beloved Colonel. Greet Panty most lovingly on my behalf; and, if Mrs. C———— and Miss C—, &c., are at G-, greet them likewise with a holy kiss; so God bless you!

L. S.

LETTER XXXI.

To Mr. Foley, at Paris.

TOULOUSE, Aug. 14, 1762.

MY DEAR FOLEY: AFTER many turnings (alias digressions), to say nothing of downright overthrows, stops and delays, we have arrived in three weeks at Toulouse, and are now settled in our house, with servants, &c. about us, and look as composed as if we had been here seven years. In our journey we suffered so much from the heats, it gives me pain to remember it. I never saw a cloud from Paris to Nismes half as broad as a twenty-four sols piece. Good God! we were toasted, roasted, grill'd, stew'd and carbonaded on one side or other all the way; and being all done enough (assez cuits) in the day, we were eat up at night by bugs, and other unswept-out vermin; the legal inhabitants (if length of possession gives right) of every inn we lay at. Can you conceive a worse accident than that in such a journey, in the hottest day and hour of it, four miles from either tree or shrub which could cast a shade of the size of one of Eve's fig-leaves, that we should break a hind wheel into ten thousand pieces, and be obliged in consequence to sit five hours on a gravelly road, without one drop of water, or possibility of getting any! To mend the matter, my two postillions were two dough-hearted fools, and fell a-crying. Nothing was to be done! By heaven, quoth I, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, something shall be done, for I'll thrash you both within an inch of your lives, and then make you take each of you a horse, and ride like two devils to the next post for a cart to carry my baggage, and a wheel to carry ourselves! Our luggage weighed ten quintals. 'Twas the fair of Baucaire: all the world was going or returning we were ask'd by every soul who pass'd by us, if we were going to the fair of Baucaire? No wonder, quoth I, we have goods enough! Vous avez raison, mes amis.

Well, here we are, after all, my dear friend, and most deliciously placed at the extremity of the town, in an excellent house, well furnish'd, and elegant beyond anything I look'd for. 'Tis built in the form of a hotel, with a pretty court towards the town; and behind, the garden in Toulouse, laid out in serpentine walks: and so large, that the company in our quarter usually come to walk there in the evening, for which they have my consent: "the more the merrier." The house consists of a good salle à manger above stairs, joining to the very great salle à compagnie as large as the Baron d'Holbach's; three handsome bed-chambers, with dressing-rooms to them; below stairs, two very goods rooms for myself; one to study in, the other to see company. I have moreover cellars round the court, and all other offices. Of the same landlord, I have bargained to have the use of a country-house, which he has two miles out of town; so that myself and all my family have nothing more to do than to take our hats and remove from the one to the other. My landlord is moreover to keep the gardens in order; and what do you think I am to pay for all this? Neither more nor less than thirty pounds a year! All things are cheap in proportion: so we shall live for very little. I dined yesterday with Mr. H—: he is most pleasantly situated; and they are all well. As for the books you have received for Dthe bookseller was a fool not to send the bill along with them; I will write to him about it. I wish you was with me for two months; it would cure you of all evils, ghostly and bodily; but this, like many other wishes both for you and myself, must have its completion elsewhere. Adieu, my kind friend, and believe I love you as much from inclination as reason, for

I am most truly yours,

L. STERNE.

Remember me

My wife and girl join in compliments to you. My best respects to my worthy Baron d'Holbach, and all that society. to my friend Mr. Panchaud.

LETTER XXXII.

To J

H- S Esq.

TOULOUSE, Oct. 19, 1762.

MY DEAR H—:

I RECEIVED your letter yesterday; so it has been travelling from Crazy Castle to Toulouse full eighteen days; if I had nothing to stop me I would engage to set out this morning, and knock at Crazy Castle gates in three days less time; by which time I should find you and the Colonel, Panty, &c., all alone; the season I most wish and like to be with you. I rejoice from my heart, down to my reins, that you have snatch'd so many happy and sunshiny days out of the hands of the blue devils. If we live to meet and join our forces as heretofore, we will give these gentry a drubbing, and turn them for ever out of their usurped citadel: some legions of them have been put to flight already by your operations this last campaign, and I hope to have a hand in dispersing the remainder, the first time my dear cousin sets up his banners again under the square tower. But what art thou meditating axes and hammers? "I know the pride and the naughtiness of thy heart," and thou lovest the sweet visions of architraves, friezes, and pediments with their tympanums; and thou hast found out a pretence à raison de cinq cent livres sterling, to be laid out in four years, &c. &c. (so as not to be felt, which is always added by the d-1 as a bait) to justify thyself unto thyself. It may be very wise to do this; but it is wiser to keep one's money in one's pocket, whilst there are wars without, and rumors of wars within, St. advises his disciples to sell both coat and waiscoat, and go rather without shirt or sword, than leave no money in their scrip to go to Jerusalem with. Now those quatre ans consecutifs, my dear Anthony, are the most precious morsels of thy life to come (in this world); and thou wilt do well to enjoy that morsel without cares, calculations, and curses, and damns, and debts; for as sure as stone is stone, and mortar is mortar, &c., 'twill be one of the many works of thy repentance. But after all, "if the Fates have decreed it," as you and I have sometimes supposed it, on accourt of your generosity, "that you are never to be a moneyed man," the decree will be ful

