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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 pleafure I have taken in these things, and that infinite delight, in particular, which has attended my fieges in my bowling green, has arose within me, and I hope in the Corporal too, from the confciousness we both had, that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our creation.

T. SHANDY, VOL. III. CHAP. 75.

1

MERCY.

MY uncle Toby was a man patient of inju

ries;-not from want of courage, where juft occafions presented, or called it forth,-I know no man under whose arm I would fooner have taken shelter;-nor did this arife from any infenfibility insensibility or obtufeness of his intellectual parts; he was of a peaceful, placid nature,no jarring element in it, all was mixed up fo kindly within him; my uncle Toby had fearce a heart to retaliate upon a fly : Go, -says he one day at dinner, to an overgrown one which had buzzed about his nofe, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last-as it flew by him; I'll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rifing from his chair, and going across the room, with the fly in his hand, I'll not hurt a hair of thy head: - Go, fays he, lifting up the fafi, and opening his hand as he fpoke, to let it escape; -go, poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? This world furely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

**

This is to ferve for parents and governors instead of a whole volume upon the fubject. T. SHANDY, VOL. 1. CHAP. 37.

INDOLENCE INDOLENCE.

INCONSISTENT foul that man is!-languishing under wounds which he has the power to heal! - his whole life a contradiction to his knowledge! - his reason, that precious gift of God to him (instead of pouring in oil) ferving but to sharpen his sensibilities, to multiply his pains and render him more melancholy and uneasy under them!-Poor unhappy creature, that he should do fo! - are not the necessary causes of mifery in this life enow, but he must add voluntary ones to his stock of forrow;-ftruggle against evils which cannot be avoided, and fubmit to others, which a tenth part of the trouble they create him, would remove from his heart for ever?

T. SHANDY, VOL. II. CHAP. 14.

CONSOLATION.

CONSOLATΙΟΝ.

BEFORE an affliction is digefted, confola

tion ever comes too foon;-and after it is digefted-it comes too late :-there is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at.

T. SHANDY, VOL. 11. CHAР. 22.

THE STARLING.

BESHREW the fombre pencil! faid I vauntingly-for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils of life with fo hard and deadly a colouring. The mind fits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper fize and hue she overlooks them 'Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition--the Baftile is not an evil to be despised but strip it of its towers--fill up the fosseunbarricade the doorsdoors call it simply a confinement, and fuppose 'tis some tyrant of a distemperand not of a man which holds you in it-the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint.

I was interrupted in the hey-day of this foliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained " it could not get out." I looked up and down the passage, and feeing neither man, woman, or child, I went out without further attention.

In my return back through the passage, I heard the fame words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage" I can't get out-I can't get out," faid the starling.

I stood looking at the bird: and to every perfon who came through the passage it ran fluttering to the fide towards which they approached it, with the fame lamentations of its captivity" I can't get out," said the starling-God help thee! faid I, but I will let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get the door; it was twisted and