do not, I beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis." My uncle Toby put his pipe into his mouth.

"Where is Troy and Mycenæ, and Thebes and Delos, and Persepolis, and Agrigentum?" continued my father, taking up his book of post-roads, which he had laid down. "What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and Babylon, of Cyzicum and Mitylenæ ? The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon are now no more; the names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piecemeals to decay, and in length of time will be forgotten, and involved with everything in a perpetual night; the world itself, brother Toby, must-must come to an end.

"Returning out of Asia, when I sailed from Ægina towards Megara," ["When can this have been?" thought my uncle Toby] "I began to view the country round about. Ægina was behind me, Megara was before, Piræus on the right hand, Corinth on the left. What flourishing towns now prostrate upon the earth! 'Alas! alas!' said I to myself, 'that man should disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as this lies awfully buried in his presence!' 'Remember,' said I to myself again, 'Remember thou art a man.''

Now, my uncle Toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of Servius Sulpicius's consolatory letter to Tully. He had as little skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity. And as my father, whilst he was concerned in the Turkey trade, had been three or four different times in the Levant, in one of which he had staid a whole year and a half at Zante, my uncle Toby naturally concluded that, in some one of these periods, he had taken a trip across the Archipelago into Asia; and that all this sailing affair, with Ægina behind, and Megara before, and Piræus on the right hand, etc., etc., was nothing more than the true course of my father's voyage and reflections.

'Twas certainly in his manner, and many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon worse foundations. "And pray, brother," quoth my uncle Toby, laying the end of his pipe upon my father's hand in a kindly way of interruption, but waiting till he had finished the account,- "what year of our Lord was this?" "It was no year of our Lord," replied my father. "That's impossible!" cried my uncle Toby. "Simpleton!" said my father-" it was forty years before Christ was born."

My uncle Toby had but two things for it; either to suppose his brother to be the Wandering Jew, or that his misfortunes had disordered his brain." May the Lord God of Heaven and earth protect him and restore him!" said my uncle Toby, praying silently for my father, and with tears in his eyes.

My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his harangue with great spirit.

brother Toby, betwixt good (This way of setting off, by

"There is not such great odds, and evil, as the world imagines." the bye, was not likely to cure my uncle Toby's suspicions.) "Labour, sorrow, grief, sickness, want, and woe, are the sauces of life." "Much good may it do them!" said my uncle Toby to himself.

"My son is dead!—so much the better;-'tis a shame, in such a tempest to have but one anchor.

"But he is gone for ever from us!-Be it so. He is got from under the hands of his barber before he was bald; but he is risen from a feast before he was surfeited; from a banquet before he had got drunken.

“The Thracians wept when a child was born" ("And we were very near it," quoth my uncle Toby), "and feasted and made merry when a man went out of the world; and with reason. Death opens the gate of Fame and shuts the gate of Envy after it it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hands.

"Show me the man, who knows what life is, who dreads it, and I'll show thee a prisoner who dreads his liberty.

"Is it not better my dear brother Toby (for mark, our appetites are but diseases), is it not better not to hunger at all, than to eat? not to thirst, than to take physic to cure it?

"Is it not better to be freed from cares and agues, from love and melancholy, and the other hot and cold fits of life, than, like a galled traveller, who comes weary to his inn, to be bound to begin his journey afresh?

“There is no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions, and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man's room. Strip it of these, What is it?" "It is better in battle than in bed,” said my uncle Toby. "Take away

its hearses, its mutes, and its mourning, its plumes, scutcheons, and other mechanic aids, What is it? Better in battle!" con

tinued my father, smiling, for he had absolutely forgot my brother Bobby; "tis terrible no way, for consider, brother Toby, when we are, death is not; and when death is, we are not." My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to consider the proposition: my father's eloquence was too rapid to stay for any man; away it went, and hurried my uncle Toby's ideas along with it.

(From the Same.)

CORPORAL TRIM AND THE CURATE

"WHEN I gave him the toast," continued the corporal, "I thought it was proper to tell him I was Captain Shandy's servant, and that your honour (though a stranger) was extremely concerned for his father; and that if there was anything in your house or cellar (and thou mightest have added my purse too,' said my uncle Toby) he was welcome to it. He made a very low bow (which was meant to your honour), but no answer; for his heart was full; so he went upstairs with the toast. 'I warrant you, my dear,' said I, as I opened the kitchen door, 'your father will be well again.' Mr. Yorick's curate was smoking a pipe by the kitchen fire; but said not a word, good or bad, to comfort the youth. I thought it wrong," added the corporal. “I think so too," said my uncle Toby.

"When the lieutenant had taken his glass of sack and toast, he felt himself a little revived, and sent down into the kitchen, to let me know, that, in about ten minutes, he should be glad if I would step upstairs.

