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CHAPTER XXIX.

It was like the momentary contest in the moist eyelids of an April morning, Whether Bridget should laugh or cry.'

She snatch'd up a rolling-pin,-'twas ten to one she had laugh'd.—

She laid it down-she cried: and had one single tear of 'em but tasted of bitterness, full sorrowful would the Corporal's heart have been that he had used the argument; but the Corporal understood the 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 would'st 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-'

-Best of honest and gallant servants!-But I have apostrophiz'd 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 XXXI.

Now my uncle Toby had one evening laid down his pipe upon the table, and was counting over to himself, upon 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

-Prithee, 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 dipp'd it in the ink.

-She has a thousand virtues, Trim! said my

Bridget's eyes poured down at the sensations uncle Toby. 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 sobb'd a sob or two-then opened her eyes;-the Corporal wiped 'em with the bottom of her apron;-she then open'd her heart and told him all.

CHAPTER XXX.

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 Maes 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 had gain'd considerable advantages,—and consequently had much to communicate ;-but what were the advantages, as well as what was the manner by which he had sciz'd them, required so nice an historian that the Corporal durst not venture upon it; and, 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.

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 ceilingthat 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 dipp'd 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: Humanity.

-Prithec, 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 received'st at the battle of Landen?

She never, an' please your Honour, in. quires 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 an 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 XXXII.

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' 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 kitchen-fat to the postillion for a groat, who truck'd 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 bencvolence 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 XXXIII.

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 everything; 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, continued my father, addressing himself to my mother, which couples and equals wise men with fools, and makes us come out of our caverns and hiding-places more like satyrs and four-footed beasts than men.

I know it will be said, continued my father (availing himself of the Prolepsis), that in itself, and simply taken,--like hunger, or thirst, or sleep,-'tis an affair neither good nor badnor shameful, or otherwise. Why, then, did the delicacy of Diogenes and Plato so recalcitrate against it? and wherefore, when we go about to make and plant a man, do we put out the candle? and for what reason is it that all the parts thereof the congredients-the preparations, the instruments, and whatever serves thereto, are so held, as to be conveyed to a cleanly mind by no language, translation, or periphrasis whatever?

The act of killing and destroying a man, continued my father, raising his voice, and turning to my uncle Toby,-you see, is glorious, and the weapons by which we do it are honourable ;-we march with them upon our shoulders ;-we strut with them by our sides;-we gild them;-we carve them ;-we inlay them ;-we enrich them; -nay, if it be but a scoundrel cannon, we cast an ornament upon the breech of it.

-My uncle Toby laid down his pipe to intercede for a better epithet; and Yorick was rising up to batter the whole hypothesis to pieces,

When Obadiah broke into the middle of the room with a complaint, which cried out for an immediate hearing.

The case was this:

My father, whether by ancient custom of the manor, or as impropriator of the great tithes, was obliged to keep a bull for the service of the parish; and Obadiah had led his cow upon a pop-visit to him one day or other the preceding summer;-I say, one day or other, because, as chance would have it, it was the day on which he was married to my father's housemaid;-so one was a reckoning to the other. Therefore, when Obadiah's wife was brought to bed, Obadiah thanked God

Now, said Obadiah, I shall have a calf; so Obadiah went daily to visit his cow.

She'll calve on Monday,-or Tuesday,-or Wednesday, at the farthest.

himself, somehow or other, thrust into employment, and as he went through the business with a grave face, my father had a high opinion of him.

Most of the townsmen, an' please your Worship, quoth Obadiah, believe that 'tis all the bull's fault.

... But may not a cow be barren? replied my father, turning to Doctor Slop.

It never happens, said Doctor Slop; but the man's wife may have come before her time, naturally enough. Prithee, has the child hair upon his head? added Doctor Slop.

...

It is as hairy as I am, said Obadiah. Obadiah had not been shaved for three weeks.

Wheu-u-u-, cried my father, beginning the sentence with an exclamatory whistle; --and so, brother Toby, this poor bull of mine, who is as good a bull as ever p-ss'd, and might have done for Europa herself in purer times, had he but two legs less, might have been driven into Doctor's Commons and lost his character; which, to a town-bull, brother Toby, is the very same thing as his life.

L-d! said my mother, what is all this

The cow did not calve;-no, she'll not calve till next week;-the cow put it off terribly, till, at the end of the sixth week, Obadiah's suspicions (like a good man's) fell upon the bull. Now the parish being very large, my father's story about? bull, to speak the truth of him, was no way equal to the department; he had, however, got

A Cock and a Bull, said Yorick ;-and one of the best of its kind I ever heard.

END OF TRISTRAM SHANDY.

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH

FRANCE AND ITALY.

-THEY order, said I, this matter better in France.

