and thank him cordially from me for his many civilities to Madame and Mademoiselle Shandy at York, who send all due acknowledgements. The humour is over for France, and Frenchmen, but that is not enough for your affectionate cousin, L. S.

(A year will tire us all out, I trow), but thank Heaven the post brings me a letter from my Anthony.

and should return back

I felicitate you upon what Messrs. the Reviewers allow you they have too much judgment themselves not to allow you what you are actually possessed of, "talents, wit, and humour." Well, write on, my dear cousin, and be guided by thy own fancy. - Oh! how I envy you all at Crazy Castle! I could like to spend a month with you again for the vintage. I honour the man that has given the world an idea of our paternal seat 'tis well done I look at it ten times a-day with a quando te aspiciam? Now farewell remember me to my beloved Colonel greet Panty most lovingly on my behalf, and if Mrs. C—, and Miss C, &c., are at G-, greet them likewise with a holy kiss. So God bless you.

XXXII.

TO MR. FOLEY, AT PARIS.

MY DEAR FOLEY,

Toulouse, August 14, 1762.

AFTER many turnings (alias digressions), to say nothing of downright overthrows, stops, and delays, we have arrived in three weeks at Toulouse, and are now settled in our house, with servants, &c., about us, and look as composed as if we had been here seven years.

In our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain to remember it I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as a twentyfour sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grill'd, stew'd, and carbonaded on one side or other all the way and being all done enough (assez cuits) in the day, we were eat up at night by bugs, and other unswept-out vermin, the legal inhabitants (if length of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at. Can you conceive a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could cast a shade of the size of one of Eve's fig-leaves that we should break a hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be obliged, in consequence, to sit five hours on a gravelly road, without one drop of water, or possibility of getting any? To mend the matter, my two postillions were two dough-hearted fools, and fell a-crying Nothing was to be done! By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, something shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within an inch of your lives — and then make you take each of you a horse, and ride like two devils to the next post for a cart to carry my baggage, and a wheel to carry ourselves. Our luggage weighed ten quintails 'twas the fair of Baucaire

all the world was going or returning

we were asked

by every soul who passed by us, if we were going to the fair of Baucaire? No wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough! vous avez raison, mes amis.

Well! here we are, after all, my dear friend, and most deliciously placed at the extremity of the town, in an excellent house, well furnish'd, and elegant beyond any thing I look'd for. "Tis built in the form

of a hotel, with a pretty court towards the town - and behind, the best garden in Toulouse, laid out in serpentine walks, and so large that the company in our quarter usually come to walk there in the evenings, for which they have my consent "the more the merrier."-The house consists of a good salle à manger above stairs, joining to the very great salle à compagnie as large as the Baron d'Holbach's; three handsome bedchambers with dressing-rooms to them below stairs two very good rooms for myself, one to study in, the other to see company. I have, moreover, cellars round the court, and all other offices. Of the same landlord I have bargained to have the use of a countryhouse which he has two miles out of town, so that myself and all my family have nothing more to do than to take our hats and remove from the one to the other. My landlord is, moreover, to keep the gardens in order and what do you think I am to pay for all this? neither more nor less than thirty pounds a-year all things are cheap in proportion for very little.

so we shall live I dined yesterday with Mr. H.; he is most pleasantly situated, and they are all well. As for the books you have received for D —, the bookseller was a fool not to send the bill along with them I will write to him about it. I wish you

was with me for two months; it would cure you of all evils ghostly and bodily but this like many other wishes both for you and myself, must have its completion elsewhere. Adieu, my kind friend, and believe that I love you as much from inclination as reason, for I am most truly yours, L. STERNE.

My wife and girl join in compliments to you - My best respects to my worthy Baron d'Holbach and all

I RECEIVED your letter yesterday so it has been travelling from Crazy Castle to Toulouse full eighteen days. If I had nothing to stop me, I would engage

the I re

to set out this morning, and knock at Crazy Castle gates in three days less time by which time I should find you and the Colonel, Panty, &c., all alone season I most wish and like to be with you. joice, from my heart down to my reins, that you have snatch'd so many happy and sunshiny days out of the hands of the blue devils If we live to meet and join our forces as heretofore, we will give these gentry a drubbing and turn them for ever out of their usurped citadel some legions of them have been put to flight already by your operations this last campaign and I hope to have a hand in dispersing the remainder the first time my dear cousin sets up his banners again under the square tower But what art thou meditating with axes and hammers? "I know the pride and the naughtiness of thy heart," and thou lovest the sweet visions of architraves, friezes, and pediments, with their tympanums, and thou hast found out a pretence à raison de cinq cent livres sterling to be laid out in four years, &c. &c. (so as not to be felt, which is always added by the d-1 as a bait) to justify thyself unto thyself It may be wise to do this 'tis wiser to keep one's money in one's pocket, whilst

very

but

there are wars without and rumours of wars within. St. advises his disciples to sell both coat and waiscoat, and go rather without shirt or sword, than leave no money in their scrip to go to Jerusalem with Now these quatre ans consecutifs, my dear Anthony, are the most precious morsels of thy life to come (in this world,) and thou wilt do well to enjoy that morsel without cares, calculations, and curses, and damns, and debts for as sure as stone is stone, and mortar is mortar, &c. 'twill be one of the many works of thy repentance But after all, if the Fates have decreed it, as you and I have some time supposed it, on account of your generosity, "that you are never to be a monied man," the decree will be fulfilled whether you adorn your castle and line it with cedar, and paint it within side and without side with vermillion, or not, et celle étant (having a bottle of Frontiniac and glass at my right hand) I drink, dear Anthony, to thy health and happiness, and to the final accomplishment of all thy lunary and sublunary projects. For six weeks together, after I wrote my last letter to you, my projects were many stories higher, for I was all that time, as I thought, journeying on to the other world I fell ill of an epidemic vile fever which killed hundreds about me The physicians here are the errantest charlatans in Europe, or the most ignorant of all pretending fools I withdrew what was left of me out of their hands, and recommended my affairs entirely to Dame Nature She (dear goddess) has saved me in fifty different pinching bouts, and I begin to have a kind of enthusiasm now in her favour, and in my own, that one or two more escapes will make me believe I shall leave you all at last by translation, and not by