A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his travels from a sentimental point of view. The novel can be seen as an epilogue to the possibly unfinished work "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman", and also as an answer to Tobias Smollett's decidedly unsentimental "Travels Through France and Italy". Sterne had met Smollett during his
USS Tristram Shandy (1864) 1865, she captured blockade runner "Blenheim". The runner's captain and crew had not received the news of the fall of Fort Fisher and anchored off Mound Battery. He thus fell prey to Union sailors from the gunboat, who boarded "Blenheim", and captured her easily. On 31 January, "Tristram Shandy" joined the East Gulf Blockading Squadron and remained with that group into the spring. Returning north, she served as a dispatch vessel with Union forces operating in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Admiral Porter embarked in "Tristram Shandy" on 14 April, after the admiral had previously escorted President Abraham Lincoln on a tour