strongly." In one of his letters to the Bramine
he wrote: "Talking of widows, pray, Eliza, if
ever you are such, do not think of giving
yourself to some wealthy nabob, because I design
to marry you myself. My wife cannot live long;
she has sold all the provinces in France already,
and I know not the woman I should like so
well for her substitute as yourself." Too much
stress must not be laid on this poor fooling.
His last letter records the breaking of another
blood-vessel. Then he wished to have his wife
near him and his daughter, "child and darling of
his heart."

After slight recovery, a relapse was followed
—not for the first time, according to the
murderous practice of the doctors in that day—
with free blood-letting. So, from his lodgings
in Bond-street, Sterne's sick body was carried
to Yorkshire, "like a bale of cadaverous goods,"
where his health greatly improved. To his
wild friend Hall Stevenson he wrote, with a
touch of the earnest feeling then in his heart,
"I have never been so well since I left college,
and should be a marvellous happy man but for
some reflections which bow down my spirits;
but if I live but even three or four years, I
will acquit myself with honour; and—no
matter! We will talk over this when we meet."
He was busy with the writing of his Sentimental
Journey, and was taking pains to keep
its spirit pure.

Next September, Mr. Sterne went to Scarborough
for ten days' sea-bathing. He was the
guest there of an Irish bishop. At the end
of the month, he met at York his returned
wife and daughter Lydia; who did justice, he
thought, to her mother's care of her, and
proved "an elegant, accomplished little slut."
He was to go to London at Christmas with
his usual Christmas book. While he was in
town, Mrs. Sterne and Lydia were to be housed
at York; and in the spring mother and daughter
were to return to France, where Lydia had
had some "advantageous offers" of marriage.

Before starting for London, a fresh attack
of illness weakened Sterne in body and in
mind. But he bade farewell to wife and
daughter—not knowing that it was a last
farewell—and delivered himself up to the gaiety
of London. On the twenty-seventh of February,
seventeen 'sixty-eight, were published, in the
usual form of two little books, sold for five
shillings, "vols. i. and ii. of a Sentimental
Journey through France and Italy." This work
was meant to be continued annually, in the
place of Tristram. But in the next March,
Sterne had a pleurisy, for which he was three
times punished with blood-letting by the
doctors. And at last, the doctors killed him! He
died on the eighteenth of March—nobody by
but a sick-nurse, and a footman sent up from
a neighbouring dinner-party to inquire how
Mr. Sterne was. Three days before his death,
he wrote to Mrs. James, the one good woman
who was his most trusted friend in London,
"If I die, cherish the remembrance of me, and
forget the follies which you have so often
condemned—which my heart, not my head,
betrayed me into. Should my child—my Lydia
—want a mother, may I hope you will (if
she is left parentless) take her to your bosom?
You are the only woman on earth whom I can
depend on for such a benevolent action."

Sterne's body was carried to its grave in
"the new burying-ground near Tyburn,"
followed by a single mourning coach, in which
were two gentlemen—one of them his publisher.
Almost immediately after burial, it was disinterred
by the resurrectionist, and recognised
presently, when its dissection was almost
complete, upon the lecture-table of the Cambridge
Professor of Anatomy.

Sterne died involved in debts, which his wife
parted with her own small fortune to pay. A
handsome subscription for his wife and
daughter was afterwards made on a Yorkshire
racecourse; but their narrow means pressed on
them heavily. Seven years later, Mrs. Sterne
was dead; and Lydia was married to a French-
man.

         SAXON HAIR-DOCTORS

"YOUR 'air is getting very thin on the top,
sir. You'd find it very advantageous to use our
Treble X Cytherean Extract, which will entirely
remove the dandriff, and cause the short 'airs to
grow long. You will also derive great benefit
from our Medicated Balm of Paphos, which is of
unparalleled efficacy in moistening dry 'eads of
'air." So says the modern hairdresser, who
generally has some wonderful theory about the
causes of baldness. We met with one who
attributed it entirely to "the acids," which his
"Arabian alkali" would effectually neutralise.
Unfortunately, this ingenious gentleman broke
down in cross-examination, proved himself to
have a very vague idea of the nature of acids in
general, and was utterly unable to explain what
were the particular acids that destroyed the hair.
Nevertheless, we bought a bottle of the "Arabian
alkali," with the view of making experiments.
Two strips of litmus-paper bore evidence, firstly,
that the alkali was not alkaline; and secondly,
that it was not acid. In short, it was merely
coloured and scented water, which probably has
a beneficial effect when applied to dirty heads.
Another of the fraternity advocated the cutting
cure, probably because the public has become
somewhat sceptical about oils and washes. He,
too, had a theory: it was a mistake, he said, to
suppose that when the hair fell it came out by
the roots; nothing of the kind; it broke off in
the middle, and split up towards the root, and if
not cut, a hair thus unfortunately divided against
itself, left only to itself above the surface of the
skin, this strip had, to the naked eye, the
appearance of a fine but perfect hair. Miserable
delusion! it was only a remnant, which might, by the
constant use of the scissors, be induced to become
a perfect hair. The application of the theory was
not difficult. In the first place, you ought to