YOUR sudden and unexpected arrival, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing himself to Dr. _Slop_, (all three of them sitting down to the fire together, as my uncle _Toby_ began to speak)—instantly brought the great _Stevinus_ into my head, who, you must know, is a favourite author with me.—Then, added my father, making use of the argument _Ad Crumenam_,—I will lay twenty guineas to a single crown-piece (which will serve to give away to _Obadiah_ when he gets back) that this same _Stevinus_ was some engineer or other—or has wrote something or other, either directly or indirectly, upon the science of fortification. He has so,—replied my uncle _Toby._—I knew it, said my father, though, for the soul of me, I cannot see what kind of connection there can be betwixt Dr. _Slop_’s sudden coming, and a discourse upon fortification;—yet I fear’d it.—Talk of what we will, brother,——or let the occasion be never so foreign or unfit for the subject,—you are sure to bring it in. I would not, brother _Toby_, continued my father,——I declare I would not have my head so full of curtins and horn-works.—That I dare say you would not, quoth Dr. _Slop_, interrupting him, and laughing most immoderately at his pun. _Dennis_ the critic could not detest and abhor a pun, or the insinuation of a pun, more cordially than my father;—he would grow testy upon it at any time;—but to be broke in upon by one, in a serious discourse, was as bad, he would say, as a fillip upon the nose;——he saw no difference. Sir, quoth my uncle _Toby_, addressing himself to Dr. _Slop_,—the curtins my brother _Shandy_ mentions here, have nothing to do with beadsteads;—tho’, I know _Du Cange_ says, “That bed-curtains, in all probability, have taken their name from them;”—nor have the horn-works he speaks of, any thing in the world to do with the horn-works of cuckoldom: But the _Curtin_, Sir, is the word we use in fortification, for that part of the wall or rampart which lies between the two bastions and joins them—Besiegers seldom offer to carry on their attacks directly against the curtin, for this reason, because they are so well _flanked._ ( ’Tis the case of other curtains, quoth Dr. _Slop_, laughing.) However, continued my uncle _Toby_, to make them sure, we generally choose to place ravelins before them, taking care only to extend them beyond the fossé or ditch:——The common men, who know very little of fortification, confound the ravelin and the half-moon together,—tho’ they are very different things;—not in their figure or construction, for we make them exactly alike, in all points; for they always consist of two faces, making a salient angle, with the gorges, not straight, but in form of a crescent;——Where then lies the difference? (quoth my father, a little testily.)—In their situations, answered my uncle _Toby:_—For when a ravelin, brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a ravelin stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a ravelin;—it is a half-moon;—a