-No, said I, the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race they may be misled, like other people; but there is a mildness in their blood. As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of a finer kind upon my cheek, more warm and friendly to man than what Burgundy (at least of two livres a bottle, which was such as I had been drinking) could have produced.

-Just God! said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many

as we do by the way?

. . . You have been in France? said my gentleman, turning quick upon me, with the most civil triumph in the world. . . . Strange! quoth I, debating the matter with myself, that one-and-twenty miles sailing, for 'tis absolutely no farther from Dover to Calais, should give a man these rights :-I'll look into them. So, giving up the argument, I went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk breeches;-The coat I have on,' | kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly said I, looking at the sleeve, 'will do ;'-took a place in the Dover stage; and, the packet sailing at nine the next morning, by three I had got set down to my dinner upon a fricaseed chicken, so incontestably in France that, had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects of the droits d'aubaine;'-my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches, portmanteau and all, must have gone to the King of France;-even the little picture which I have so long worn, and so often told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me into my grave, would have been torn from my neck!-Ungenerous! to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your subjects had beckoned to their coast! By Heaven! Sire, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me 'tis the monarch of a people so civilised and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with!

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When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! He pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompress'd, looks round him as if he sought for an object to share it with.-In doing this, I felt every vessel in my frame dilate,-the arteries beat all cheerily together, and every power which sustained life performed it with so little friction that 'twould have confounded the most physical precieuse in France: with all her materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine.

I'm confident, said I to myself, I should have overset her creed.

The accession of that idea carried Nature, at that time, as high as she could go;-I was at peace with the world before, and this finish'd the treaty with myself.

-Now, was I a King of France, cried I, what a moment for an orphan to have begg'd his

But I have scarce set a foot in your domi- father's portmanteau of me! nions.

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humours; they may depend upon the same causes, for aught I know, which influence the tides themselves ;-'twould oft be no discredit to us to suppose it was so I'm sure, at least for myself, that in many a case I should be more highly satisfied to have it said by the world- I had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame,' than have it pass altogether as my own act and deed, wherein there was so much of both.

-But be this as it may, the moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket, button'd it up, set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him. There was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scatter'd white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it, might be about seventy; but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty :-truth might lie between,he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seem'd to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account.

It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted,-mild, pale, penetrating, free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth; -it look'd forwards, but look'd as if it look'd at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows; but it would have suited a Brahmin, and, had I met it upon the plains of Indostan, I had reverenced it.

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes. One might put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas neither elegant nor otherwise, but as character and expression made it so it was a thin, spare form, something above the common size, if it lost not the distinction by a bend forward in the figure-but it was the attitude of Intreaty; and, as it now stands presented to my imagination, it gained more than it lost by it.

When he had entered the room three paces, he stood still; and laying his left hand upon his breast (a slender white staff with which he journeyed being in his right), when I had got close up to him, he introduced himself with the little story of the wants of his convent and the poverty of his order; and did it with so simple a grace, and such an air of deprecation was there in the whole cast of his look and figure, I was bewitch'd not to have been struck with it.

-A better reason was, I had predetermined not to give him a single sous.

THE MONK.

CALAIS.

-'Tis very true, said I, replying to a cast upwards with his eyes, with which he had concluded his address :-'tis very true,-and Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world! the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.

As I pronounced the words great claims, he gave a slight glance with his eye downwards upon the sleeve of his tunic.-I felt the full force of the appeal.-I acknowledge it, said I: -a coarse habit, and that but once in three years, with meagre diet, are no great matters; and the true point of pity is, as they can be earn'd in the world with so little industry, that your order should wish to procure them by pressing upon a fund which is the property of the lame, the blind, the aged, and the infirm ! -the captive, who lies down counting over and over again the days of his afflictions, languishes also for his share of it; and had you been of the order of Mercy, instead of the order of St. Francis, poor as I am, continued I, pointing at my portmanteau, full cheerfully should it have been opened to you, for the ransom of the unfortunate.- -The monk made me a bow.But of all others, resum'd I, the unfortunate of our own country, surely, have the first rights: and I have left thousands in distress upon our own shore. The monk gave a cordial wave with his head-as much as to say, No doubt there is misery enough in every corner of the world, as well as within our convent.-But we distinguish, said I, laying my hand upon the sleeve of his tunic in return for his appeal,-we distinguish, my good father, betwixt those who wish only to eat the bread of their own labour, and those who eat the bread of other people's, and have no other plan in life but to get through it in sloth and ignorance, for the love of God.

The poor Franciscan made no reply: a hectic of a moment pass'd across his cheek, but could not tarry :-Nature seemed to have had done with her resentments in him; he showed none;-but letting his staff fall within his arm, he press'd both his hands with resignation upon his breast, and retired.

THE MONK.

CALAIS.

Mr heart smote me the moment he shut the door.-Psha! said I, with an air of carelessness, three several times,-but it would not do; every

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