In a fortnight’s close and painful application, which, by the bye, did my uncle _Toby_’s wound, upon his groin, no good,—he was enabled, by the help of some marginal documents at the feet of the elephant, together with _Gobesius_’s military architecture and pyroballogy, translated from the _Flemish_, to form his discourse with passable perspicuity; and before he was two full months gone,—he was right eloquent upon it, and could make not only the attack of the advanced counterscarp with great order;—but having, by that time, gone much deeper into the art, than what his first motive made necessary, my uncle _Toby_ was able to cross the _Maes_ and _Sambre_; make diversions as far as _Vauban_’s line, the abbey of _Salsines_, &c. and give his visitors as distinct a history of each of their attacks, as of that of the gate of _St. Nicolas_, where he had the honour to receive his wound. But desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it. The more my uncle _Toby_ pored over his map, the more he took a liking to it!—by the same process and electrical assimilation, as I told you, through which I ween the souls of connoisseurs themselves, by long friction and incumbition, have the happiness, at length, to get all be-virtu’d—be-pictured,—be-butterflied, and be-fiddled. The more my uncle _Toby_ drank of this sweet fountain of science, the greater was the heat and impatience of his thirst, so that before the first year of his confinement had well gone round, there was scarce a fortified town in _Italy_ or _Flanders_, of which, by one means or other, he had not procured a plan, reading over as he got them, and carefully collating therewith the histories of their sieges, their demolitions, their improvements, and new works, all which he would read with that intense application and delight, that he would forget himself, his wound, his confinement, his dinner. In the second year my uncle _Toby_ purchased _Ramelli_ and _Cataneo_, translated from the _Italian_;—likewise _Stevinus, Moralis_, the Chevalier _de Ville, Lorini, Cochorn, Sheeter_, the Count _de Pagan_, the Marshal _Vauban_, Mons. _Blondel_, with almost as many more books of military architecture, as Don _Quixote_ was found to have of chivalry, when the curate and barber invaded his library. Towards the beginning of the third year, which was in _August_, ninety-nine, my uncle _Toby_ found it necessary to understand a little of projectiles:—and having judged it best to draw his knowledge from the fountain-head, he began with _N. Tartaglia_, who it seems was the first man who detected the imposition of a cannon-ball’s doing all that mischief under the notion of a right line—This _N. Tartaglia_ proved to my uncle _Toby_ to be an impossible thing. ——Endless is the search of Truth.