A delusive, delicious consultation or two of this kind, betwixt my uncle Toby and Trim, upon the demolition of Dunkirk, for a moment rallied back the ideas of those pleasures, which were slipping from under him: - still - still all went on heavily - the magic left the mind the weaker - STILLNESS, with SILENCE at her back, entered the solitary parlour, and drew their gauzy mantle over my uncle Toby's head; - and LISTLESSNESS, with her lax fibre and undirected eye, sat quietly down beside him in his arm chair. - No longer Amberg, and Rhinberg, and Limbourg, and Huy, and Bonn, in one year, - and the prospect of Landen, and Trerebach, and Drusen, and Dendermond, the next, - hurried on the blood: - No longer did saps, and mines, and blinds, and gabions, and palisadoes, keep out this fair enemy of man's repose: - No more could my uncle Toby, after passing the French lines, as he eat his egg at supper, from thence break into the heart of France, - cross over the Oyes, and with all Picardie open behind him, march up to the gates of Paris, and fall asleep with nothing but ideas of glory: - No more was he to dream, he had fixed the royal standard upon the tower of the Bastile, and awake with it streaming in his head.
[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Sterne, L.]
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