have been troubled, but except that he once
met her in York and trusted that some trouble
of hers was ended, there is little to tell us, for
good or bad, what place she occupied in the
mind of Laurence Sterne.

By his uncle Richard, Laurence was sent to
the college—Jesus College, Cambridge—of
which Richard's grandfather, the archbishop,
had been master, and which the archbishop had
enriched with foundations and benefactions. In
the course of his first year Laurence's education
was put upon an economical footing, on the
ground, doubtless, of his orphanhood, by his
entry as a sizar on the sixth of July, seventeen
'thirty-three. His Uncle Richard had died in
the preceding October, and Richard his son,
Laurence's cousin, about six years older than
himself, inheriting, not Woodhouse, which was
left to a son by a second marriage, but
Elvington, with a chief share of his father's wealth
and all his good will to Laurence, became
thenceforth answerable for the expenses of his
education. So at the university Laurence Sterne
"spent the usual number of years; read a
great deal, laughed more, and sometimes took
the diversion of puzzling his tutors. He left
Cambridge with the character of an odd man,
who had no harm in him, and who had parts, if
he would use them." At Cambridge, Laurence
Sterne commenced his friendship with John
Hall, afterwards John Hall Stevenson—the
Eugenius of Tristram Shandy. Here, also, Sterne
made his first acquaintance with another most
familiar associate of after years, that affection
of the chest which showed itself in constant
cough and the occasional spitting of blood.
Sterne matriculated in March, seventeen 'thirty-
five, took his degree as B.A. in the following
January, and was ordained deacon in March,
seventeen 'thirty-six. His ordination as priest
followed two or three years later, when his age
was not quite five-and-twenty.

Besides the eldest brother Richard, Roger
Sterne had an elder brother Jaques, who also
survived him, and who, like Richard, was ready
to help, as he could, Roger's orphan son.
Laurence's uncle, Dr. Jaques Sterne, a Whig and
a strong Protestant, was, at the time when his
nephew entered the Church, canon residentiary,
prebendary, and precentor of York Cathedral,
and rector of two small livings in the East
Riding. Eight years later he became archdeacon
of Cleveland, and he died archdeacon of the
East Riding of Yorkshire.

The young clergyman then, the Reverend
Laurence Sterne, came home from the university
to York, where his Uncle Jaques, as precentor
of the cathedral, had a residence, and his cousin
Richard was at Elvington, within a five-mile
walk, or in the season occupied the town-house
of the Sternes in Castlegate. And now it was
that Laurence Sterne met a clergyman's daughter
who was making a long stay at York, Elizabeth
Lumley, daughter of the rector of Bedal in
Staffordshire. After a two years' courtship,
Miss Lumley went back to Staffordshire, leaving
Laurence sentimentally disconsolate. When
presently she returned to York, it was with
broken health; she was believed to be a dying
victim of consumption, and under that impression
told her "Laury" that she should not live
to be his, but had made a will leaving all that
she had to him. She had forty pounds a year
in her own right, if not more. By this time
Laurence was, in the world's eyes, settled in
life. His ordination as priest preceded only by
five days his induction into the vicarage of
Sutton-on-the-Forest, named from its position
on the edge of the Yorkshire forest of the
Galtrees, which then extended all the way to York.
Two years afterwards he took his degree of
M.A., and in the following year got one of the
best prebend's stalls in York Minster, which
gave him, with the dignity and prospect of
promotion, forty pounds a year and a house in
Stonegate. Upon this he married. It was in
seventeen 'forty-one that he got his stall, and
it was on Easter Monday of that year that,
according to his own entry in his parish register
at Sutton, "Laurence Sterne, A.M., Vicar of
Sutton-on-the-Forest, and Prebendary of York,
was married, by the Reverend Dr. Osbaldeston,
Dean of York, to Elizabeth Lumley, the 30th
day of March, 1741 (being Easter Monday), in
the Cathedral, by license."

Of Mrs. Sterne, who before marriage had been
the object of her husband's sentimental ecstasies,
the worst that Mr. Fitzgerald can suggest as
excuse for her husband's subsequent neglect
of her—a neglect that he clearly shows to
have been greatly exaggerated by the world—
is that a crayon portrait recently discovered
gives her a disagreeable face, and that although
she had a fine voice and a good taste in music,
"she is like to have settled down into a plain,
well meaning, orderly, humdrum sort of
housewife; excellent for school-work, for cottage-
visiting, for marketing, for sweeping up, and
weekly washings; excellent as a social labourer
of life, yet, unhappily, with a literal turn of
mind, and on which her husband's brilliant
rockets might explode harmlessly, quite unfelt
and unappreciated." Just the sort of faithful
home-cherishing wife, in fact, that the man of
genius most needs, weds if he can, and whose
value he of all men in the world usually most
appreciates. At Sutton, Parson Sterne was not on
good terms with the squire of his parish, and
was not liked among his people, but some families
of good repute held fast by him. He amused
himself with playing the bass viol, painting,
writing, and occasionally shooting, looking to
his fruit and vegetables, and his hay. His
sermons were very short; the weakness of
his lungs made that an unavoidable condition.
Preaching, he said in 'sixty-two, " which I have
not strength for, is ever fatal to me; but I
cannot avoid the latter yet." If his sermons,
however, were short, they were boldly natural
and practical, often dramatic in their tone,
always home spoken, religious even when in
mood upon the verge of laughter, and of a sort
always to seize on the attention of his hearers.

In the year following that of Sterne's marriage