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more of it, for he kept his forefinger in the chapter; not pettishly, for he shut the book slowly, his thumb resting, when he had done it, upon the upper side of the cover, as his three fingers supported the lower side of it, without the least compressive violence.

"I have demonstrated the truth of that point," quoth my father, nodding to Yorick, "most sufficiently in the preceding chapter."

Now could the man in the moon be told that a man in the earth had wrote a chapter sufficiently demonstrating that the secret of all health depended upon the due contention for mastery betwixt the "radical heat and radical moisture;" and that he had managed the point so well that there was not one single word, wet or dry, upon radical heat or radical moisture throughout the whole chapter, or a single syllable in it, pro or con, directly or indirectly, upon the contention betwixt these two powers in any part of the animal economy

"O thou Eternal Maker of all beings!" he would cry, striking his breast with his right hand (in case he had one), "Thou whose power and goodness can enlarge the faculties of Thy creatures to this infinite degree of excellence and perfection, what have we Moonites done?"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

WITH two strokes, the one at Hippocrates, the other at Lord Verulam, did my father achieve it.

The stroke at the prince of physicians with which he began was no more than a short insult upon his sorrowful complaint of the ars longa and vita brevis. "Life short," cried my father," and the art of healing tedious ! And who are we to thank for both the one and the other but the ignorance of quacks themselves, and the stage-loads of chemical nostrums and peripatetic lumber with which in all ages they have at first flattered the world and at last deceived it?"

66 Ο my Lord Verulam !" cried my father, turning from Hippocrates, and making his second stroke at him, as the principal of nostrummongers and the fittest to be made an example of to the rest : "what shall I say to thee, my great Lord Verulam? What shall I say to thy internal spirit, thy opium, thy saltpetre, thy greasy unction, thy daily purges, thy nightly glisters, and succedaneums?"

My father was never at a loss what to say to any man upon any subject, and had the least occasion for the exordium of any man breathing. How he dealt with his lordship's opinion you shall see; but when, I know not: we must first see what his lordship's opinion was.

CHAPTER XXXV.

"THE two great causes which conspire with each other to shorten life," says Lord Verulam, are, first

"The internal spirit, which, like a gentle flame, wastes the body down to death; and secondly, the external air, that parches the body up to ashes: which two enemies, attacking us on both sides of

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our bodies together, at length destroy our organs, and render them unfit to carry on the functions of life."

This being the state of the case, the road to longevity was plain; nothing more being required, says his lordship, but to repair the waste committed by the internal spirit, by making the substance of it more thick and dense, by a regular course of opiates on one side, and by refrigerating the heat of it on the other, by three grains and a half of saltpetre every morning before you get up.

Still this frame of ours was left exposed to the inimical assaults of the air without; but this was fenced off again by a course of greasy unctions, which so fully saturated the pores of the skin that no spicula could enter, nor could any one get out. This put a stop to all perspiration, sensible and insensible, which being the cause of so many scurvy distempers, a course of glisters was requisite to carry off redundant humours, and render the system complete.

What my father had to say to my Lord of Verulam's opiates, his saltpetre, and greasy unctions and glisters, you shall read, but not today or to-morrow: time presses upon me; my reader is impatient; I must get forwards. You shall read the chapter at your leisure (if you choose it) as soon as ever the "Tristrapædia" is published.

Sufficeth it at present to say, my father levelled the hypothesis with the ground, and in doing that, the learned know, he built up and established his own.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

'THE whole secret of health," said my father, beginning the sentence again, "depending evidently upon the due contention betwixt the radical heat and radical moisture within us, the least imaginable skill had been sufficient to have maintained it, had not the schoolmen confounded the task, merely (as Van Helmont, the famous chemist, has proved) by all along mistaking the radical moisture for the tallow and fat of animal bodies.

"Now the radical moisture is not the tallow or fat of animals, but an oily and balsamous substance; for the fat and tallow, as also the phlegm or watery parts, are cold; whereas the oily and balsamous parts are of a lively heat and spirit,

"Now it is certain that the radical heat lives in the radical moisture, but whether vice versa is a doubt: however, when the one decays, the other decays also; and then is produced, either an unnatural heat, which causes an unnatural dryness, or an unnatural moisture, which causes dropsies. So that if a child, as he grows up, can be but taught to avoid running into fire or water, as either of them threaten his destruction, 'twill be all that is needful to be done upon that head."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE description of the siege of Jericho itself could not have engaged the attention of my Uncle Toby more powerfully than the last chapter: his eyes were fixed upon my father throughout it; he never mentioned radical heat and radical moisture but my Uncle Toby took his pipe out of his mouth and shook his head; and, as soon as the chapter was finished he beckoned to the Corporal to come close to his chair, to ask him the following question aside: * *

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* "It was at the siege of Limerick, an' please your honour," replied the Corporal, making a bow. "The poor fellow and I," quoth my Uncle Toby, addressing himself to father, my 66 were scarce able to crawl out of our tents, at the time the siege of Limerick was raised, upon the very account you mention.' Now what can have got into that precious noddle of thine, my dear brother Toby?" cried my father, mentally. By heaven!" continued he, communing still with himself, "it would puzzle an Edipus to bring it in point."

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"I believe, an' please your honour," quoth the Corporal, "that if it had not been for the quantity of brandy we set fire to every night, and the claret and cinnamon with which I plied your honour off "-[" And the geneva, Trim," added my Uncle Toby," which did us more good than all.""I verily believe," continued the Corporal, we had both, an' please your honour, left our lives in the trenches, and been buried in them too."-" The noblest grave, corporal," cried my Uncle Toby, his eyes sparkling as he spoke," that a soldier could wish to lie down in.""But a pitiful death for him, an' please your honour," replied the Corporal.

