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, begun while Stella was lying dead, and continued after her funeral, in a room in which he has taken. refuge in order to escape seeing the light in the church, may be here copied. Never,' he says, 'was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversation. . . . Her advice was always the best, and with the greatest freedom, mixed with the greatest decency. She had a gracefulness somewhat more than human in every motion, word, and action. Never was so happy a con

junction 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, or was given to interruption, or appeared eager to put in her word, by waiting impatiently till another had done. She spoke in a most agreeable voice, in the plainest words, never hesitating, except out of modesty before new faces, where she was somewhat reserved; nor, among her nearest friends, ever spoke much at a time. . . . Although her knowledge, from books and company, was much more extensive than usually falls to the share of her sex, yet she was so far from making a parade of it that her female visitants, on their first acquaintance, who expected to discover it by what they call hard words and deep discourse, would be sometimes disappointed, and say they found she was 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 preceding 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, in truth, he had invariably 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 outlines of the perfect figure, and dimmed the lustre of the beautiful eyes. What she had been, is not quite easy for a modern admirer to realize from the dubious Delville medallion, or the inadequate engraving by Engleheart of the portrait at Ballinter, which forms the frontispiece to Wilde's invaluable 'Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life.' The photogravure of the Ballinter picture given in Mr. Gerald Moriarty's recent book is much more satisfactory, and so markedly to Esther Johnson's advantage as to suggest the further reproduction of the original in some separate and accessible form.

AT TULLY'S HEAD.

THE 'HE 'Tully's Head' stood on the north side of Pall Mall. In those days what is now the Via Sacra of Clubland was little more than an unpaved roadway from St. James's Palace to Carlton House-the latter of which occupied the existing open space between the foot of Regent Street and the Duke of York's column. The precise position of Mr. Robert Dodsley's establishment was next the passage leading into King Street, at present known as Pall Mall Place, or, in other words, about halfway between the Old Smyrna Coffee-house (the site of Messrs. Harrison's) and the Old Star and Garter Tavern which preceded the more recent hostelry of that name. Judged by a latter-day standard, it is probable that the 'Tully's Head' was not very impressive externally. Indeed, a bookseller's shop in the Georgian era must have been something widely different from the attractive-looking resort to which we are accustomed in this age of plate glass and parti-coloured cloth bindings. Viewed through the bulged and clumsily-framed greenish panes, the homely calf

and sheep covers looked homelier still; while the elaborate developments of modern book-illustration were but faintly foreshadowed by very rudimentary and appropriately entitled 'wooden cuts,' and by old-fashioned 'coppers,' often, for economy, crowding many figures' on one plate of metal. But if, at the period here intended, you could have peeped under the slanting sunblind of the 'Tully's Head' (the shop, be it remembered, was not on that 'sweet shady side of Pall Mall' afterwards so melodiously sung by Captain Charles Morris of the Life Guards), you would at once have found yourself on familiar ground. You would discover the little window to be piled with pamphlets on those burning questions, the Naturalisation of the Jews, the State of the Corn Trade, and the 'Case' of the notorious Elizabeth Canning. You would also be confronted by the latest numbers of Mr. Dodsley's new periodical, 'The World,' one of which would doubtless be opened at the passage inviting the contributions of 'the Generous and the Fair' for that bankrupt Belisarius, Baron Neuhoff, otherwise Theodore of Corsica, who, with his realm for his only assets, was, at this particular moment of time, languishing in the King's Bench. And you could not fail to be attracted by the very prominent notification that