have died, it had been matter of wonder,--not that
he is dead.

'Monarchs and princes dance in the same ring with us.

'--To die, is the great debt and tribute due unto nature: tombs and
monuments, which should perpetuate our memories, pay it themselves; and
the proudest pyramid of them all, which wealth and science have erected,
has lost its apex, and stands obtruncated in the traveller's horizon.'
(My father found he got great ease, and went on)--'Kingdoms and
provinces, and towns and cities, have they not their periods? and
when those principles and powers, which at first cemented and put
them together, have performed their several evolutions, they fall
back.'--Brother Shandy, said my uncle Toby, laying down his pipe at the
word evolutions--Revolutions, I meant, quoth my father,--by heaven!
I meant revolutions, brother Toby--evolutions is nonsense.--'Tis not
nonsense--said my uncle Toby.--But is it not nonsense to break the
thread of such a discourse upon such an occasion? cried my father--do
not--dear Toby, continued he, taking him by the hand, do not--do not, I
beseech thee, interrupt me at this crisis.--My uncle Toby put his pipe
into his mouth.

'Where is Troy and Mycenae, and Thebes and Delos, and Persepolis and
Agrigentum?'--continued my father, taking up his book of post-roads,
which he had laid down.--'What is become, brother Toby, of Nineveh and
Babylon, of Cizicum and Mitylenae? The fairest towns that ever the sun
rose upon, are now no more; the names only are left, and those (for many
of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piece-meals to decay,
and in length of time will be forgotten, and involved with every thing
in a perpetual night: the world itself, brother Toby, must--must come to
an end.

'Returning out of Asia, when I sailed from Aegina towards Megara,' (when
can this have been? thought my uncle Toby,) 'I began to view the country
round about. Aegina was behind me, Megara was before, Pyraeus on the
right hand, Corinth on the left.--What flourishing towns now prostrate
upon the earth! Alas! alas! said I to myself, that man should disturb
his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as this lies awfully
buried in his presence--Remember, said I to myself again--remember thou
art a man.'--

Now my uncle Toby knew not that this last paragraph was an extract
of Servius Sulpicius's consolatory letter to Tully.--He had as little
skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole