CHAPTER XXI
If the reader has not a clear conception of the rood and the half of ground which lay at the bottom of my uncle _Toby’s_ kitchen-garden, and which was the scene of so many of his delicious hours, --the fault is not in me, --but in his imagination; --for I am sure I gave him so minute a description, I was almost ashamed of it.
When FATE was looking forwards one afternoon, into the great transactions of future times, --and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined, ---she gave a nod to NATURE, --’twas enough --Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so _much_ clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings, --and so _little_ of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much glory, nasty in foul weather.
My uncle _Toby_ came down, as the reader has been informed, with plans along with him, of almost every fortified town in _Italy_ and _Flanders_; so let the Duke of _Marlborough_, or the allies, have set down before what town they pleased, my uncle _Toby_ was prepared for them.
His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this; as soon as ever a town was invested--(but sooner when the design was known) to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would), and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling-green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large role of packthread, and a number of small piquets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the ditches, --the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several banquets, parapets, &c. --he set the corporal to work----and sweetly went it on: ----The nature of the soil, --the nature of the work itself, --and above all, the good-nature of my uncle _Toby_ sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the corporal upon past-done deeds, --left LABOUR little else but the ceremony of the name.
When the place was finished in this manner, and put into a proper posture of defence, --it was invested, --and my uncle _Toby_ and the corporal began to run their first parallel. ----I beg I may not be interrupted in my story, by being told, _That the first parallel should be at least three hundred toises distant from the main body of the place, --and that I have not left a single inch for it_; ------for my uncle _Toby_ took the liberty of incroaching upon his kitchen-garden, for the sake of enlarging his works on the bowling-green, and for that reason generally ran his first and second parallels betwixt two rows of his cabbages and his cauliflowers; the conveniences and inconveniences of which will be considered at large in the history of my uncle _Toby’s_ and the corporal’s campaigns, of which, this I’m now writing is but a sketch, and will be finished, if I conjecture right, in three pages (but there is no guessing) ----The campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work----surely they had better be printed apart, ----we’ll consider the affair----so take the following sketch of them in the meantime.
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