That this _Ambrose Paræus_ was chief surgeon and nose-mender to _Francis_ the ninth of _France_, and in high credit with him and the two preceding, or succeeding kings (I know not which)--and that, except in the slip he made in his story of _Taliacotius’s_ noses, and his manner of setting them on--he was esteemed by the whole college of physicians at that time, as more knowing in matters of noses, than any one who had ever taken them in hand. Now _Ambrose Paræus_ convinced my father, that the true and efficient cause of what had engaged so much the attention of the world, and upon which _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_ had wasted so much learning and fine parts----was neither this nor that----but that the length and goodness of the nose was owing simply to the softness and flaccidity in the nurse’s breast------as the flatness and shortness of _puisne_ noses was to the firmness and elastic repulsion of the same organ of nutrition in the hale and lively--which, tho’ happy for the woman, was the undoing of the child, inasmuch as his nose was so snubb’d, so rebuff’d, so rebated, and so refrigerated thereby, as never to arrive _ad mensuram suam legitimam_; ----but that in case of the flaccidity and softness of the nurse or mother’s breast--by sinking into it, quoth _Paræus_, as into so much butter, the nose was comforted, nourish’d, plump’d up, refresh’d, refocillated, and set a growing for ever. I have but two things to observe of _Paræus_; first, That he proves and explains all this with the utmost chastity and decorum of expression: --for which may his soul for ever rest in peace! And, secondly, that besides the systems of _Prignitz_ and _Scroderus_, which _Ambrose Paræus_ his hypothesis effectually overthrew--it overthrew at the same time the system of peace and harmony of our family; and for three days together, not only embroiled matters between my father and my mother, but turn’d likewise the whole house and everything in it, except my uncle _Toby_, quite upside down. Such a ridiculous tale of a dispute between a man and his wife, never surely in any age or country got vent through the key-hole of a street-door.