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By Root 1807 0

higher in his figure, as he spoke,——and all the time I had the honour to serve his Majesty King William, in relieving the most considerable posts, I never left more than two in my life.——Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby;—but you do not consider Trim, that the towers, in Solomon’s days, were not such things as our bastions, flank’d and defended by other works;—this, Trim, was an invention since Solomon’s death; nor had they horn-works, or ravelins before the curtin, in his time;—or such a fossé as we make with a cuvette in the middle of it, and with cover’d-ways and counterscarps pallisadoed along it, to guard against a Coup de main:34—So that the seven men upon the tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de Garde, set there, not only to look out, but to defend it.—They could be no more, an’ please your Honour, than a Corporal’s Guard.35—My father smiled inwardly,—but not outwardly;—the subject between my uncle Toby and Corporal Trim being rather too serious, considering what had happened, to make a jest of:—So, putting his pipe into his mouth, which he had just lighted,—he contented himself with ordering Trim to read on. He read on as follows:]

“To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our mutual dealings with each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right and wrong:—The first of these will comprehend the duties of religion;——the second, those of morality, which are so inseparably connected together, that you cannot divide these two tables,36 even in imagination, (tho’ the attempt is often made in practice) without breaking and mutually destroying them both.

“I said the attempt is often made, and so it is;—there being nothing more common than to see a man who has no sense at all of religion,——and indeed has so much honesty as to pretend to none, who would take it as the bitterest affront, should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral character,–or imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to the uttermost mite.

“When there is some appearance that it is so,—Tho’ one is unwilling even to suspect the appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty,37 yet were we to look into the grounds of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we should find little reason to envy such a one the honour of his motive.

“Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will be found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, his pride, his ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will give us but small dependence upon his actions in matters of great stress.

“I will illustrate this by an example.

“I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually call in [there is no need, cried Dr. Slop, (waking) to call in any physician in this case] to be neither of them men of much religion: I hear them make a jest of it every day, and treat all its sanctions with so much scorn, as to put the matter past doubt. Well;—notwithstanding this, I put my fortune into the hands of the one;—and, what is dearer still to me, I trust my life to the honest skill of the other.

“Now, let me examine what is my reason for this great confidence.——Why, in the first place, I believe there is no probability that either of them will employ the power I put into their hands to my disadvantage;—I consider that honesty serves the purposes of this life:—I know their success in the world depends upon the fairness of their characters.—In a word,—I’m persuaded that they cannot hurt me, without hurting themselves more.

“But put it otherwise, namely, that interest lay, for once, on the other side; that a case should happen, wherein the one, without stain to his reputation, could secrete my fortune, and leave me naked in the world;—or that the other could send me out of it, and enjoy an estate by my death, without dishonour to himself or his art:—In this case, what hold have I of either of them?—Religion, the strongest of all motives, is out of the question:—Interest, the next most powerful motive in the world, is strongly against me:—What have I left to cast into the opposite