A delusive, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle Toby and Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk,⁠—for a moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him:⁠⸺⁠still⁠—still all went on heavily⁠⸺⁠the magic left the mind the weaker⁠—Stillness, with Silence at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle Toby’s head;⁠⸺⁠and Listlessness, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his armchair.⁠⸺⁠No longer Amberg and Rhinberg, and Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year,⁠—and the prospect of Landen, and Trerebach, and Drusen, and Dendermond, the next,⁠—hurried on the blood:⁠—No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man’s repose:⁠⸺⁠No more could my uncle Toby, after passing the French lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of France,⁠—cross over the Oyes, and with all Picardie open behind him, march up to the gates of Paris, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory:⁠⸺⁠No more was he to dream he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the Bastile, and awake with it streaming in his head.

⸺⁠Softer visions,⁠—gentler vibrations stole sweetly in upon his slumbers;⁠—the trumpet of war fell out of his hands,⁠—he took up the lute, sweet instrument! of all others the most delicate! the most difficult!⁠⸺⁠how wilt thou touch it, my dear uncle Toby?