sex, a quart major to a terce at least, better than my uncle Toby, and accordingly he assailed Mrs. Bridget after this manner :—

I know, Mrs. Bridget, said the Corporal, giving her a most respectful kiss, that thou art good and modest by nature; and art withal so generous a girl in thyself, that, if I know thee rightly, thou wouldst not wound an insect, much less the honour of so gallant and worthy a soul as my master, wast thou sure to be made a countess of;-but thou hast been set on, and deluded, dear Bridget, as is often a woman's case, 'to please others more than themselves——.'

Bridget's eyes poured down at the sensations the Corporal excited.

Tell me, tell me, then, my dear Bridget, continued the Corporal, taking hold of her hand, which hung down dead by her side, and giving a second kiss, whose suspicion has misled thee?

Bridget sobbed a sob or two,-then opened her eyes; the Corporal wiped them with the bottom of her apron ;-she then opened her heart, and told him. all.

CHAPTER CCCIX.

My uncle Toby and the Corporal had gone on separately with their operations the greatest part of the campaign, and as effectually cut off from all communication of what either the one or the other had been doing, as if they had been separated from each other by the Maese or the Sambre.

My uncle Toby, on his side, had presented himself every afternoon in his red and silver, and blue and gold, alternately, and sustained an infinity of attacks in them, without knowing them to be attacks ;—and so had nothing to communicate.

The Corporal, on his side, in taking Bridget, by it

VOL. II.

P

gained considerable advantages, and consequently had much to communicate; but what were the advantages,- as well as what was the manner by which he had seized them, required so nice an historian, that the Corporal durst not venture upon it; and, as sensible as he was of glory, would rather have been contented to have gone bare-headed and without laurels for ever, than torture his master's modesty for a single

moment.

-Best of honest and gallant servants!—But I have apostrophized thee, Trim, once before;-and could I apotheosize thee also (that is to say) with good company, I would do it, without ceremony, in the very next page.

CHAPTER CCCX.

Now my uncle Toby had one evening laid down his pipe upon the table, and was counting over to himself, upón his fingers' ends, (beginning at his thumb) all Mrs. Wadman's perfections, one by one; and happening two or three times together, either by omitting some, or counting others twice over, to puzzle himself sadly before he could get beyond his middle-finger,

-Prythee, Trim, said he, taking up his pipe again, bring me a pen and ink.-Trim brought paper also.

-Take a full sheet, Trim! said my uncle Toby, making a sign with his pipe at the same time to take a chair, and sit down close by him at the table. The Corporal obeyed,-placed the paper directly before him,—took a pen, and dipped it in the ink.

-She has a thousand virtues, Trim! said my uncle Toby.

Am I to set them down, an' please your honour? quoth the Corporal.

-But they must be taken in their ranks, replied

my uncle Toby; for of them all, Trim, that which wins me most, and which is a security for all the rest, is the compassionate turn and singular humanity of her character. I protest, added my uncle Toby, looking up, as he protested it, towards the top of the ceiling, that was I her brother, Trim, a thousand-fold, she could not make more constant or more tender inquiries after my sufferings,-though now no more.

The Corporal made no reply to my uncle Toby's protestation, but by a short cough:-he dipped the pen a second time into the inkhorn; and my uncle Toby, pointing with the end of his pipe, as close to the top of the sheet, at the left-hand corner of it, as he could get it, the Corporal wrote down the word HUMANITY thus.

---

-Prythee, Corporal, said my uncle Toby, as soon as Trim had done it, how often does Mrs. Bridget inquire after the wound on the cap of thy knee, which thou receivedst at the battle of Landen?

-She never, an' please your honour, inquires after it at all.

That, Corporal, said my uncle Toby, with all the triumph the goodness of his nature would permit, that shows the difference in the character of the mistress and maid.-Had the fortune of war allotted the same mischance to me, Mrs. Wadman would have inquired into every circumstance relating to it a hundred times. She would have inquired, an' please your honour, ten times as often about your honour's groin. The pain, Trim, is equally excruciating,and compassion has as much to do with the one as the other.

-God bless your honour! cried the Corporal,what has a woman's compassion to do with a wound upon the cap of a man's knee? Had your honour's been shot into ten thousand splinters at the affair of Landen, Mrs. Wadman would have troubled her head

as little about it as Bridget; because, added the Corporal, lowering his voice, and speaking very distinctly, as he assigned his reason,

The knee is such a distance from the main body, -whereas the groin, your honour knows, is upon the very curtain of the place.'

My uncle Toby gave a long whistle;-but in a note which could scarce be heard across the table.

The Corporal had advanced too far to retire ;—in three words he told the rest.

My uncle Toby laid down his pipe as gently upon the fender as if it had been spun from the unravellings of a spider's web.

-Let us go to my brother Shandy's, said he.

CHAPTER CCCXI.

There will be just time, whilst my uncle Toby and Trim are walking to my father's, to inform you that Mrs. Wadman had, some moons before this, made a confidant of my mother; and that Mrs. Bridget, who had the burden of her own, as well as her mistress's secret to carry, had got happily delivered of both to Susannah, behind the garden-wall.

As for my mother, she saw nothing at all in it, to make the least bustle about;—but Susannah was sufficient by herself for all the ends and purposes you could possibly have, in exporting a family-secret; for she instantly imparted it by signs to Jonathan ;—and Jonathan by tokens to the cook, as she was basting a loin of mutton; the cook sold it, with some kitchenfat, to the postilion for a groat, who trucked it with the dairy-maid for something of about the same value;

and though whispered in the hay-loft, Fame caught the notes with her brazen trumpet, and sounded them upon the house-top.-In a word, not an old woman

in the village, or five miles round, who did not understand the difficulties of my uncle Toby's siege, and what were the secret articles which had delayed the surrender.

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means, never man crucified Truth at the rate he did,-had but just heard of the report as my uncle Toby set out; and catching fire suddenly at the trespass done his brother by it, was demonstrating to Yorick, notwithstanding my mother was sitting by,-not only, that the devil was in women, and that the whole of the affair was lust ;' but that every evil and disorder in the world, of what kind or nature soever, from the first fall of Adam down to my uncle Toby's (inclusive), was owing, one way or other, to the same unruly appetite.

Yorick was just bringing my father's hypothesis to some temper, when my uncle Toby entering the room with marks of infinite benevolence and forgiveness in his looks, my father's eloquence rekindled against the passion;—and as he was not very nice in the choice of his words when he was wroth, -as soon as my uncle Toby was seated by the fire, and had filled his pipe, my father broke out in 'this manner :—

CHAPTER CCCXII.

That provision should be made for continuing the race of so great, so exalted, and godlike a being as man, I am far from denying ;- but philosophy speaks freely of every thing; and therefore I still think, and do maintain it to be a pity, that it should be done by means of a passion, which bends down the faculties, and turns all the wisdom, contemplations, and operations of the soul backwards :- -a passion, my dear,