“Where is _Troy_ and _Mycenæ_, and _Thebes_ and _Delos_, and _Persepolis_ and _Agrigentum?_” --continued my father, taking up his book of post-cards, which he had laid down. --“What is become, brother _Toby_, of _Nineveh_ and _Babylon_, of _Cizicum_ and _Mitylenæ?_ The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon, are now no more; the names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piece-meals to decay, and in length of time will be forgotten, and involved with everything in a perpetual night: the world itself, brother _Toby_, must--must come to an end. “Returning out of _Asia_, when I sailed from _Ægina_ towards _Megara_,” (_when can this have been? thought my uncle Toby_) “I began to view the country round about. _Ægina_ was behind me, _Megara_ was before, _Pyræus_ on the right hand, _Corinth_ on the left. --What flourishing towns now prostrate upon the earth! Alas! alas! said I to myself, that man should disturb his soul for the loss of a child, when so much as this lies awfully buried in his presence ----Remember, said I to myself again--remember thou art a man.”-- Now my uncle _Toby_ knew not that this last paragraph was an extract of _Servius Sulpicius’s_ consolatory letter to _Tully_. --He had as little skill, honest man, in the fragments, as he had in the whole pieces of antiquity. --And as my father, whilst he was concerned in the _Turkey_ trade, had been three or four different times in the _Levant_, in one of which he had staid a whole year and an half at _Zant_, my uncle _Toby_ naturally concluded, that, in some one of these periods, he had taken a trip across the _Archipelago_ into _Asia_; and that all this sailing affair with _Ægina_ behind, and _Megara_ before, and _Pyræus_ on the right hand, &c., &c., was nothing more than the true course of my father’s voyage and reflections. --’Twas certainly in his _manner_, and many an undertaking critic would have built two stories higher upon worse foundations. --And pray, brother, quoth my uncle _Toby_, laying the end of his pipe upon my father’s hand in a kindly way of interruption--but waiting till he finished the account--what year of our Lord was this? --’Twas no year of our Lord, replied my father. --That’s impossible, cried my uncle _Toby_. --Simpleton! said my father, --’twas forty years before Christ was born. My uncle _Toby_ had but two things for it; either to suppose his brother to be the wandering _Jew_, or that his misfortunes had disordered his brain. --“May the Lord God of heaven and earth protect him and restore him,” said my uncle _Toby_, praying silently for my father, and with tears in his eyes. --My father placed the tears to a proper account, and went on with his harangue with great spirit.