for her and Mrs. Dingley alone, he pours out his inmost confidences, from the minutest particulars regarding his interviews with courtiers and wits, to the commonest interests of his and their everyday life. Every page of these letters breathes the tenderest regard for Esther Johnson; and they abound with playful child's language, manifestly such as he had learned to use to her in their early inter­course. Swift writes of himself through­out as "Pdfr," "Podefar," "F R," or other fragments of what may be pre­sumed to be "Poor dear foolish rogue." Besides "Ppt," presumably “Poppet," or "Poor pretty thing," Esther Johnson is for the most part designated by "MD," "My dear," though this occasionally re­fers to Mrs. Dingley as well. For the latter lady, "D" or "D D," "Dingley" or "Dear Dingley," stands always; "M E," or "Madam Elderly," being only now and then applied to her. These wonderful letters were preserved by Esther Johnson; were borrowed by Swift to assist him in his political writings, and remained among his papers. The literary world is largely indebted to Mr. Forster for his care in collating portions, at least, of current editions with the originals, and pointing out liberties taken with them by previous biographers. Swift, who had for some years been growing less zealous in support of his Whig friends, soon after his arrival in London openly went over to the Tories. Mr. Lecky says: "The reasons he assigned for this change were very simple. He had originally been a Whig because he justified the Revolution, which could only be de­fended on Whig principles. On the other hand, as a clergyman and a High Church­man, he considered the exclusion of Dis­senters from state offices essential to the security of the Church... It was almost inevitable that a young man brought up in the house of Sir W. Temple should begin his career as a Whig. It was almost equally certain that a High Church clergyman would ultimately gravi­tate to the Tories. Swift, though he dis­liked William, never appears to have questioned the necessity of the Revolution, and in this respect he continued a Whig. Nor was he ever implicated, like his Tory friends, in negotiations with the Pretender... No doubt his junction with the Tories in 1710 was eminently to his advantage, but it should not be forgotten that in his later years he de­fended tests and disqualifications quite as jealously in Ireland, at the very time when he was endeavouring to unite all Irishmen in their national cause. Such a bigotry is far from admirable, but it may at least claim the merit of sincerity." Swift's immediate business in London, to secure for the Irish clergy a remission of the rights of the Crown to the first fruits and twentieth parts, was accomplished in less than a year; but he was detained from month to month by the Ministry, who found his services invaluable as a writer for the press and otherwise. "The nation, dazzled by the genius of Marlborough, and fired by the enthusiasm of a pro­tracted war, was fiercely opposed to a party whose policy was peace; but Swift's Examiners gradually modified this oppo­sition, and his Conduct of the Allies for a time completely quelled it. The success of this pamphlet has scarcely a parallel in history. It seems to have for a time almost reversed the current of public opinion, and to have enabled the Ministers to conclude the Peace of Utrecht." But, while his influence was great, and he was successful in procuring preferment for others, it was denied to himself; and all that his friends could prevail upon the Queen to grant him was the deanery of St. Patrick's. The patent was signed, 23rd February 1712-'13, and he returned to Ireland in June. His friends Oxford and Bolingbroke fell from power on the death of Queen Anne a year later; and the rest of his life may be said to have been passed in and for Ireland. At the period of his final settlement in this country he was forty-six years of age. His per­sonal appearance was still attractive; his features were regular and striking: he had a high forehead and broad massive temples; heavy-lidded blue eyes, to which his dark complexion and bushy black eyebrows gave unusual capacity for stern­ness, as well as brilliance and kindliness; a slightly aquiline nose; a resolute mouth; a handsome, dimpled double chin, and over all the pride of a confident, calm superiority. During his sojourn in London, Swift formed a friendship with Hester Vanhom­righ (better known by his pet name for her, "Vanessa"), daughter of a deceased Dutch merchant, Bartholomew Vanhom­righ, who had profited to the extent of some £16,000 by dealings connected with the forfeitures in Ireland. The family lived within a few doors of his lodgings; and there are constant references to them in his letters to Esther Johnson. Hester Vanhomrigh was born about 1692, and was consequently twenty years old; not re­markable for personal beauty; but of cap­tivating manners, and endowed with bril­liant talents and a greater inclination for reading and mental cultivation than was then usually combined with a gay temper. The Queen of Learning sowed - "Within her tender mind Seeds long unknown to womankind, For manly bosoms chiefly fit, The seeds of knowledge, judgment, wit. Her soul was suddenly endued With justice, truth, and fortitude; With