His way, which was the simplest one in the world, was this: as soon as ever a town was invested--(but sooner when the design was known) to take the plan of it (let it be what town it would) and enlarge it upon a scale to the exact size of his bowling green; upon the surface of which, by means of a large roll of packthread, and a number of small pickets driven into the ground, at the several angles and redans, he transferred the lines from his paper; then taking the profile of the place, with its works, to determine the depths and slopes of the ditches,--the talus of the glacis, and the precise height of the several _banquettes_, parapets, etc.--he set the Corporal to work; and sweetly went it on.--The nature of the soil,--the nature of the work itself,--and, above all, the good-nature of my uncle Toby, sitting by from morning to night, and chatting kindly with the Corporal upon past done deeds,--left _labour_ little else but the ceremony of the name. . . When the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby and the Corporal began to run their first parallel,--not at random, or anyhow,--but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run {78} theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks by the accounts my uncle Toby received from the daily papers,--they went on, during the whole siege, step by step, with the allies. When the Duke of Marlborough 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.