To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others,—there could not have been a greater sight in 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 avails apostrophes?——with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught. In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the _Flanders_ mail, and kept them so long in torture,—but still ’twas the torture of the happy——In this track, I say, did my uncle _Toby_ and _Trim_ move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on. The first year’s campaign was carried on from beginning to end, in the plain and simple method I’ve related. In the second year, in which my uncle _Toby_ took _Liege_ and _Ruremond_, he thought he might afford the expence of four handsome draw-bridges; of two of which I have given an exact description in the former part of my work. At the latter end of the same year he added a couple of gates with port-cullises:——These last were converted afterwards into orgues, as the better thing; and during the winter of the same year, my uncle _Toby_, instead of a new suit of clothes, which he always had at _Christmas_, treated himself with a handsome sentry-box, to stand at the corner of the bowling-green, betwixt which point and the foot of the glacis, there was left a little kind of an esplanade for him and the corporal to confer and hold councils of war upon. ——The sentry-box was in case of rain. All these were painted white three times over the ensuing spring, which enabled my uncle _Toby_ to take the field with great splendour.