in Flanders. "But alas!" said the Corporal, «<< Ithe lieutenant's last day's march is over."-"Then what is to become of his poor boy?" cried my Uncle Toby.

IT WAS to my Uncle Toby's eternal honor-though I tell it only for the sake of those who, when cooped in betwixt a natural and a positive law, know not for their souls which way in the world to turn themselves—that notwithstanding my Uncle Toby was warmly engaged at that time in carrying on the siege of Dendermond parallel with the Allies, who pressed theirs on so vigorously that they scarce allowed him time to get his dinner, that nevertheless he gave up Dendermond, though he had already made a lodgment upon the counterscarp, and bent his whole thoughts towards the private distresses at the inn; and except that he ordered the garden gate to be bolted up, by which he might be said to have turned the siege of Dendermond into a blockade, he left Dendermond to itself, to be relieved or not by the French king as the French king thought good; and only considered how he himself should relieve the poor lieutenant and his

son.

That kind Being who is a friend to the friendless shall recompense thee for this.

"Thou hast left this matter short," said my Uncle Toby to the Corporal as he was putting him to bed, "and I will tell thee in what, Trim. In the first place, when thou madest an offer of my services to Le Fevre, as sickness and traveling are both expensive, and thou knewest he was but a poor lieutenant, with a son to subsist as well as himself out of his pay, that thou didst not make an offer to him of my purse; because, had he stood in need, thou knowest, Trim, he had been as welcome to it as myself."-"Your Honor knows," said the Corporal, "I had no orders."-"True," quoth my Uncle Toby: "thou didst very right, Trim, as a soldier, but certainly very wrong as a man. »

"In the second place, for which indeed thou hast the same excuse, ," continued my Uncle Toby, "when thou offeredst him whatever was in my house, thou shouldst have offered him my house too. A sick brother officer should have the best quarters, Trim; and if we had him with us, we could tend and look to him. Thou art an excellent nurse thyself, Trim; and what with thy care of him, and the old woman's, and his boy's, and mine

together, we might recruit him again at once, and set him upon his legs.

"In a fortnight or three weeks," added my Uncle Toby, smiling, "he might march."-"He will never march, an' please your Honor, in this world," said the Corporal.-"He will march," said my Uncle Toby, rising up from the side of the bed with one shoe off. “An' please your Honor," said the Corporal, “he will never march but to his grave. » _ "He shall march," cried my Uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a shoe on, though without advancing an inch, "he shall march to his regiment." "He cannot stand it," said the Corporal.-"He shall be supported," said my Uncle Toby.- "He'll drop at last," said the Corporal, and what will become of his boy?"-" He shall not drop," said my Uncle Toby firmly.-"Ah, well-a-day, do what we can for him,” said Trim, maintaining his point, "the poor soul will die."—" He shall not die, by G," cried my Uncle Toby.

The Accusing Spirit which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in; and the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out forever.

My Uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his breeches pocket, and having ordered the Corporal to go early in the morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep.

THE sun looked bright the morning after, to every eye in the village but Le Fevre's and his afflicted son's; the hand of death pressed heavy upon his eyelids; and hardly could the wheel of the cistern turn round its circle, when my Uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted time, entered the lieutenant's room, and without preface or apology sat himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and independently of all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend and brother officer would have done it, and asked him how he did, how he had rested in the night, what was his complaint, where was his pain, and what he could do to help him? And without giving him time to answer any one of the inquiries, went on and told him of the little plan which he had been concerting with the Corporal the night before for him.

"But you shall go home directly, Le Fevre," said my Uncle Toby, "to my house, and we'll send for a doctor to see what's

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the matter, and we'll have an apothecary, and the Corporal shall be your nurse, and I'll be your servant, Le Fevre."

There was a frankness in my Uncle Toby-not the effect of familiarity, but the cause of it—which let you at once into his soul, and showed you the goodness of his nature. To this there was something in his looks and voice and manner superadded, which eternally beckoned to the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him. So that before my Uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the father, had the son insensibly pressed up close to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it towards him. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to the last citadel, the heart, rallied back. The film forsook his eyes for a moment. He looked up wistfully in my Uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy; and that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again. The film returned to its place; the pulse fluttered, stopped, went on-throbbed, stopped againmoved, stopped- Shall I go on? No.

