sted ten years and eight months,--though with such a train of
artillery as we had at Namur, the town might have been carried in a
week--was I not as much concerned for the destruction of the Greeks and
Trojans as any boy of the whole school? Had I not three strokes of a
ferula given me, two on my right hand, and one on my left, for calling
Helena a bitch for it? Did any one of you shed more tears for Hector?
And when king Priam came to the camp to beg his body, and returned
weeping back to Troy without it,--you know, brother, I could not eat my
dinner.--

--Did that bespeak me cruel? Or because, brother Shandy, my blood flew
out into the camp, and my heart panted for war,--was it a proof it could
not ache for the distresses of war too?

O brother! 'tis one thing for a soldier to gather laurels,--and 'tis
another to scatter cypress.--(Who told thee, my dear Toby, that cypress
was used by the antients on mournful occasions?)

--'Tis one thing, brother Shandy, for a soldier to hazard his own
life--to leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in
pieces:--'Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to
enter the breach the first man,--to stand in the foremost rank, and
march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his
ears:--'Tis one thing, I say, brother Shandy, to do this,--and
'tis another thing to reflect on the miseries of war;--to view the
desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues
and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them,
is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo.

Need I be told, dear Yorick, as I was by you, in Le Fever's funeral
sermon, That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, and
kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this?--But why did you not add,
Yorick,--if not by Nature--that he is so by Necessity?--For what is war?
what is it, Yorick, when fought as ours has been, upon principles of
liberty, and upon principles of honour--what is it, but the getting
together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in their hands,
to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? And heaven is
my witness, brother Shandy, that the pleasure I have taken in these
things,--and that infinite delight, in particular, which has attended
my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose within me, and I hope in the
corporal too, from the consciousness we both had, that in carrying th