rlborough made a lodgment,--my uncle Toby made a
lodgment too;--and when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a
defence ruined,--the Corporal took his mattock and did as much,--and so
on;--gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works, one
after another, till the town fell into their hands.

To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others, there could not
have been a greater sight in the world than on a post-morning, in which
a practicable breach had been made by the Duke of Marlborough in the
main body of the place,--to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and
observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him,
sallied forth;--the one with the Gazette in his hand,--the other with a
spade on his shoulder, to execute the contents.--What an honest triumph
in my uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts! what intense
pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the Corporal, reading the
paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure,
he should make the breach an inch too wide,--or leave it an inch too
narrow!--but when the _chamade_ was beat, and the Corporal helped my
uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them
upon the ramparts,--Heaven! Earth! Sea!--but what avail
apostrophes?--with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded
so intoxicating a draught.

{79} In this track of happiness for many years, without one
interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow
due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the Flanders
mail, and kept them so long in torture, but still it was the torture of
the happy:--in this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for
many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the
invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new
conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always
opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on.

(_Tristram Shandy_.)

HORACE WALPOLE 1717-1797

THE FUNERAL OF GEORGE II

_Horace Walpole to George Montagu_

ARLINGTON STREET,

_November_ 13, 1760.

Even the honeymoon of a new reign don't produce events every day.
There is nothing but the common saying of addresses and kissing
hands. . . For the King himself, he seems all good nature, and wishing
to satisfy everybody; all his speeches are obliging.

I saw him again yesterday, and was surprised to find