and in another, the famous portrait of him by Reynolds, copies of which have long been favorite illustrations with the disciples of Lavater and Gall. In Old Bond Street, No. 41, now a cheesemonger's, but known in his day as "The Silk-bag-shop," are the lodgings whence are dated many of his letters, where, according to tradition, he finished the "Sentimental Journey," and where occurred his melancholy death. In the burial-ground fronting Hyde Park, on the road to Bayswater, about the centre of the western wall, is the headstone that marks his grave, set up, as the best of London guide-books truly declares, "with an unsuitable inscription," by a "tippling fraternity of Freemasons." The most interesting problem involved in his career as an author is the rank he holds as an expositor of sentiment. Critics have viewed him, in this regard, at the two extremes of hypocrisy and sincerity, of artifice and of truth. In order justly to estimate Sterne with reference to this, his most obvious claim and purpose, we must consider the true relation between human feeling and its written expression. Sentiment, as an element of literature, is the intellectual embodiment of feeling; it is thought imbued with a coloring and an atmosphere derived from emotion; its reality, duration, and tone depend in books, as in character, upon alliance with other qualities; and there is no fallacy more common than that which tests its sincerity in the author by the permanent traits of the man. It may be quite subordinate as a motive of action, and altogether secondary as a normal condition, and yet it is none the less real while it lasts. In each artist and author, sentiment exists in relation to other qualities, which essentially modify it while they do not invalidate its claim. To say that a man who writes an elegy which moves us to tears, and at the same time displays the most heartless conduct in his social life, is therefore a hypocrite, is to reason without discrimination. The adhesiveness, the conscience, and the temperament of each individual directly influence his sentiment, in one case giving to it the intensity of passion, in another the sustained dignity of principle, now causing it to appear as an incidental mood, and again as a permanent characteristic. United to strength of will or to earnestness of spirit, it is worthy of the highest confidence; in combination with a feeble and impressible mind, or a lightsome and capricious fancy, or a selfish disposition, it is quite unreliable. In either case, however, the quality itself is genuine, its type and degree only are to be questioned. Thus regarded, the apparent incongruity between its expression and its actual condition vanishes. Sentiment in Burns was essentially modified by tenderness, in Byron by passion, in Shelley by imagination; meditation fostered it in Petrarch, extreme susceptibility in Kirke White. In the French Quietists it took the form of religious ecstasy. In the Old English drama it is robust, in the Spanish ballads chivalric, in Hamlet abstract and intellectual, in "As You Like It" full of airy fancifulness. Miss Edgeworth and Jane Austen exhibited it as governed by prudence and common sense, Mrs. Radcliffe, as rendered mysterious by superstition. Scott delighted to interpret it through local and legendary accessories, under the influence of a sensuous temperament. In the Dantesque picture of Francesca da Rimini it is full of tragic sweetness, and in Paul and Virginia perverted by artificial taste. In Charles Lamb it is quaint, in Hood deeply human, in Cowper alternately natural and morbid, in Mackenzie soft and pale as moonlight, and in Boccaccio warm as the glow of a Tuscan vintage. Chastened by will, it is as firm and cold as sculpture in Alfieri, and melted by indulgence, it is as insinuating as the most delicious music in Metastasio. Pure and gentle in Raphael, it is half savage in Salvator and Michael Angelo; severely true in Vandyke, it is luscious and coarse in Rubens. And yet, to a certain extent and under specific modifications, every one of these authors and artists possessed sentiment; but held in solution by character, in some it governed, in others it served genius; in some it was a predominant source of enjoyment and suffering, and in others but an occasional stimulus or agency. Who doubts, over a page of the Nouvelle Heloise, that sentiment in all its tearful bliss was known to Rousseau? The abandonment of his offspring to public charity does not disprove its existence, but only shows that in his nature it was a mere selfish instinct. The history of philanthropic enterprise indicates the same contradiction. Base cruelty has at times deformed the knight, gross appetites the crusader, hypocrisy the missionary, and the men whose names figure in the so-called charitable movements of our day are often the last to whom we should appeal for personal kindness and sympathy. The same inconsistency is evident in that large class of women in whose characters the romantic predominates over the domestic instincts. "Confessions" form a popular department of French literature, and are usually based on sentiment. Yet their authors are frequently thorough men of the world and intense egotists. It is this want of harmony between expression and life, between the eloquent avowal and the practical influence of sentiment, patriotic, religious, and