y distinction of habiliment was lost, but the Latus Clavus.

And what was the Latus Clavus? said my father.

Rubenius told him, that the point was still litigating amongst the
learned:--That Egnatius, Sigonius, Bossius Ticinensis, Bayfius Budaeus,
Salmasius, Lipsius, Lazius, Isaac Casaubon, and Joseph Scaliger, all
differed from each other,--and he from them: That some took it to be the
button,--some the coat itself,--others only the colour of it;--That the
great Bayfuis in his Wardrobe of the Ancients, chap. 12--honestly said,
he knew not what it was,--whether a tibula,--a stud,--a button,--a
loop,--a buckle,--or clasps and keepers.--

--My father lost the horse, but not the saddle--They are hooks and eyes,
said my father--and with hooks and eyes he ordered my breeches to be
made.

Chapter 3.LXIII.

We are now going to enter upon a new scene of events.--

--Leave we then the breeches in the taylor's hands, with my father
standing over him with his cane, reading him as he sat at work a
lecture upon the latus clavus, and pointing to the precise part of the
waistband, where he was determined to have it sewed on.--

Leave we my mother--(truest of all the Poco-curante's of her
sex!)--careless about it, as about every thing else in the world which
concerned her;--that is,--indifferent whether it was done this way or
that,--provided it was but done at all.--

Leave we Slop likewise to the full profits of all my dishonours.--

Leave we poor Le Fever to recover, and get home from Marseilles as he
can.--And last of all,--because the hardest of all--

Let us leave, if possible, myself:--But 'tis impossible,--I must go
along with you to the end of the work.

Chapter 3.LXIV.

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