cross to him, and have called him, fancies that Swift must have secretly 'friend' three or four times." Then, regretted his loss; and it would, no having been drunk again, he is all but doubt, have been edifying to hear Patdischarged, and Mrs. Vanhomrigh (a rick upon his master. near neighbor) has to make the peace. There is one person, however, for He is certainly trying; he loses keys, fuller details respecting whom one forgets messages, locks up clothes at would willingly surrender the entire critical moments, and so forth. But he" Patrickiad," and that is the lady in is accustomed to Swift's ways, and the whose interest the journal was written, next we hear of him is that, "intoler- since Mrs. Rebecca Dingley, notwithable rascal" though he be, he is going standing the many conventional referto have a livery which will cost four ences to her, does no more than play pounds, and that he has offered to pay the mute and self-denying part of profor the lace on his hat out of his own priety. But of Esther Johnson (as wages. Yet his behavior is still so bad she signs herself) we get, in reality, that his master is afraid to give him his little beyond the fact that her health at new clothes, though he has not the this time was already a source of anxheart to withhold them. "I wish MD iety to her friends. The journal is full were here to entreat for him—just of injunctions to her to take exercise, here at the bed's side." Then there is especially horse exercise, and not to a vivid little study of Swift bathing in attempt to read Pdfr's "ugly small the Thames at Chelsea, with Patrick on hand," but to let Dingley read it to guard- of course quite perfunctorily her. "Preserve your eyes, if you to prevent his master's being dis-be wise," says a distich manufactured turbed by boats. "That puppy Patrick, for the occasion. Nor is she to write standing ashore, would let them come until she is "mighty, mighty, mighty, within a yard or two, and then call mighty, mighty well" in her sight, and sneakingly to them." After this he is sure it will not do her the least hurt. takes to the study of Congreve, goes to" Or come, I will tell you what; you, the play, fights in his cups with another Mistress Ppt, shall write your share at gentleman's gentleman, by whom he is five or six sittings, one sitting a day; dragged along the floor upon his face, and then comes DD altogether, and "which looked for a week after as if then Ppt a little crumb towards the end, he had the leprosy; and," adds the to let us see she remembers Pdfr; and diarist grimly, "I was glad enough to then conclude with something handsee it." Later on he enrages his mas-some and genteel, as 'your most humter so much by keeping him waiting, ble cumdumble,' or, &c." A favorite that Swift is provoked into giving him subject of raillery is Mrs. Johnson's "two or three swingeing cuffs on the spelling, which was not her strong point, ear," spraining his own thumb thereby, though she was not nearly as bad as Lady though Arbuthnot thinks it may be Wentworth. "Rediculous, madam ? I gout. "He [Patrick] was plaguily suppose you mean ridiculous. Let me afraid and humbled." That he was have no more of that; it is the author more frightened than repentant, the of the Atalantis' spelling. I have sequel shows. "I gave him half a mended it in your letter." Elsewhere crown for his Christmas box, on condi- there are lists of her lapses: bussiness tion he would be good," says Swift, for business, immagin, merrit, phamwhose forbearance is certainly extraor-phlets, etc. But the letters seldom end dinary, "and he came home drunk at without their playful greeting to his midnight." Worse than this, he some- "dearest Sirrahs," his "dear foolish times never comes home at all. At last Rogues," his " pretty, saucy MD," and arrives the inevitable hour when he is the like. As his mood changes in its "turned off to the wide world," and intensity they change also. "Farewell, he never seems to have succeeded in my dearest lives and delights; I love coaxing himself back again. Yet one you better than ever, if possible.

more poignant in the sincerity of their
utterance. "We have been perfect
friends these thirty-five years," he tells
Mr. Worrall, his vicar, of Mrs. John-
son; and he goes on to describe her as
one whom he
"most esteemed upon

