STERLING STETTIN. 



405 



prevent occasional defects in the face of the plate, 

 and it requires therefore to be minutely examined 

 by workmen called pickers. It is the business of 

 the picker to remove the small globules of metal 

 which occasionally fill up or bloat the letters; to 

 insert a new letter, which he can do by soldering, 

 if any one be broken ; and even to make an altera- 

 tion of a word or a line, if it should be found neces- 

 sary. Such, indeed, is the dexterity of a good 

 picker, that a stereotype plate is much more open 

 to correction and alteration than might be imagined; 

 while it has this advantage over ordinary letter- 

 press, that when accuracy is once obtained, the 

 plate is not afterwards liable, as movable types are, 

 to get deranged. 



STERLING; an epithet of English money of 

 account. It is by some derived from easterling, a 

 name by which the Hanseatics were called in some 

 of the western countries of Europe ; others derive 

 it from the Anglo-Saxon steore (rule, or law). See 

 Coins. 



STERN; the posterior part of a ship, or that 

 part which is presented to the view of a spectator, 

 placed on the continuation of the keel, behind. 



STERN-POST; along, straight piece of timber, 

 erected on the extremity of the keel, to sustain the 

 rudder and terminate the ship behind. It is usually 

 marked, like the stem, with a scale of feet, from 

 the keel upwards, in order to ascertain the draught 

 of water abaft. 



STERNE, LAWRENCE, the author of Tristram 

 Shandy, was the son of a lieutenant in the army, 

 and born at Clonmell, in Ireland, in November, 

 1713. He was put to school at Halifax, in York- 

 shire, in 1722, whence he removed to Cambridge, 

 and studied for the church. He took his degree of 

 master of arts in 1740, before which he was ad- 

 vanced; and, by the interest of doctor Sterne, his 

 uncle, a prebendary of Durham, he obtained the 

 living of Sutton, a prebend of York, and, subse- 

 quently, by the interest of his wife, whom he mar- 

 ried in 1741, the living of Stillington, at which, 

 and at Sutton, he performed the clerical duties for 

 nearly twenty years. During this period, he 

 appears to have amused himself with books, paint- 

 ing, music, and shooting, but was Ijttle known 

 beyond his vicinity, the only production of his pen 

 being his humorous satire upon a greedy church 

 dignitary of York, entitled the History of a 

 Watch Coat. In 1759, following, appeared the 

 two first volumes of his celebrated Tristram Shandy, 

 which drew upon him praise and censure of every 

 kind, and became so popular that a bookseller 

 engaged for its continuance on very lucrative terms. 

 Accordingly a third and fourth volume appeared in 

 1761, a fifth and sixth in 1762, a seventh and eighth 

 in 1764, and a ninth, singly, in 1766. If, in the 

 groundwork of this extraordinary production, a 

 resemblance maybe traced to the ridicule of pedantry 

 and false philosophy in Scriblerus, the style and 

 filling up are chiefly his own, although he borrowed 

 entire passages from Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 

 choly, and the works of bishop Hall and others. 

 In 1768, he produced his Sentimental Journey (in 

 2 vols., 12mo.), which, by a number of pathetic 

 incidents, and vivid strokes of national and charac- 

 teristic delineation, is rendered extremely enter- 

 taining, and acquired a more general reputation than 

 even its predecessor. In 1760, appeared two 

 volumes of Sermons of Mr Yorick, to which he 

 added two additional volumes in 1766, with his 

 own name. He died of pulmonary consumption, 



in March, 1768, leaving a widow and one daughter. 

 The latter, who was married to a French gentle- 

 man, published a collection of her father's letters, 

 in three volumes, 12mo., to which were prefixed 

 memoirs of his life and family. In the same year, 

 an anonymous editor published Letters between 

 Yorick and Eliza, which were regarded as the 

 authentic correspondence, in a strain of high senti- 

 mental friendship, between Sterne and Mrs Draper, 

 an accomplished East India lady. His private 

 character was by no means honourable to his genius, 

 affording another proof that the power of expressing 

 and conceiving strong feelings by no means implies 

 that they will influence the conduct. 



STERNHOLD, THOMAS; the principal author 

 of the metrical version of the Psalms long used in 

 public worship in our churches, and not yet entirely 

 discontinued. He was a native of Hampshire, and 

 educated at Oxford, and became groom of the robes 

 to Henry VIII., who left him a legacy of 100 marks. 

 He held a similar office under Edward VI., in whose 

 reign he died, in August, 1549. The principal 

 coadjutor of Sternhold, in his versification of the 

 Psalter, was John Hopkins ; and the names of these 

 persons have become a proverbial designation of bad 

 poets. Sternhold also produced Certayne Chapters 

 of the Proverbs of Solomon, drawn into Metre, 

 which were published after his death. 



STERNUTATION. See Sneezing. 



STESICHORUS; a Greek lyric poet, born at 

 Himera, in Sicily, about B. C. 612. He composed 

 a number of works, which were highly esteemed by 

 the ancients. Horace speaks of Stesichori graves 

 camcencc; and Dionysius Halicarnassus says, that 

 he had all the graces of Pindar and Simonides, 

 while he surpassed them both in the grandeur of 

 his subjects. He was the first who introduced into 

 the ode the triple division of strophe, antistrophe, 

 and epode; and he is said to have thence derived 

 his name, which was before Tisias. A few frag- 

 ments of his works, to the amount of fifty or sixty 

 lines, alone remain. See Kleine's Stesichori Frag- 

 menta (Berlin, 1828), with a preliminary treatise. 



STETHOSCOPE (from <^, chest); an 

 instrument consisting of a short tube, widening 

 towards one end, with which physicians have, for 

 some years, been accustomed to examine the 

 internal state of the human body (i. e. in diseases 

 of the lungs and other internal organs, also in 

 hernia, and the condition of women in pregnancy, 

 &c.), by applying the stethoscope to the chest or 

 abdomen, and putting the ear to the narrower end. 

 Many disorders may be distinguished very clearly 

 in this way ; and the instrument has proved, in the 

 hands of many physicians, a useful invention. See 

 Laennec, Auscultation Mediate (Paris, 1819). 



STETTIN; a town of Prussia, capital of Pome- 

 rania, and of a government and circle of the same 

 name, situated on the Oder, about sixty miles from 

 the Baltic, eighty miles north-east of Berlin; Ion. 

 14 46' E. ; lat. 53 20' N. It stands on an emi- 

 nence on the left bank of the Oder, and has three 

 suburbs, five gates, and several squares. The prin- 

 cipal public buildings are the castle, government 

 house, arsenal, barracks, hospitals, exchange, theatre, 

 and public library. It has five Lutheran churches, 

 an academical gymnasium, college, c. Population, 

 32,191. Stettin is a place of extensive trade, the 

 great outlet of the manufactures of Silesia, and 

 the depot of colonial goods and foreign fabrics re- 

 quired by that province, as well as by Berlin, and 

 other towns in Brandenburg. The number of 



