Need I be told, dear _Yorick_, as I was by you, in _Le Fever_’s funeral sermon, _That so soft and gentle a creature, born to love, to mercy, and kindness, as man is, was not shaped for this?_——But why did you not add, _Yorick_,—if not by NATURE—that he is so by NECESSITY?——For what is war? what is it, _Yorick_, when fought as ours has been, upon principles of _liberty_, and upon principles of _honour_—what is it, but the getting together of quiet and harmless people, with their swords in their hands, to keep the ambitious and the turbulent within bounds? And heaven is my witness, brother _Shandy_, that the pleasure I have taken in these things,—and that infinite delight, in particular, which has attended my sieges in my bowling-green, has arose within me, and I hope in the corporal too, from the consciousness we both had, that in carrying them on, we were answering the great ends of our creation. C H A P. LXXVI I TOLD the Christian reader—I say _Christian_——hoping he is one——and if he is not, I am sorry for it——and only beg he will consider the matter with himself, and not lay the blame entirely upon this book—— I told him, Sir——for in good truth, when a man is telling a story in the strange way I do mine, he is obliged continually to be going backwards and forwards to keep all tight together in the reader’s fancy——which, for my own part, if I did not take heed to do more than at first, there is so much unfixed and equivocal matter starting up, with so many breaks and gaps in it,—and so little service do the stars afford, which, nevertheless, I hang up in some of the darkest passages, knowing that the world is apt to lose its way, with all the lights the sun itself at noon-day can give it——and now you see, I am lost myself!—— ——But ’tis my father’s fault; and whenever my brains come to be dissected, you will perceive, without spectacles, that he has left a large uneven thread, as you sometimes see in an unsaleable piece of cambrick, running along the whole length of the web, and so untowardly, you cannot so much as cut out a * *, (here I hang up a couple of lights again)——or a fillet, or a thumb-stall, but it is seen or felt.—— _Quanto id diligentias in liberis procreandis cavendum_, sayeth _Cardan._ All which being considered, and that you see ’tis morally impracticable for me to wind this round to where I set out—— I begin the chapter over again. C H A P. LXXVII I TOLD the Christian reader in the beginning of the chapter which preceded my uncle _Toby_’s apologetical oration,—though in a different trope from what I should make use of now, That the peace of _Utrecht_ was within an ace of creating the same shyness betwixt my uncle _Toby_ and his hobby-horse, as it did betwixt the queen and the rest of the confederating powers.