My father, I believe, had the truest love and tenderness for my uncle _Toby_, that ever one brother bore towards another, and would have done any thing in nature, which one brother in reason could have desir’d of another, to have made my uncle _Toby’s_ heart easy in this, or any other point. But this lay out of his power. ----My father, as I told you, was a philosopher in grain, --speculative, --systematical; --and my aunt _Dinah’s_ affair was a matter of as much consequence to him, as the retrogradation of the planets to _Copernicus_: --The backslidings of _Venus_ in her orbit fortified the _Copernican_ system, called so after his name; and the backslidings of my aunt _Dinah_ in her orbit, did the same service in establishing my father’s system, which, I trust, will for ever hereafter be called the _Shandean System_, after this. In any other family dishonour, my father, I believe, had as nice a sense of shame as any man whatever; ----and neither he, nor, I dare say, _Copernicus_, would have divulged the affair in either case, or have taken the least notice of it to the world, but for the obligations they owed, as they thought, to truth. --_Amicus Plato_, my father would say, construing the words to my uncle _Toby_, as he went along, _Amicus Plato_; that is, DINAH was my aunt; --_sed magis amica veritas_----but TRUTH is my sister. This contrariety of humours betwixt my father and my uncle, was the source of many a fraternal squabble. The one could not bear to hear the tale of family disgrace recorded, ----and the other would scarce ever let a day pass to an end without some hint at it. For God’s sake, my uncle _Toby_ would cry, ----and for my sake, and for all our sakes, my dear brother _Shandy_, --do let this story of our aunt’s and her ashes sleep in peace; ----how can you, ----how can you have so little feeling and compassion for the character of our family? ----What is the character of a family to an hypothesis? my father would reply. ----Nay, if you come to that--what is the life of a family? ----The life of a family! --my uncle _Toby_ would say, throwing himself back in his arm chair, and lifting up his hands, his eyes, and one leg. ----Yes, the life, ----my father would say, maintaining his point. How many thousands of ’em are there every year that come cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)----and considered as nothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis. In my plain sense of things, my uncle _Toby_ would answer, ----every such instance is downright MURDER, let who will commit it. ----There lies your mistake, my father would reply; ----for, in _Foro Scientiæ_ there is no such thing as MURDER, ----’tis only DEATH, brother.