honour which no breath can stain, Which malice must attack in vain; With open heart and bounteous hand." Swift thus writes in his poem of Cadenus and Vanessa, considered by Goldsmith to be one of the best of his pieces. It was penned at Windsor in 1713, and gives an account of the progress of a friendship which resulted in her open declaration of love for him. After his return to Dublin, Hester Vanhomrigh removed thither, and passed the remainder of her life there and at Marlay Abbey, Celbridge. She died ten years afterwards, in May 1723, aged 36. There seems to be small ground for the web of mystery that has been thrown around her intimacy with Swift. Scott says: "Enough of blame will remain with Swift, if we allow that he cherished, with indecisive yet flattering hope, a passion which, in justice to himself and Vanessa, he ought, at whatever risk to her feelings and his own, to have repressed as soon as she had declared it." Through their correspondence there is nothing to lead us to suppose that Swift ever addressed her as a lover. She reproaches him with coldness and unkindness, but not with in­constancy. His letters indicate the ut­most perplexity - he remonstrates, reasons, and scolds; he soothes and flatters. He adopted every device that ingenuity can suggest to bring her to reason. He seconded the addresses of two unexceptionable suitors for her hand. The stories about Hester Vanhomrigh's letter to Esther Johnson; Miss Johnson's transmission of it to Swift, and Miss Vanhomrigh's re­tirement to Celbridge; Swift's angry visit to her there; her consequent death; and Swift's remorse, are unsupported by evi­dence, and appear to be fully disposed of by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine for May 1876. Hester Vanhomrigh, as has been said, died in May 1723. and is sup­posed to have been buried at Leixlip. Her will (made 1st May, and proved 6th June) is an orderly document, exhibiting no traces of the resentment against Swift attributed to her. Dr. George Berkeley, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, and Robert Marshall, of Clonmel, are named her executors, and are bequeathed all her property, some £9,000, except small legacies to servants and friends, amounting to not more than £500. Marlay Abbey, at Celbridge, will ever be associated with the memories of Swift and Hester Vanhomrigh; there he often visited her; and there, to commemorate his visits, she planted beside the Liffey laurels, the off-shoots of which are still shown. All through the time of his acquaintance with Hester Vanhomrigh, his affection for Esther Johnson contin­ued unabated. The story of her pining under his unkindness is unsupported by reliable evidence. Some of his tenderest and purest effusions are his birthday odes to her for 1719, 1720, 1722, and 1723. Esther Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, far from living lonely and neglected in Dublin, moved in the best society the city afforded, and occasionally paid prolonged visits to friends in remote parts of the country. There is no proof of the private marriage that is said to have taken place between Swift and Esther Johnson, in 1716. The first positive statement regarding it appears in Lord Orrery's Remarks, penned in 1751; and the most recent researches fail to find any evidence to support it. Capable of the warmest friendship, Swift appears to have been insensible to the passion of love. It has been said that in the whole of his writings not one word occurs, in the whole course of his life not one act is recorded, indicative of passion. Mrs. Dingley, who was never separated from Esther Johnson from the time of their arrival in Dublin until the death of the latter, and who could not by possibility have been ignorant of the marriage, had it taken place, laughed at the story "as an idle tale, founded only on sus­picion." Swift's life, from his settlement in Ireland until his first appearance in Irish public matters in 1720, was chiefly occupied with the affairs of his Cathedral, in study, and in intercourse with his friends. His zeal for the rights and welfare of the Church soon made his influence paramount with his chapter. Perhaps for economy, he boarded with a friend whose wife pre­served that neatness and good order which was particularly agreeable to him. He kept two public days weekly at the deanery, where his entertainments were accounted rather parsimonious. He had received his preferment on terms that involved him in considerable debt; yet his parsimony, though often ludicrous, and in his declining years deplorable, never interfered with the claims of justice or benevolence. He gathered round him a coterie, for whose amusement many of his verses, and those of his friends Sheridan and Delany, were thrown off. He sometimes resided for months at a time at Sheridan's residence at Quilca, or at Gaulstown House, the seat of Chief-Baron Rochford. During these years he renewed his early intimacy with Addison, which had been broken off by the political events of 1711. In 1720 he en­tered the arena of Irish politics by the publication of a Proposal for the Universal use of Irish Manufactures. Government sought in vain to punish the printer. His satirical essays on the project for a National Bank caused the measure to be rejected by Parliament; and