CHAPTER XXXV

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?_

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