God Almighty bless you ever, and make | Walter Scott or Mr. Forster), married us happy together. I pray for this by the Bishop of Clogher in the garden twice every day, and I hope God will of St. Patrick's Deanery. For one hear my poor, hearty prayers." In an- thing which is detachable from the netother place it is "God send poor Ppt work of tittle-tattle and conjecture enher health, and keep MD happy. Fare- cumbering a question already sufficiently well, and love Pdfr, who loves MD perplexed in its origin is that Swift's above all things ten millions of times." expressions of esteem and admiration And again, "Farewell, dearest rogues; for Stella are as emphatic at the end as I am never happy but when I think or at the beginning. Some of those in the write of MD. I have enough of courts journal have already been reproduced. and ministers, and wish I were at Lara- But his letters during her last lingering cor." It is to Laracor, with its holly illness, and a phrase in the Holyhead and its cherry-trees, and the willow-diary of 1727, are, if anything, even walk he had planted by the canal he had made, and Stella riding past with Joe "to the Hill of Bree, and round by Scurlock's Town," that he turns regretfully when the perfidies of those in power have vexed his soul with the conviction that for all they "call him nothing but Jonathan," he can serve everybody but himself." "If I had not a spirit naturally cheerful," he says in his second year of residence, "I should be very much discontented at a thousand things. Pray God preserve MD's health, and Pdfr's, and that I may live far from the envy and discontent that attends those who are thought to have more favor at court than they really possess. Love Pdfr, who loves MD above all things." And then the letter winds off into those cryptic epistolary caresses of which a specimen has been already quoted.

Upon Stella's reputed rival, and Swift's relations with her, the scope of this paper dispenses us from dwelling. Indeed, though Swift's visits to Miss Vanhomrigh's mother are repeatedly referred to, Esther Vanhomrigh herself (from motives which the reader will no doubt interpret according to his personal predilections in the famous Vanessafrage) is mentioned but twice or thrice in the entire journal, and then not by name. But we are of those who hold with Mr. Henry Craik that, whatever the relations in question may have heen, they never seriously affected or even materially interrupted, Swift's lifelong attachment to the lady to whom, a year or two later, he was, or was not (according as we elect to side with Sir

the score of every good quality that can possibly commend a human creature.

To an

Ever since I left you my heart has been so sunk that I have not been the same man, nor ever shall be again, but drag on a wretched life, till it shall please God to call me away.' other correspondent, speaking of Stella's then hourly expected death, he says, "As I value life very little, so the poor casual remains of it, after such a loss, would be a burden that I beg God Almighty to enable me to bear; and I think there is not a greater folly than that of entering into too strict and particular a friendship, with the loss of which a man must be absolutely miserable. . . . Besides, this was a person of my own rearing and instructing from childhood who excelled in every good quality that can possibly accomplish a human creature." The date of this letter is July, 1726; but it was not until the beginning of 1728 that the blow came which deprived him of his "dearest friend." Then, on a Sunday in January, at eleven at night, he sits down to compile that (in the circumstances) extraordinary "character" of "the truest, most virtuous, and valuable friend that I, or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed with." A few passages from this strange finis to a strange story, began while Stella was lying dead, and continued after her

funeral (in a room to which he had she had been is not quite easy for a

edly to Esther Johnson's advantage as to suggest the further reproduction of the portrait in some separate and accessible form.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

From The Nineteenth Century.

THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE ON RACE.
Is it not remarkable that in this

moved in order to avoid the sight of the modern admirer to realize from the light in the church), may be copied dubious Delville medallion, or the inadhere. "Never," he says, 66 was any of equate engraving by Engleheart of the her sex born with better gifts of the picture at Ballinter, which forms the mind, or who more improved them by frontispiece to Sir William Wilde's reading and conversation. . . . Her ad- deeply interesting Closing Years of vice was always the best, and with the Dean Swift's Life." The more accugreatest freedom, mixed with the great-rate photogravure of the latter given in est decency. She had a gracefulness Mr. Gerald Moriarty's recent book is somewhat more than human in every much more satisfactory, and so markmotion, word, and action. Never was so happy a conjunction of civility, freedom, easiness, and sincerity. . . . She never mistook the understanding of others; nor ever said a severe word, but where a much severer was deserved. . . . She never had the least absence of mind in conversation, nor was given to interruption, nor appeared eager to put in her word, by waiting impatiently till another had done. She spoke in a most agreeable voice, in the plainest much-exalted nineteenth century we words, never hesitating, except out of should still be so utterly in the dark modesty before new faces, where she as to the effects of climate ou the human was somewhat reserved; nor, among organization? We English are interher nearest friends, ever spoke much at ested, if ever a people was, in obtaining a time. . . . Although her knowledge, some knowledge of the subject, being from books and company, was much masters, for the present at any rate, of more extensive than usually falls to the countries situate in almost every degree share of her sex, yet she was so far of latitude. Yet we know nothing from making a parade of it that her whatever certain about it, and we seem female visitants, on their first acquaint- even to be in conspiracy to ignore it. ance, who expected to discover it by Like most Englishmen, I have read what they call hard words and deep abundance of papers about imperial discourse, would be sometimes disap- federation, federation of the Englishpointed, and say they found she was speaking peoples all over the world, like other women. But wise men, through all her modesty, whatever they discoursed on, could easily observe that she understood them very well, by the judgment shown in her observations as well as in her questions.'

