the addition of two singular improvements, of
which he was almost as proud as if he had been the original inventor of
the project itself.

The one was, to have the town built exactly in the style of those of
which it was most likely to be the representative:--with grated windows,
and the gable ends of the houses, facing the streets, &c. &c.--as those
in Ghent and Bruges, and the rest of the towns in Brabant and Flanders.

The other was, not to have the houses run up together, as the corporal
proposed, but to have every house independent, to hook on, or off, so
as to form into the plan of whatever town they pleased. This was put
directly into hand, and many and many a look of mutual congratulation
was exchanged between my uncle Toby and the corporal, as the carpenter
did the work.

--It answered prodigiously the next summer--the town was a perfect
Proteus--It was Landen, and Trerebach, and Santvliet, and Drusen, and
Hagenau,--and then it was Ostend and Menin, and Aeth and Dendermond.

--Surely never did any Town act so many parts, since Sodom and Gomorrah,
as my uncle Toby's town did.

In the fourth year, my uncle Toby thinking a town looked foolishly
without a church, added a very fine one with a steeple.--Trim was for
having bells in it;--my uncle Toby said, the metal had better be cast
into cannon.

This led the way the next campaign for half a dozen brass field-pieces,
to be planted three and three on each side of my uncle Toby's
sentry-box; and in a short time, these led the way for a train
of somewhat larger,--and so on--(as must always be the case in
hobby-horsical affairs) from pieces of half an inch bore, till it came
at last to my father's jack boots.

The next year, which was that in which Lisle was besieged, and at the
close of which both Ghent and Bruges fell into our hands,--my uncle
Toby was sadly put to it for proper ammunition;--I say proper
ammunition--because his great artillery would not bear powder; and 'twas
well for the Shandy family they would not--For so full were the papers,
from the beginning to the end of the siege, of the incessant firings
kept up by the besiegers,--and so heated was my uncle Toby's imagination
with the accounts of them, that he had infallibly shot away all his
estate.

Something therefore was wanting as a succedaneum, especially in one or
two of the more violent paroxysms of the siege, to keep up something
like a continual firing in the imagination,--and this some