made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last: I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more; but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you, for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live.”

The lady's proposal of marriage was declined: but the Dean from vanity, or fondness, or both, had not sufficient firmness to relinquish their affectionate intercourse.

Swift now returned to Ireland, and conscious of his imprudence, endeavoured to limit, as much as possible, the correspondence between himself and Vanessa, probably expecting that their attachment would be diminished by absence; but he was mistaken: she wrote to him frequently, and complained bitterly of his not replying to her letters.

At length Mrs. Vanhomrigh died: her two sons died soon afterwards; and the circumstances of the two sisters being somewhat embarrassed, they resolved to retire to Ireland, where their father had left a small property, near Cellbridge. We have seen that Stella had been from the first suspicious of the intercourse in Bury-street; and in_1714, Vanessa arrived in Dublin, to the annoyance of the Dean, and dread of Stella. Swift saw her very seldom : he introduced to her Dean Winter, a gentleman of fortune, and suitor for her hand; but this, and a similar offer, were rejected. Stella's jealousy at length became so restless, that Swift is said to have consented to their marriage, and the ceremony was performed in 1716, in the garden of the Deanery, by the bishop of Clogher; but Swift never acknowledged the marriage. Her subsequently signing her will with her maiden name "Esther Johnson" disproves her marriage with Swift; but this fact, though known to his biographers, was not allowed its due weight against such strong positive evidence as exists on the other side.

In 1717, Vanessa and her sister retired to Marley Abbey, near Cellbridge, of which retreat a Correspondent of Sir Walter

Scott's furnished him with the materials on which to found the following passage:

"Marley Abbey is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account), showed the grounds to my Correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa weli; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company: her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden. She avoided company, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called 'Vanessa's bower.' Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot. There were two

seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey. In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them.

"But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections-to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him-then in Ireland-'If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine.' Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe of Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogatories, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death-warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained

wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks."-And she died in 1723.

When Vanessa died, and Stella heard that Swift had written beautifully regarding her, "That does not surprise me," said Stella, "for we all know that the Dean could write beautifully about a broomstick."

SWIFT'S ANTIPATHY TO PROJECTORS.

This unconquerable aversion of the Dean is traceable to the ill success of the speculative and expensive projects of his uncle Godwin, by which he became greatly embarrassed. One of these projects was the iron manufactory at Swandlingbar, which the Dean sarcastically describes, in his Essay on "Barbarous Denominations in Ireland," as a most witty conceit of four gentlemen, who ruined themselves with this iron project. Sw. stands for Swift, And. for Sanders, Ling. for Darling, and Bar for Barry. Methinks I see the four loggerheads, sitting in consult, like Smectymnuus, each gravely contributing a part of his own name, to make up one for their place in the iron work; and could wish they had been hanged as well as undone for their wit." He strongly expressed similar feeling upon the following occasion:

"The Dean was at Holyhead, waiting for a fair wind to sail for Ireland, when one Welldon, an old seafaring man, sent him a letter that he had found out the Longitude, and would convince him of it; to which the Dean answered, in writing, that if he had found it out he must apply to the Lords of the Admiralty, of whom, perhaps, one might be found who knew something of navigation, of which he was totally ignorant; and that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom (meaning his uncle Godwin) ruined himself and family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist, lest one or other might happen to him."-Swiftiana. The other unfortunate projector was probably Joseph Beaumont, often mentioned in Swift's Journal, who committed suicide.

That monstrous scheme of commercial gambling, which reached its climax in 1720, in "the South Sea Bubble," was unsparingly lashed by Swift's satire. The caricatures of the Bubble, its knaves and fools, have become rare, and shut up in the cabinets of print-collectors, but Swift's satire is accessible to all: well may he exclaim, comparing Exchange Alley to a gulf in the South Sea,

"Subscribers here by thousands float,

And jostle one another down,

Each paddling in his leaky boat,

And here they fish for gold, and drown."

STELLA TO SWIFT.

The following verses were composed and sent by StellaTo Dr. Swift on his Birthday, November 30, 1721.

"St. Patrick's Dean, your country's pride,

My early and my only guide,
Let me among the rest attend,
Your pupil and your humble friend,
To celebrate in female strains

The day that paid your mother's pains;
Descend to take that tribute due
In gratitude alone to you.

When men began to call me fair,
You interpos'd your timely care;
You early taught me to despise
The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes;

Shew'd where my judgment was misplac'd;
Refin'd my fancy and my taste.
Behold that beauty just decay'd
Invoking art to Nature's aid;
Forsook by her admiring train
She spreads her tatter'd nets in vain ;
Short was her part upon the stage;
Went smoothly on for half a page;
Her bloom was gone, she wanted art,
As the scene chang'd, to change her part;
She, whom no lover could resist,
Before the second act was hiss'd.
Such is the fate of female race
With no endowments but a face!
Before the thirti'th year of life
A maid forlorn, or hated wife.
STELLA, to you, her tutor, owes
That she has ne'er resembled those;
Nor was a burden to mankind

With half her course of

years behind.
You taught how I might youth prolong
By knowing what was right and wrong;
How from my heart to bring supplies
Of lustre to my fading eyes;

How soon a beauteous mind repairs
The loss of chang'd or falling hairs;
How wit and virtue from within

Send out a smoothness o'er the skin!
Your lectures cou'd my fancy fix,
And I can please at thirty-six !
The sight of Chloe at fifteen
Coquetting, gives me not the spleen,
The idol now of every fool

"Till time shall make their passions cool;

When tumbling down time's steepy hill,
While STELLA holds her station still.
Oh! turn your precepts into laws,
Redeem the women's ruin'd cause,
Retrieve lost empire to her sex,
That men may bow their rebel necks.
Long be the day that gave you birth
Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth ;
Late dying may you cast a shred
Of your rich mantle o'er my head;
To bear with dignity my sorrow,
One day alone, then die to-morrow l”

SWIFT'S ATTACHMENT TO THE EARL OF OXFORD. How dearly the Dean loved Oxford, in whom were many qualities deserving of such attachment, appears from a thousand expressions in his letters and journal. The despair which he expresses at his being wounded by Guiscard is like that of a brother mourning for a brother. Swift retained to his dying day, as a sacred relic, the penknife with which the wound was inflicted; and it would seem, that, on one occasion, he secured his friend's life from a dangerous attempt of the same kind, at the hazard of his own. Lady Masham, by whose secret influence Oxford had been displaced, wrote to conjure by his charity and compassion for the Queen, not to desert her cause at this crisis; and Barber was commissioned by Bolingbroke to inform Swift that he would reconcile him with the Duchess of Somerset. These flattering proposals seemed to open a prospect full upon the path of honour, ambition, and preferment. But almost the next post brought a letter from Lord Oxford, now dismissed and going alone to his seat in Herefordshire, requesting Swift to accompany him. His gratitude and his affection for Lord Oxford did not allow him to hesitate a moment in accepting the invitation of the disgraced minister, and he wrote immediately to Ireland to get an extension of his leave of absence, which was now nearly expired, to enable him to do so. "I meddle not with his faults, as he was a minister of state," are his manly expressions; "but you know his personal kindness to me was excessive; he distinguished and chose me above all men when he was great; and his letter to me the other day was the most moving imaginable."

Within three days the death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I. put an end to the power of the Tories. Lord