In the foregoing retrospect, as in the final birthday poems to Stella, Swift, it will be gathered, dwells upon the intellectual rather than the physical charms of this celebrated woman. To her mental qualities, indeed, he had always given the foremost place. But time, in 1728, had long since silvered those locks once "blacker than a raven," while years of failing health had sadly altered the perfect figure, and dimmed the lustre of the beautiful eyes. What

and so forth, all of which seemed to proceed on the à priori assumptions, first, that the Anglo-Saxon can live and thrive more or less all the world over; secondly, that he is bound, to whatever climate he may be transplanted, to remain very much the same creature as he is in the British isles. Nay, there are doctrinaire enthusiasts who go still further; who assume that, if a certain number of Englishmen be sent to a continent in the torrid zone, the native races are bound to assimilate themselves, in defiance of the traditions of centuries, and the sun under which these have grown up, to the type of

1 This article was sent to me in May, 1892. Nineteenth Century.

.ED.

national character which is only to our own little islands.

peculiar | ous; but Canada can hardly be considered apart from the United States, This last, of course, is an extreme whether (as good judges assure us must case. More sober men do recognize | be, and as seems most natural) she bethat in the tropics at any rate the Eu- comes part of the United States or not. glish are subject to climatic disadvan- The United States, as we know, have tages, and cannot compete on equal their negro problem to face, and the terms with colored races. It is ad- wisest American heads are puzzled as mitted that there the English white to its solution. For it seems certain must be a small minority, overwhelm- that, in some of the Southern States at ingly outnumbered by the colored races, any rate, the negroes are out-breeding aboriginal or imported. For the whole and to that extent displacing the whites, system of white supremacy in the trop- through favor of the climate. Let us ics is, in fact, artificial. The colored pass, then, to the Cape Colonies. These races, whether African, as in Barbados, certainly cannot be considered as safe or East Indian, as in Mauritius, increase from colored competition, being no more and multiply. The whites are kept on than a white tag, indeed a few white their feet by constant importation of hairs, in the tail of a black coutinent. fresh blood from the central breeding Australia? More than a third of it lies establishment in the Old Country, and within the tropic of Capricorn; but of propped by British men-of-war and this more hereafter. Tasmania would British bayonets. If any one be scep- answer the purpose, but that its proxtical as to the damaging effects of a imity to Australia binds its fate so tropical climate, a disbeliever in the closely to Australia's. Let us, theredegeneracy of Englishmen from purely fore, fall back on New Zealand. climatic causes, let him go to the oldest New Zealand is reckoned, and I beand healthiest of our tropical posses- lieve justly, to be the most English sions-Barbados. There he will see place out of England. Not that in resome people known as the " mean-spect of latitude it would occupy Enwhites," men and women of blood as gland's place if transferred to this pure as his own, whose progenitors hemisphere; far from it. The point of have lost through poverty the luxuries England nearest to the equator is 50° and advantages which, with constant distant from it; the point of New Zeainfusion of fresh blood, alone keep the land remotest from the equator is less whites alive there. He can notice at than 48°. In fact it is rather Italy the same time-for it will be brought than England. New Zealand has been home to him without mistake the settled for little more than fifty years, insolence which the consciousness of during which period fresh blood has physical superiority has bred in the de- been constantly streaming in from the scendants of the African slaves. Old Country. She possesses, also, the This is one extreme among our so- eminently British attribute of insularcalled colonial possessions that where-ity. It is therefore no great wonder in the numerical inferiority of the that she should be far more English whites is accepted as inevitable. Let than, for instance, New South Wales. us pass on to consider colonies better | But the people are nonthe less undeserving of the name, wherein the dergoing a rapid process of alteration climate gives the transplanted English- are becoming, to coin a word, dismen a better chance: Canada, the Englished in respect of mental charCape Colonies, Australia vast terri-acteristics. As to purely physical tories, all three - Tasmania and New changes it is impossible to say anything Zealand; and let us choose one which definite; and yet after short experiembraces the other extreme where, ence one becomes alive to the fact that in fact, the white man need not dread there is something in the make and competition from a colored race. Which shape of the New Zealander bred and shall it be? Canada is the most obvi-born which renders him in a great

