ich, and very superb, and very
magnificent, said my father, addressing himself to the sacristan, who
was a younger brother of the order of Benedictines--but our curiosity
has led us to see the bodies, of which Monsieur Sequier has given the
world so exact a description.--The sacristan made a bow, and lighting a
torch first, which he had always in the vestry ready for the purpose; he
led us into the tomb of St. Heribald--This, said the sacristan, laying
his hand upon the tomb, was a renowned prince of the house of Bavaria,
who under the successive reigns of Charlemagne, Louis le Debonnair,
and Charles the Bald, bore a great sway in the government, and had a
principal hand in bringing every thing into order and discipline--

Then he has been as great, said my uncle, in the field, as in the
cabinet--I dare say he has been a gallant soldier--He was a monk--said
the sacristan.

My uncle Toby and Trim sought comfort in each other's faces--but found
it not: my father clapped both his hands upon his cod-piece, which was a
way he had when any thing hugely tickled him: for though he hated a monk
and the very smell of a monk worse than all the devils in hell--yet the
shot hitting my uncle Toby and Trim so much harder than him, 'twas a
relative triumph; and put him into the gayest humour in the world.

--And pray what do you call this gentleman? quoth my father, rather
sportingly: This tomb, said the young Benedictine, looking downwards,
contains the bones of Saint Maxima, who came from Ravenna on purpose to
touch the body--

--Of Saint Maximus, said my father, popping in with his saint before
him,--they were two of the greatest saints in the whole martyrology,
added my father--Excuse me, said the sacristan--'twas to touch the bones
of Saint Germain, the builder of the abbey--And what did she get by
it? said my uncle Toby--What does any woman get by it? said my
father--Martyrdome; replied the young Benedictine, making a bow down
to the ground, and uttering the word with so humble, but decisive a
cadence, it disarmed my father for a moment. 'Tis supposed, continued
the Benedictine, that St. Maxima has lain in this tomb four hundred
years, and two hundred before her canonization--'Tis but a slow rise,
brother Toby, quoth my father, in this self-same army of martyrs.--A
desperate slow one, an' please your honour, said Trim, unless one could
purchase--I should rather sell out entirely, quoth my uncle Toby--I am
pretty much of your