My uncle _Toby’s_ opinion, Madam, “that there could be no harm in _Cornelius Gallus_, the _Roman_ prætor’s lying with his wife;” ----or rather the last word of that opinion, --(for it was all my mother heard of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex: ----You shall not mistake me, --I mean her curiosity, --she instantly concluded herself the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her fancy, you will readily conceive every word my father said, was accommodated either to herself, or her family concerns. ----Pray, Madam, in what street does the lady live, who would not have done the same? From the strange mode of _Cornelius’s_ death, my father had made a transition to that of _Socrates_, and was giving my uncle _Toby_ an abstract of his pleading before his judges; ----’twas irresistible: ----not the oration of _Socrates_, --but my father’s temptation to it. ----He had wrote the Life of _Socrates_[5.1] himself the year before he left off trade, which, I fear, was the means of hastening him out of it; ----so that no one was able to set out with so full a sail, and in so swelling a tide of heroic loftiness upon the occasion, as my father was. Not a period in _Socrates’s_ oration, which closed with a shorter word than _transmigration_, or _annihilation_, --or a worse thought in the middle of it than _to be--or not to be_, --the entering upon a new and untried state of things, --or, upon a long, a profound and peaceful sleep, without dreams, without disturbance? ----_That we and our children were born to die, --but neither of us born to be slaves_. ----No--there I mistake; that was part of _Eleazer’s_ oration, as recorded by _Josephus_ (_de Bell. Judaic._)----_Eleazer_ owns he had it from the philosophers of _India_; in all likelihood _Alexander_ the Great, in his irruption into _India_, after he had over-run _Persia_, amongst the many things he stole, --stole that sentiment also; by which means it was carried, if not all the way by himself (for we all know he died at _Babylon_), at least by some of his maroders, into _Greece_, --from _Greece_ it got to _Rome_, --from _Rome_ to _France_, --and from _France_ to _England_: ----So things come round.---- By land carriage, I can conceive no other way.----