LIVING AGE.

VOL. LXXXIII. 4264

degree distinguishable from the Briton | but one single small point, and think of bred and born, of the same age. Some- the revolution that would be wrought times the difference is indefinable, and, in our national character by such a indeed, imperceptible, by any but a change as the certainty of fine weather practised eye. Sometimes young New in its season. The matter sounds insigZealanders betray their native origin nificant, but it is not. Distrust of the by that length and slenderness of form weather is deeply rooted in the Enwhich has gained for young Australians glish mind, and is very difficult to eradthe name of "cornstalks." The physicate from it. We remember Marryat's ical precocity of these transplanted En- quartermaster, when he came back to glish is admitted on all hands, and the fogs of the Channel from the West must, no doubt, produce its effect; but Indies: "This is what I calls somewhilst I should hesitate to ascribe to thing like. None of your d -d blue them physical superiority over the na- skies here." But the born and bred tive English, I should be still more loth New Zealanders have faith in the blue even to hint of physical inferiority. A skies of their country, and enjoy a new physical difference which is accentuat- sensation, a source of pleasure uning itself rapidly is to be found in what known to their forefathers - a delight is known as the "colonial twang," in in existence for its own sake. When speech. It may be a small point; but they lay themselves out for pleasure will anybody explain to me why the they can do so without fear that the eletransplanted Englishman makes his ments will spoil it; they cease to take language sound so hideous to native it sadly, after the manner of our race, English ears? I can understand the or to gulp it down greedily for fear it lazy, nasal drawl of the over-heated should be dashed from their lips, beBarbadian; but why the nasality of cause they have confidence that they America? Why, again, should Aus- can enjoy it at leisure, and sip it to tralasia have grown to speak, with the dregs. Life is brighter and happier aggravations, the hideous cockney dialect (quite of modern date, judging by Sam Weller) which converts "a" into a quasi-diphthongic "y"? Why should South Australians speak of their native country as "S'th 'Strylia"? Why, in spite of the efforts of fathers, should children - English, Scotch, and Irish all tend in New Zealand to use the same abominable corrupt pronunciation ? Does it cost them less effort? If not, what excuse is there for it?

to them. They cease to be restless, gloomy, and anxious, and become cheerful and light-hearted, more like the southern races of Europe.

Another and a far more important change is wrought by exemption from the hardships of a severe winter. Our friends in the Antipodes boast of the superiority of their climate, and, so far as the amenities of life are concerned, they have, no doubt, every right to do So, Warmth is certainly far pleasanter than cold, and even excessive heat, such as is known in Australia, is, I fancy, preferred by most men to excessive cold. After all, a great deal of heat may be got through pleasantly enough by the simple process of lying still in the shade, provided you can afford to do so. But to lie still in the cold means nothing less than death. It

But we must leave this uncertain ground for the easier field of the influence of a change of climate on mental habits and character. For such influence there is; how should there not be? Our national English melancholy is proverbial, and is attributed, with good reason, by our lighter-hearted neighbors across the Channel, to our eternal leaden skies, fogs, and other must, however, be borne in mind that damp, depressing atmospheric condi- it is not the pleasantest climate that tions. Remove these conditions, change necessarily turns out the finest men. the climate as in New Zealand to that of A hard winter is a great Teutonic inItaly, and can we expect the Englishman stitution. It is a great teacher of stubto remain the same creature? Take born endurance, providence, industry,