CHAPTER CLXXXVI.

My uncle Toby had scarce turned the corner of his yew-hedge, which separated his kitchen-garden from his bowling-green, when he perceived the Corporal had begun the attack without him.

Let me stop and give you a picture of the Corporal's apparatus, and of the Corporal himself in the height of this attack, just as it struck my uncle Toby, as he turned towards the sentry-box, where the Corporal was at work, for in nature there is not such another; nor can any combination of all that is gro tesque and whimsical in her works produce its equal. The Corporal

-Tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius,→→→ for he was your kinsman :

Weed his grave clean, ye men of goodness, for he was your brother. O Corporal! had I thee but now,-now, that I am able to give thee a dinner and protection,how would I cherish thee! Thou shouldst wear thy Montero-cap every hour of the day, and every day of the week; and when it was worn out, I would purchase thee a couple like it. But alas! alas! alas! now that I can do this, in spite of their reverences, the occasion is lost, for thou art gone;

thy genius fled up to the stars, from whence it came; and that warm heart of thine, with all its generous and open vessels, compressed into a clod of the valley!

But what, what is this, to that future and dreaded page, where I look towards the velvet pall, decorated with the military ensigns of thy master,-the first,the foremost of created beings; where I shall see thee, faithful servant! laying his sword and scabbard, with a trembling hand, across his coffin, and then returning, pale as ashes, to the door, to take his mourning-horse by the bridle, to follow his hearse, as he

directed thee;-where all my father's systems shall be baffled by his sorrows; and, in spite of his philosophy, I shall behold him, as he inspects the lacquered plate, twice taking his spectacles from off his nose, to wipe away the dew which nature has shed upon them.When I see him cast in the rosemary with an air of disconsolation, which cries through my ears,—O Toby! in what corner of the world shall I seek thy fellow?

-Gracious Powers! which erst have opened the lips of the dumb in his distress, and made the tongue of the stammerer speak plain, when I shall arrive at this dreaded page, deal not with me, then, with a stinted hand.

CHAPTER CLXXXVII.

The Corporal, who the night before had resolved in his mind to supply the grand desideratum, of keeping up something like an incessant firing upon the enemy during the heat of the attack, had no farther idea in his fancy at that time, than a contrivance of smoking tobacco against the town, out of one of my uncle Toby's six field-pieces, which were planted on each side of his sentry-box; the means of effecting which occurring to his fancy at the same time, though he had pledged his cap, he thought it in no danger from the miscarriage of his projects.

Upon turning it this way and that a little in his mind, he soon began to find out, that by means of his two Turkish tobacco-pipes, with the supplement of three smaller tubes of wash-leather at each of their lower ends, to be tagged by the same number of tin pipes fitted to the touch-holes, and sealed with clay next the cannon, and then tied hermetically with waxed silk at their several insertions into the Morocco

tube, he should be able to fire the six field-pieces all together, and with the same ease as to fire one.

up

and say

-Let no man say from what taggs and jaggs hints may not be cut out for the advancement of human knowledge. Let no man, who has read my father's first and second beds of justice, ever rise again, from collision of what kinds of bodies light may or may not be struck out, to carry the arts and sciences up to perfection.-Heaven! thou knowest how I love. them; thou knowest the secrets of my heart, and that I would this moment give my shirtThou art

a fool, Shandy, said Eugenius, for thou hast but a dozen in the world; and 'twill break thy set.

No matter for that, Eugenius; I would give the shirt off my back to be burnt into tinder, were it only to satisfy one feverish inquirer, how many sparks, at one good stroke, a good flint and steel could strike into the tail of it.-Think ye not, that in striking these in, he might, peradventure, strike something out? as sure as a gun.

--

But this project by the bye.

The Corporal sat up the best part of the night, in bringing his to perfection; and having made a sufficient proof of his cannon, with charging them to the top with tobacco, he went with contentment to bed.

CHAPTER CLXXXVIII.

The Corporal had slipped out about ten minutes before my uncle Toby, in order to fix his apparatus, and just give the enemy a shot or two before my uncle Toby came.

He had drawn the six field-pieces for this end, all close up together in front of my uncle Toby's sentrybox, leaving only an interval of about a yard and a half betwixt the three, on the right and left, for the convenience of charging, &c.—and the sake, possibly,

of two batteries, which he might think double the honour of one.

In the rear, and facing this opening, with his back to the door of the sentry-box, for fear of being flanked, had the Corporal wisely taken his post. He held the ivory pipe appertaining to the battery on the right, betwixt the finger and thumb of his right hand;-and the ebony pipe tipped with silver, which appertained to the battery on the left, betwixt the finger and thumb of the other; and with his right knee fixed firm upon the ground, as if in the front rank of his platoon, was the Corporal, with his Montero-cap upon his head, furiously playing off his two cross-batteries at the same time against the counter-guard, which faced the counter-scarp, where the attack was to be made that morning. His first intention, as I said, was no more than giving the enemy a single puff or two;-but the pleasure of the puffs, as well as the puffing, had insensibly got hold of the Corporal, and drawn him on, from puff to puff, into the very height of the attack, by the time my uncle Toby joined him.

"Twas well for my father that my uncle Toby had not his will to make that day. :

CHAPTER CLXXXIX.

My uncle Toby took the ivory pipe out of the Corporal's hand;-looked at it for half a minute, and returned it.

In less than two minutes, my uncle Toby took the pipe from the Corporal again, and raised it half way to his mouth, then hastily gave it back a second time.

The Corporal redoubled the attack;-my uncle Toby smiled, then looked grave, then smiled for a moment, then looked serious for a long time.Give me hold of the ivory pipe, Trim, said my uncle:

Toby. My uncle Toby put it to his lips,-drew it back directly,-gave a peep over the horn-beam hedge. Never did my uncle Toby's mouth water so much for a pipe in his life. My uncle Toby retired into the sentry-box with his pipe in his hand.

Dear uncle Toby! don't go into the sentry-box with the pipe-there's no trusting a man's self with such a thing in such a corner.

CHAPTER CXC.

I beg the reader will assist me here to wheel off my uncle Toby's ordnance behind the scenes;-to remove his sentry-box, and clear the theatre, if possible, of horn-works and half-moons, and get the rest of his military apparatus out of the way;-that done, my dear friend Garrick, we'll snuff the candles bright,sweep the stage with a new broom,-draw up the curtain, and exhibit my uncle Toby dressed in a new character, throughout which the world can have no idea how he will act: and yet, if pity be akin to love, and bravery no alien to it, you have seen enough of my uncle Toby in these, to trace these family likenesses betwixt the two passions (in case there is one) to your heart's content.

Vain Science! thou assistest us in no case of this kind, and thou puzzlest us in every one.

There was, madam, in my uncle Toby, a singleness of heart, which misled him so far out of the little serpentine tracks in which things of this nature usually go on, you can-you can have no conception of it: with this, there was a plainness and simplicity of thinking, with such an unmistrusting ignorance of the plies and foldings of the heart of woman; and so naked and defenceless did he stand before you (when a siege was out of his head), that you might have stood