All this was as much Arabic to my father as the rites of the Colchi and Troglodytes had been before to my Uncle Toby; my father could not determine whether he was to frown or smile.

My Uncle Toby, turning to Yorick, resumed the case at Limerick more intelligibly than he had begun it, and so settled the point for my father at once.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

"IT was undoubtedly," said my Uncle Toby, "a great happiness for myself and the Corporal that we had all along a burning fever, attended with a most raging thirst, during the whole five-and-twenty days the flux was upon us in the camp; otherwise what my brother calls the radical moisture must, as I conceive it, inevitably have got the better."-My father drew in his lungs topful of air, and looking up, blew it forth again as slowly as he possibly could.

"It was heaven's mercy to us," continued my Uncle Toby, "which put it into the Corporal's head to maintain that due contention between

the radical heat and the radical moisture, by reinforcing the fever, as he did all along, with hot wines and spices; whereby the Corporal kept up (as it were) a continual firing, so that the radical heat stood its ground from the beginning to the end, and was a fair match for the moisture, terrible as it was. Upon my honour," added my Uncle Toby, "you might have heard the contention within our bodies, brother Shandy, twenty toises."-" If there was no firing?" said Yorick. "Well," said my father, with a full aspiration, and pausing a while after the word, 66 was I a judge, and the laws of the country which made me one permitted it, I would condemn some of the worst malefactors, provided they had had their clergy Yorick foreseeing

the sentence was likely to end with no sort of mercy, laid his hand upon my father's breast, and begged he would respite it for a few minutes till he asked the Corporal a question. "Pr'ythee, Trim," said Yorick, without staying for my father's leave," tell us honestly what is thy opinion concerning this self-same radical heat and radical moisture."

With humble submission to his honour's better judgment," quoth the Corporal, making a bow to my Uncle Toby.-"Speak thy opinion freely, Corporal," said my Uncle Toby. "The poor fellow is my ser vant, not my slave," added my Uncle Toby, turning to my father.

The Corporal put his hat under his left arm, and with his stick hanging upon the wrist of it by a black thong split into a tassel about the knot, he marched up to the ground where he had performed his catechism, then touching his under-jaw with the thumb and fingers of his right hand before he opened his mouth, he delivered his notion thus.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

JUST as the Corporal was humming to begin, in waddled Dr. Slop. 'Tis not twopence matter; the Corporal shall go on in the next chapter, let who will come in.

CHAPTER XL.

"THE city of Limerick, the siege of which was begun under his Majesty King William himself the year after I went into the army, lies, an' please your honours, in the middle of a devilish wet swampy country." "'Tis quite surrounded," said my Uncle Toby, "with the Shannon, and is, by its situation, one of the strongest fortified places in Ireland." "I think this is a new fashion,” quoth Dr. Slop, “of beginning a medical lecture."-" "Tis all true," answered Trim.-" Then I wish the faculty would follow the cut of it," said Yorick.- "'Tis all cut through, an' please your reverence," said the Corporal, "with drains and bogs; and besides, there was such a quantity of rain fell during the siege, the whole country was like a puddle; 'twas that, and nothing else, which brought on the flux, and which had like to have killed both his honour and myself. Now there was no such thing, after the first ten days,"

continued the Corporal, "for a soldier to lie dry in his tent without cutting a ditch round it to draw off the water. Nor was that enough, for those who could afford it, as his honour could, without setting fire every night to a pewter dish full of brandy, which took off the damp of the air, and made the inside of the tent as warm as a stove

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"And what conclusion dost thou draw, Corporal Trim," cried my father, "from all these premises?"

"I infer, an' please your worship,” replied Trim, "that the radical moisture is nothing in the world but ditch-water, and that the radical heat of those who can go to the expense of it, is burnt brandy; the radical heat and moisture of a private man, an' please your honour, is nothing but ditch-water and a dram of geneva; and give us but enough of it, with a pipe of tobacco, to give us spirits and drive away the vapours, we know not what it is to fear death."

I am at a loss, Captain Shandy," quoth Dr. Slop, "to determine in which branch of learning your servant shines most, whether in physiology or divinity." Slop had not forgot Trim's comment upon the

sermon.

"It is not an hour ago," replied Yorick, "since the Corporal was examined in the latter, and passed muster with great honour."

"The radical heat and moisture," quoth Dr. Slop, turning to my father, " you must know, is the basis and foundation of our being, as the root of a tree is the source and principle of its vegetation. It is inherent in the seeds of all animals, and may be preserved sundry ways, but principally, in my opinion, by consubstantials, impriments, and occludents. Now this poor fellow," continued Dr. Slop, pointing to the Corporal, "has had the misfortune to have heard some superficial empiric discourse upon this nice point."-" That he has," said my father." Very likely," said my uncle.-"I'm sure of it," quoth Yorick.

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CHAPTER XLI.

DOCTOR SLOP being called out to look at a cataplasm he had ordered, it gave my father an opportunity of going on with another chapter in the Tristrapedia." Come, cheer up my lads! I'll show you land; for when we've tugged through that chapter, the book shall not be opened again this twelvemonth. Huzza!

CHAPTER XLII.

FIVE years with a bib under his chin;

Four years in travelling from Christ-cross Row to Malachi;
A year and a half in learning to write his own name;

Seven long years and more TUTTw-ing it at Greek and Latin;

Four years at his probations and his negations the fine statue still lying in the middle of the marble block, and nothing done but his tools sharpened to hew it out! 'Tis a piteous delay! Was not the great Julius

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