"I believe,' said the landlord, 'he is going to say his prayers; for there was a book laid upon the chair by his bed-side, and, as I shut the door, I saw his son take up a cushion.'

"I thought,' said the curate, 'that you gentleman of the army, Mr. Trim, never said your prayers at all.' 'I heard the poor gentleman say his prayers last night,' said the landlady very devoutly, and with my own ears, or I could not have believed it.' ‘Are you sure of it?' replied the curate. 'A soldier, an' please your reverence,' said I, 'prays as often, of his own accord, as a parson; and when he is fighting for his king, and for his own life, and for his honour too, he has the most reason to pray to God of any one in the whole world."" "It was well

“But when a soldier,'

said of thee, Trim," said my uncle Toby. said I, 'an' please your reverence, has been standing for twelve hours together in the trenches, up to his knees in cold water, or engaged,' said I, 'for months together in long and dangerous marches; harassed, perhaps, in his rear to-day; harassing others to-morrow; detached here; countermanded there; resting this night out upon his arms; beat up in his shirt the next, benumbed in his joints; perhaps without straw in his tent to kneel on; must say his prayers how and when he can; I believe,' said I, for I was piqued," quoth the corporal, "for the reputation of the army, 'I believe, an't please your reverence,' said I, 'that when a soldier gets time to pray, he prays as heartily as a parson --though not with all his fuss and hypocrisy.""

"Thou should'st not have said that, Trim," said my uncle Toby, "for God only knows who is a hypocrite, and who is not. At the great and general review of us all, corporal, at the day of judgment (and not till then) it will be seen who have done their duties in this world, and who have not; and we shall be advanced, Trim, accordingly." "I hope we shall," said Trim. "It is in the Scripture," said my uncle Toby; "and I will show it thee to-morrow. In the meantime we may depend upon it, Trim, for our comfort," said my uncle Toby, "that God Almighty is so good and just a governor of the world, that if we have but done our duties in it, it will never be inquired into whether we have done them in a red coat or a black one." "I hope not," said the "But go on, Trim," said my uncle Toby, "with thy

corporal.

story."

(From the Same.)

TRISTRAM AND THE ASS

'TWAS by a poor ass, who had just turned in with a couple of large panniers upon his back, to collect eleemosynary turnip-tops and cabbage leaves; and stood dubious, with his two fore feet on the inside of the threshold, and with his two hinder feet towards the street, as not knowing very well whether he was to go in or not.

Now, it is an animal (be in what hurry I may) I cannot bear to strike; there is a patient endurance of sufferings wrote so

unaffectedly in his looks and carriage, which pleads so mightily for him, that it always disarms me; and to that degree, that I do not like to speak unkindly to him: on the contrary, meet him where I will, whether in town or country, in cart or under panniers, whether in liberty or bondage, I have ever something civil to say to him on my part; and, as one word begets another (if he has as little to do as I) I generally fall into conversation with him; and surely never is my imagination so busy as in framing his responses from the etchings of his countenance,—and where those carry me not deep enough,—in flying from my own heart into his, and seeing what is natural for an ass to think,—as well as a man upon the occasion. In truth, it is the only creature of all the classes of beings below me, with whom I can do this; for parrots, jackdaws, etc., I never exchange a word with them,— nor with apes, etc., for pretty near the same reason; they act by rote, as the others speak by it, and equally make me silent: nay, my dog and my cat, though I value them both (and, for my dog, he would speak if he could) yet somehow or other, they neither of them possess the talents for conversation; I can make nothing of a discourse with them beyond the proposition, the reply, and rejoinder, which terminated my father's and my mother's conversations in his beds of justice;—and those uttered, there's an end of the dialogue.

But with an ass, I can commune for ever.

Come, honesty! said I, seeing it was impracticable to pass betwixt him and the gate, art thou for coming in, or going out ? The ass twisted his head round to look up the street.

Well, replied I, we'll wait a minute for thy driver.

He turned his head thoughtful about, and looked wistfully the opposite way.

I understand thee perfectly, answered I; if thou takest a wrong step in this affair, he will cudgel thee to death. Well! a minute is but a minute, and if it saves a fellow-creature a drubbing, it shall not be set down as ill-spent.

He was eating the stem of an artichoke as this discourse went on, and in the little peevish contentions of nature betwixt hunger and unsavouriness, had dropped it out of his mouth half a dozen times, and picked it up again. God help thee, Jack! said I, thou hast a bitter breakfast on't, and many a bitter day's labour, and many a bitter blow, I fear for its wages! 'tis all-all bitterness to thee, whatever life is to others! And now thy mouth, if one