humane, which gave rise to the invective of Carlyle, and the other stern advocates of fact, of action, and of reality. Meanwhile the beauty, the high capacity, the exalted grace of sentiment itself is uninvaded. We must learn to distinguish its manifestations, to honor its genuine power, to distrust its rhetorical exaggeration. The truth is, that Sterne's heart was more sensitive than robust. It was like "wax to receive," but not like "marble to retain," impressions. Their evanescence therefore does not impugn their reality. Perhaps we owe the superiority of their artistic expression to this want of stability. Profound and continuous emotion finds but seldom its adequate record; men thus swayed recoil from self-contemplation; their peace of mind is better consulted by turning from than by dwelling upon their states of feeling; whereas more frivolous natures may dally with and make capital of their sentiment without the least danger of insanity. We have but to study the portrait of Sterne in order to feel that a highly nervous organization made him singularly alive to the immediate, while it unfitted him for endurance and persistency. That thin, pallid countenance, that long, attenuated figure, the latent mirth of the expression, the predominance of the organs of wit and ideality, betoken a man to "set the table in a roar," -one who passes easily from smiles to tears, from whose delicately strung yet unheroic mould the winds of life draw plaintive and gay, but transient music;-a being more artistic than noble, more susceptible than generous, capable of a shadowy grace and a fitful brilliancy, but without the power to dignify and elevate sensibility. His fits of depression, his recourse to amusement, his favorite watchword, "Vive la bagatelle," his caprice and trifling, his French view of life, his alternate gayety and blue-devils, attest one of those ill-balanced characters, amusing in society, ingenious in literature, but unsatisfactory in more intimate relations and higher spheres. ART. V.-1. Schamyl als Feldherr, Sultan, und Prophet; und der Caucasus. Von DR. FRIEDRICH WAGNER. Leipzig. 1854. 2. Der Caucasus und das Land der Kosaken. Von Mozitz WAGNER. Dresden. 1848. 3. Journal of a Residence in Circassia. By JAMES STANISLAUS BELL. London. 1840. 4. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1853. "La Guerre de Caucase." 5. Russia and England. By JOHN REYNELL MORELL. London. 1854. THE Eastern War has given a fresh interest to the war of independence in Circassia. In this "cradle of the races" there has been going on for more than twenty-five years a struggle, which, for the persistency of the one party, and the energy, enthusiasm, and obstinacy of the other, is not surpassed in those chapters from which the schoolboy wrests the story of Greek and Persian battles. The poor, partly civilized tribes of Circassia, with no very lofty ideal of freedom to fight for, have succeeded, hitherto, in protecting themselves against the encroachments of Russia. They have steadily refused to pay taxes and to do homage to the Czar. They have laughed at his proclamations and defied his armies. They have held themselves aloof from him in all respects, so that now the Caucasus lifts its mountain summits, like islands of the sea, above a wide waste of Russian provinces. In the present article we propose to give a brief account of this war, and of the parties engaged in it, especially of that remarkable man whose eloquence and courage have driven his countrymen to make successful resistance against an almost overwhelming enemy. It is only as Circassia appears on the map of ancient history, that its shape and position are popularly known. A mere glance at its situation on the modern atlas will reveal its geographical importance. It is a long arm of land thrust out by Europe into Asia. The Caspian Sea washes it on the east. The broad Black Sea, with its border cities, its far-flowing rivers, and classic shores, bounds it on the west. Across the centre, diagonally, from sea to sea, the lofty spinal ridge of the Caucasus bisects the entire country. Through narrow gorges of the mountains run the two great highways by which Southern Russia journeys into Persia and Arabia. When the caravan of merchandise, toiling up, reaches, the summit of the mountain boundary, it commands both continents at a glance, -on the north, Europe, with its indomitable, bustling, onward life, on the south, Asia, torpid, emasculate, sleeping a child's sleep in the sun. What venerable associations gather about Circassia and the Caucasus! "The intelligible forms of ancient poets, point us to this far country of myth and classic story. Here is the local habitation assigned to some of the most sacred traditions of the ancient world. On one of the highest of these hills, the inexpugnable fortresses set up by nature against Russian aggression,—the ark of Noah, it is fabled, first grounded and hung poised for a moment, before drifting southward to Mount Ararat. Here is the region to which the Argo sailed that childish voyage which looms so grandly through the mists of Grecian fable. Here is "the outmost tract of earth, The Scythian waste, the pathless solitude," where Prometheus was chained to the bald, bleak rock, with a vulture battening on his liver, because he had stolen heavenly fire. Here dwelt the Amazons, first of the "strong |