Chapter C: H a P. LXXVIII

A DELUSIVE, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_, upon the demolition of _Dunkirk_,—for a moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him:——still—still all went on heavily——the magic left the mind the weaker—STILLNESS, with SILENCE at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle _Toby_’s head;—and LISTLESSNESS, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm-chair.——No longer _Amberg_ and _Rhinberg_, and _Limbourg_, and _Huy_, and _Bonn_, in one year,—and the prospect of _Landen_, and _Trerebach_, and _Drusen_, and _Dendermond_, the next,—hurried on the blood:—No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man’s repose:——No more could my uncle _Toby_, after passing the _French_ lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of _France_,—cross over the _Oyes_, and with all _Picardie_ open behind him, march up to the gates of _Paris_, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory:——No more was he to dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the _Bastile_, and awake with it streaming in his head.

——Softer visions,—gentler vibrations stole sweetly in upon his slumbers;—the trumpet of war fell out of his hands,—he took up the lute, sweet instrument! of all others the most delicate! the most difficult!——how wilt thou touch it, my dear uncle _Toby_?