other like the attacks which history is full of, and from the same reasons. A general looker-on would scarce allow them to be attacks at all ;- —or if he did, would confound them all together;-but I write not to them. It will be time enough to be a little more exact in my descriptions of them as I come up to them, which will not be for some chapters; having nothing more to add in this, but that in a bundle of original papers and drawings, which my father took care to roll up by themselves, there is a plan of Bouchain in perfect preservation (and shall be kept so, whilst I have power to preserve any thing); upon the lower corner of which, on the right-hand side, there are still remaining the marks of a snuffy finger and thumb, which, there is all the reason in the world to imagine, were Mrs. Wadman's; for the opposite side of the margin, which I suppose to have been my uncle Toby's, is absolutely clean. This seems an authenticated record of one of these attacks; for there are vestigia of the two punctures partly grown up, but still visible on the opposite corner of the map, which are, unquestionably, the very holes through which it has been pricked up in the sentry-box.

By all that is priestly! I value this precious relic, with its stigmata and pricks, more than all the relics of the Romish church ;-always excepting, when I am writing upon these matters, the pricks which entered the flesh of St. Radagunda in the Desert; which, in your road from Fesse to Cluny, the nuns of that name will show you for love.

CHAPTER CCLXII.

I think, an' please your honour, quoth Trim, the fortifications are quite destroyed;—and the basin is upon a level with the mole. I think so too,-replied my uncle Toby, with a sigh half suppressed;

VOL. II.

K

but step into the parlour, Trim, for the stipulation;it lies upon the table.

—İt has lain there these six weeks, replied the Corporal; till this very morning, that the old woman kindled the fire with it.

-Then, said my uncle Toby, there is no farther occasion for our services. -The more, an' please your honour, the pity, said the Corporal; in uttering which, he cast his spade into the wheelbarrow, which was beside him, with an air the most expressive of disconsolation that can be imagined, and was heavily turning about to look for his pick-axe, his pioneer's shovel, his picquets, and other little military stores, in order to carry them off the field,-when a heigh-ho! from the sentry-box, which, being made of thin slit deal, reverberated the sound more sorrowfully to his ear, forbade him.

—No, said the Corporal to himself; I'll do it before his honour rises to-morrow morning; so taking his spade out of the wheelbarrow again, with a little earth in it, as if to level something at the foot of the glacis, -but with a real intent to approach nearer to his master, in order to divert him,-he loosened a sod or two,-pared their edges with his spade, and having given them a gentle blow or two with the back of it, he sat himself down close by my uncle Toby's feet, and began as follows:

CHAPTER CCLXIII.

It was a thousand pities;-though I believe, an' please your honour, I am going to say but a foolish kind of a thing for a soldier,

A soldier, cried my uncle Toby, interrupting the Corporal, is no more exempt from saying a foolish thing, Trim, than a man of letters. -But not so

often, an' please your honour, replied the Corporal. My uncle Toby gave a nod.

It was a thousand pities, then, said the Corporal, casting his eye upon Dunkirk and the Mole, as Servius Sulpicius, in returning out of Asia (when he sailed from Egina towards Megara), did upon Corinth and Piraeus,

-It was a thousand pities, an' please your honour, to destroy these works, and a thousand pities to have let them stand.

-Thou art right, Trim, in both cases, said my uncle Toby.This, continued the Corporal, is the reason, that, from the beginning of their demolition to the end, I have never once whistled, or sung, or laughed, or cried, or talked of past-done deeds, or told your honour one story, good or bad.—

-Thou hast many excellences, Trim, said my uncle Toby; and I hold it not the least of them, as thou happenest to be a story-teller, that of the number thou hast told me, either to amuse me in my painful hours, or divert me in my grave ones,-thou hast seldom told me a bad one.

-Because, an' please your honour, except one of a King of Bohemia and his seven castles,—they are all true; for they are about myself.

-I do not like the subject the worse, Trim, said my uncle Toby, on that score. But, prythee, what is this story? thou hast excited my curiosity.

I'll tell it your honour, quoth the Corporal, directly. Provided, said my uncle Toby, looking earnestly towards Dunkirk and the Mole again,-provided it is not a merry one: to such, Trim, a man should ever bring one half of the entertainment along with him; and the disposition I am in at present would wrong both thee, Trim, and thy story.It is not a merry one by any means, replied the Corporal.Nor would I have it altogether a grave one, added my uncle Toby.It is neither the one nor the other,

replied the Corporal; but will suit your honour exactly.- -Then I'll thank thee for it with all my heart, cried my uncle Toby; so prythee begin it, Trim.

The Corporal made his reverence; and though it is not so easy a matter as the world imagines, to pull off a lank Montero-cap with grace,- -or a whit less difficult, in my conceptions, when a man is sitting squat upon the ground, to make a bow so teeming with respect as the Corporal was wont; yet, by suffering the palm of his right hand, which was towards his master, to slip backwards upon the grass, a little beyond his body, in order to allow it the greater sweep,—and by an unforced compression, at the same time, of his cap with the thumb and the two fore-fingers of his left, by which the diameter of the cap became reduced; so that it might be said rather to be insensibly squeezed, -than pulled off with a flatus,-the Corporal acquitted himself of both in a better manner than the posture of his affairs promised; and having hemmed twice, to find in what key his story would best go, and best suit his master's humour,-he exchanged a single look of kindness with him, and set off thus:

THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND HIS SEVEN CASTLES.

There was a certain King of Bo- -he

As the Corporal was entering the confines of Bohemia, my uncle Toby obliged him to halt for a single moment. He had set out bare-headed; having, since he pulled off his Montero-cap in the latter end of the last chapter, left it lying beside him on the ground.

-The eye of goodness espieth all things;—so that before the Corporal had well got through the first five words of his story, had my uncle Toby twice touched his Montero-cap with the end of his cane, interrogatively; as much as to say, Why don't you put it on, Trim?

-Trim took it up with the most respectful

slowness; and casting a glance of humiliation, as he did it, upon the embroidery of the fore-part, which being dismally tarnished and frayed, moreover, in some of the principal leaves and boldest parts of the pattern, he laid it down again between his two feet, in order to moralize upon the subject.

'Tis every word of it but too true, cried my uncle Toby, that thou art about to observe :Nothing in this world, Trim, is made to last for

ever.'

-But when tokens, dear Tom, of thy love and remembrance wear out, said Trim, what shall we say?

-There is no occasion, Trim, quoth my uncle. Toby, to say any thing else; and was a man to puzzle his brains till Doomsday, I believe, Trim, it would be impossible.

The Corporal perceiving my uncle Toby was in the right, and that it would be in vain for the wit of man to think of extracting a purer moral from his cap, without farther attempting it, he put it on; and passing his hand across his forehead to rub out a pensive wrinkle, which the text and the doctrine between them had engendered, he returned, with the same look and tone of voice, to his story of the King of Bohemia and his seven castles.

THE STORY OF THE KING OF BOHEMIA AND HIS SEVEN CASTLES, CONTINUED.

There was a certain King of Bohemia; but in whose reign, except his own, I am not able to inform your honour.

I do not desire it of thee, Trim, by any means, cried my uncle Toby.

It was a little before the time, an' please your honour, when giants were beginning to leave off breeding:-but in what year of our Lord that was,