cious, my dear Jenny,-than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more ;-every thing presses on ; whilst thou art twisting that lock,-see! it grows gray; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make.

Heaven have mercy upon us both!

CHAPTER CCLXXXVIII.

Now, for what the world thinks of that ejaculation, -I would not give a groat.

CHAPTER CCLXXXIX.

My mother had gone with her left arm twisted in my father's right, till they had got to the fatal angle of the old garden-wall, where Dr. Slop was overthrown by Obadiah on the coach-horse. As this was directly opposite to the front of Mrs. Wadman's house, when my father came to it, he gave a look across; and seeing my uncle Toby and the Corporal within ten paces of the door, he turned about:-Let us just stop a moment,' quoth my father, and see with what ceremonies my brother Toby and his man Trim make their first entry; it will not detain us,' added my father, a single minute.'

6

ther.

ther.

-No matter if it be ten minutes, quoth my mo

-It will not detain us half a one, said my fa

The Corporal was just then setting in with the story of his brother Tom and the Jew's widow: the story

went on,—and on;-it had episodes in it;-it came back, and went on,-and on again; there was no end of it ;-the reader found it very long.

G-help my father! he pished fifty times at every new attitude; and gave the Corporal's stick, with all its flourishing and danglings, to as many devils as chose to accept of them.

When issues of events, like these my father is waiting for, are hanging in the scales of fate, the mind has the advantage of changing the principle of expectation three times, without which it would not have

see it out.

power to

Curiosity governs the first moment; and the second moment is all economy to justify the expense of the first; and for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth moments, and so on to the day of judgment,-'tis a point of Honour.

I need not be told that the ethic writers have assigned this all to patience; but that Virtue, methinks, has extent of dominion sufficient of her own, and enough to do in it, without invading the few dismantled castles which Honour has left him upon the earth.

My father stood it out as well as he could with these three auxiliaries, to the end of Trim's story; and from thence to the end of my uncle Toby's panegyric upon arms, in the chapter following it; when seeing that, instead of marching up to Mrs. Wadman's door, they both faced about and marched down the avenue, diametrically opposite to his expectation, he broke out at once with that little subacid soreness of humour, which, in certain situations, distinguished his character from that of all other men.

cried

CHAPTER CCXC.

Now what can their two noddles be about?' my father,- -&c.

-I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications.

-Not on Mrs. Wadman's premises! cried my father, stepping back.

-I suppose not, quoth my mother.

-I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, fausse-brays, and cuvettes.

-They are foolish things, said my mother.

Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give away my purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your reverences would imitate ;—and that was, never to refuse her assent and consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her, but no more; and so would go on using a hard word for twenty years together,—and replying to it too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and tenses, without giving herself any trouble to inquire about it.

This was an eternal source of misery to my father, and broke the neck, at the first setting out, of more good dialogues between them, than could have done the most petulant contradiction;-the few which survived were the better for the cuvettes.

They are foolish things,' said my mother. -Particularly the cuvettes, replied my father. 'Tis enough ;-he tasted the sweet of triumph,-and went on.

-Not that they are, properly speaking, Mrs. Wadman's premises, said my father, partly correcting himself;-because she is but tenant for life.

ther.

said

-That makes a great difference,-said my mo

In a fool's head, replied my father.

Unless she should happen to have a child, my mother.

But she must persuade my brother Toby first to get her one.

-To be sure, Mr. Shandy, quoth my mother. -Though, if it comes to persuasion,-said my father, Lord have mercy upon them!

Amen, said my mother, piano.

-Amen, cried my father, fortissime.

-Amen, said my mother again, but with such a sighing cadence of personal pity at the end of it, as discomfited every fibre about my father:—he instantly took out his almanack; but before he could untie it, Yorick's congregation coming out of church, became a full answer to one half of his business with it;-and my mother telling him it was a sacrament day,-left him as little in doubt as to the other part.-He put his almanack into his pocket.

The first lord of the treasury, thinking of ways and means, could not have returned home with a more embarrassed look.

CHAPTER CCXCI.

Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter, and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the four following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year; nor is it a poor creeping digression (which,

but for the name of a man, might continue as well going on in the king's highway) which will do the business.-No; if it is to be a digression, it must be a good frisky one, and upon a frisky subject too, where neither the horse nor his rider are to be caught but by rebound.

The only difficulty is, raising powers suitable to the nature of the service: Fancy is capricious,- Wit must not be searched for,-and Pleasantry (good-natured slut as she is) will not come in at a call, was an empire to be laid at her feet.

-The best way for a man is, to say his prayers.

Only, if it puts him in mind of his infirmities and defects, as well ghostly as bodily,-for that purpose, he will find himself rather worse after he has said them than before ;-for other purposes, better.

For my own part, there is not a way, either moral or mechanical, under heaven, that I could think of, which I have not taken with myself in this case: sometimes by addressing myself directly to the soul herself, and arguing the point over and over again with her, upon the extent of her own faculties.

-I never could make them an inch the wider.

Then, by changing my system, and trying what could be made of it upon the body, by temperance, soberness, and chastity. These are good, quoth I, in themselves; they are good absolutely, they are good relatively, they are good for health,-they are good for happiness in this world, they are good for happiness in the next.

In short, they were good for every thing but the thing wanted; and there they were good for nothing, but to leave the soul just as Heaven made it. As for the theological virtues of Faith and Hope, they give it courage; but then, that snivelling virtue of Meekness (as my father would always call it) takes it quite away again; so you are exactly where you started.