filled whether you adorn your castle, and line it with cedar, and paint it withinside and withoutside with vermilion, or not---et cela étant (having a bottle of Frontiniac and glass at my right hand), I drink, dear Anthony, to thy health and happiness, and to the final accomplishments of all thy lunary and sublunary projects. For six weeks together, after I wrote my last letter to you, my projects were many stories higher; for I was all that time, as I thought, journeying on to the other world. I fell ill of an epidemic vile fever, which killed hundreds about me. The physicians here are the arrantest charlatans in Europe, or the most ignorant of all pretending fools. I withdrew what was left of me out of their hands, and recommended my affair entirely to Dame Nature; she (dear goddess) has saved me in fifty different pinching bouts; and I begin to have a kind of enthusiasm now in her favor, and in my own, that one or two more escapes will make me believe I shall leave you all at last by translation, and not by fair death. I am now stout and foolish again as a happy man can wish to be; and am busy playing the fool with my uncle Toby, whom I have got soused over head and ears in love: I have many hints and projects for other works: all will go on I trust as I wish in this matter. When I have reaped the benefit of this winter at Toulouse, I cannot see I have any thing more to do with it; therefore, after having gone with my wife and girl to Bagnieres, I shall return from whence I came. Now my wife wants to stay another year to save money; and this opposition of wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemons, yet 'twill not be as sweet as sugar-candy. I wish T- would lead Sir Charles to Toulouse, 'tis as good as any town in the south of France. For my own part, 'tis not to my taste; but I attribute the groundwork of my ennui more to the eternal platitude of the French character-little variety, no originality in it at all—than to any other cause, for they are very civil; but civility itself, in that uniform, wearies and bothers one to death. If I don't mind, I shall grow most stupid and sententious. Miss Shandy is hard at it with music, dancing, and French speaking; in the last of which she does à merveille, and speaks it with an excellent accent, considering she practises within sight of the Pyrenean Mountains. If the snows will suffer me, I propose to spend two or three months at Barege, or Bagniers, but my dear wife is against all schemes of additional expenses; which wicked propensity (though

not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer, though, by the by, laudable enough. But she may talk; I will do my own way; and she will aquiesce without a word of debate on the subject. Who can say so much in praise of his wife? Few I trow. M- is out of town, vintaging; so write me, Monsieur Sterne, gentilhomme Anglais: 'twill find me. We are as much out of the road of all intelligence here, as at the Cape of Good Hope; so write a long nonsensical letter like this, now and then, to me; in which, say nothing but what may be shown (though I love every paragraph and spirited stroke of your pen, others might not); for you must know, a letter no sooner arrives from England, but Curiosity is upon her knees to know the contents. Adieu, dear H. believe me

Your affectionate

L. STERNE.

We have had bitter cold weather here these fourteen days, which has obliged us to sit with whole pagells of wood lighted up to our noses; 'tis a dear article; but every thing else being extremely cheap, Madame keeps an excellent good house, with soupe, bouilli, reti, &c. &c. for two hundred and fifty pounds a year.

MY DEAR FOLEY:

LETTER XXXIII.

To Mr. Foley at Paris.

TOULOUSE, Nov. 9, 1762.

I HAVE this week your letter on my table, and hope you will forgive my not answering it sooner; and even to-day I can but write you ten lines, being engaged at Mrs. M-'s. I would not omit one post more acknowledging the favor. In a few posts I will write you a long one gratis; that is, for love. Thank you for having done what I desired you; and, for the future, direct to me under cover at Monsieur Brousse's: I receive all letters through him, more punctual and sooner than when left at the post-house.

H's family greet you with mine; we are much together, and