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_?