I AM so impatient to return to my own story that what remains of young Le Fevre's - that is, from this turn of his fortune to the time my Uncle Toby recommended him for my preceptor shall be told in a very few words in the next chapter. All that is necessary to be added to this chapter is as follows:

That my Uncle Toby, with young Le Fevre in his hand, attended the poor lieutenant as chief mourners to his grave.

THE START

From 'A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy'

HEY order," said I, "this matter better in France->

"THEY

world.

"You have been in France?" said my gentleman, turning quick upon me, with the most civil triumph in the

"Strange!" quoth I, debating the matter with myself, "that one-and-twenty miles' sailing (for 'tis absolutely no further from Dover to Calais) should give a man these rights-I'll look into them: >> so, giving up the argument, I went straight to my lodgings, put up half a dozen shirts and a black pair of silk

breeches "the coat I have on," said I, looking at the sleeve, "will do "took a place in the Dover stage; and the packet sailing at nine the next morning, by three I had got sat down to my dinner upon a fricasseed chicken, so incontestably in France that had I died that night of an indigestion, the whole world could not have suspended the effects of the droits d'aubaine: my shirts, and black pair of silk breeches, portmanteau, and all, must have gone to the King of France; even the little picture which I have so long worn, and so often have told thee, Eliza, I would carry with me to my grave, would have been torn from my neck.-Ungenerous! - to seize upon the wreck of an unwary passenger, whom your subjects had beckoned to their coast! by heaven! sire, it is not well done; and much does it grieve me, 'tis the monarch of a people so civilized and courteous, and so renowned for sentiment and fine feelings, that I have to reason with

But I have scarce set foot in your dominions—

WHEN I had finished my dinner, and drank the King of France's health, to satisfy my mind that I bore him no spleen, but on the contrary, high honor for the humanity of his temper, I rose up an inch taller for the accommodation.

-"No," said I, "the Bourbon is by no means a cruel race: they may be misled, like other people, but there is a mildness in their blood." As I acknowledged this, I felt a suffusion of a finer kind upon my cheek, more warm and friendly to man than what burgundy (at least of two livres a bottle, which was such as I had been drinking) could have produced.

-"Just God!" said I, kicking my portmanteau aside, "what is there in this world's goods which should sharpen our spirits, and make so many kind-hearted brethren of us fall out so cruelly as we do by the way?"

When man is at peace with man, how much lighter than a feather is the heaviest of metals in his hand! He pulls out his purse, and holding it airily and uncompressed, looks round him as if he sought for an object to share it with. In doing this, I felt every vessel in my frame dilate the arteries beat all cheerily together and every power which sustained life performed it with so little friction that 'twould have confounded the most physical précieuse in France: with all her materialism, she could scarce have called me a machine

-

"I'm confident," said I to myself, "I should have overset her creed.»

The accession of that idea carried Nature, at that time, as high as she could go.-I was at peace with the world before, and this finished the treaty with myself

-"Now, was I a King of France," cried I, "what a moment for an orphan to have begged his father's portmanteau of me!"

I

THE MONK

From A Sentimental Journey>

HAD scarce uttered the words, when a poor monk of the order of St. Francis came into the room to beg something for his

convent.

The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was predetermined not to give him a single sous; and accordingly I put up my purse into my pocket, buttoned it up, set myself a little more upon my centre, and advanced up gravely to him; there was something, I fear, forbidding in my look: I have his figure this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.

The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure (a few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it), might be about seventy; but from his eyes, and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered by courtesy than years, could be no more than sixty;-truth might lie between; he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the

account.

It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted,mild, pale, penetrating,- free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented ignorance looking downwards upon the earth, —it looked forwards; but looked as if it looked at something beyond this world. How one of his order came by it, Heaven above, who let it fall upon a monk's shoulders, best knows; but it would have suited a Brahmin; and had I met it upon the plains of Hindostan, I had reverenced it.

The rest of his outline may be given in a few strokes; one might put it into the hands of any one to design, for 'twas