his Last Dying Speech of Elliston, a noted thief, intimating that he had left a list of the names of his companions, to be proceeded against in case they did not relinquish their evil courses, almost put an end to street rob­beries in Dublin for some years. In 1723 Swift electrified the Irish nation by the publication of his Drapier's Letters. Ire­land had for some time been suffering from the want of copper currency; and Walpole, through the influence of the Duchess of Kendal, the king's mistress (who stipulated that she should receive a large share of the profits), granted a patent to a person of the name of Wood, for the coinage of £108,000 in halfpence. Neither the Government nor the people of Ireland were in any way consulted in the matter - a striking proof of the condition of sub­serviency to which the country had been reduced. Its dignity and independence were felt to be grossly outraged; and the report that the coins were not worth their nominal value spread through the country, and was confirmed by Parliament. Swift, somewhat disingenuously, it is true, seized the opportunity to arouse the public spirit of Ireland; and, writing in the character of a Dublin draper, printed a series of letters, in which he asserted that all who took the new coin would lose nearly eleven-pence in the shilling; that every section of the community would lose by their in­troduction; the beggars were even assured that halfpence had been selected for adul­teration, so that their ruin at least should be compassed. A great turmoil was cre­ated; and a general panic ensued, which the Ministry in vain endeavoured to allay by an examination of the coin at the mint, and the issue of a certificate of its purity signed by Sir Isaac Newton. Swift's fourth letter turned the agitation into the desired channel. Declaring that a people long used to indignities soon lose by degrees the very idea of liberty, he boldly and clearly defined the limits of the prerogatives of the Crown, asserted the in­dependence of Ireland, and the nullity of those measures which had not received the sanction of the Irish Parliament. "He avowed his entire adherence to the doctrine of Molyneux; he declared his allegiance to the King, not as King of England, but as King of Ireland; and he asserted that Ireland was rightfully a free nation, which implied that it had the power of self-legislation; for, (government without the consent of the governed, is the very de­finition of slavery.'" All parties in Ireland combined in resistance to the obnoxious patent; the Lord-Chancellor denounced the coin; the Lords-Justices refused to sanction its circulation; Parlia­ment voted addresses against it; most of the grand juries at quarter sessions con­demned it; Primate Boulter lamented "that the people of every religion, country, and party here are alike set against Wood's halfpence, and that their agreement in this has had a very unhappy influence on the state of this nation, by bringing on in­timacies between Papists and Jacobites, and the Whigs." Neither the Duke of Grafton nor his successor, Lord Carteret, was able to quell the agitation; a reward of £300 was in vain offered for the dis­covery of the author (who was well known to be Swift); the grand jury refused to find a bill against the printer; public feeling grew stronger every day; and at last Walpole was compelled to cancel the patent. Mr. Lecky says: "Such were the circumstances of this memorable contest - a contest which has been deserved­ly placed in the foremost ranks in the annals of Ireland. There is no more momentous epoch in the history of a nation than that in which the voice of the people has first spoken, and spoken with success.... Before this time rebellion was the natural issue of every patriotic effort in Ireland. Since then rebellion has been an anachron­ism and a mistake. The age of Desmond and of O'Neill had passed. The age of Grattan and of O'Connell had begun. Swift was admirably calculated to be the leader of public opinion in Ireland, from his complete freedom from the characteristic defects of the Irish temperament. His writings exhibit no tendency to exaggeration or bombast; no fallacious im­ages or far-fetched analogies; no tumid phrases, in which the expression hangs loosely and inaccurately around the mean­ing. His style is always clear, keen, nervous, and exact. He delights in the most homely Saxon, in the simplest and most unadorned sentences. His arguments are so plain that the weakest mind can grasp them, yet so logical that it is seldom possible to evade their force... After the Drapier's Letters, Swift published several minor pieces on Irish affairs, but most of them are very inconsiderable. The principal is his Short View of the State of Ireland, published in 1727, in which he enumerated fourteen causes of a nation's prosperity, and showed in how many of these Ireland was deficient. He also brought forward the condition of the country indirectly, in his amusing pro­posal for employing children for food - a proposal which a French writer is said to have taken literally, and to have gravely adduced as a proof of the wretched con­dition of the Irish. His influence with the people, after the Drapier's Letters, was unbounded... There are few things in the Irish history of the last century more