To one who took pleasure in the happy state of others, there could not have been a greater sight in the world than on a post-morning, in which a practicable breach had been made by the Duke of Marlborough in the main body of the place,—to have stood behind the horn-beam hedge, and observed the spirit with which my uncle Toby, with Trim behind him, sallied forth;—the one with the Gazette in his hand,—the other with a spade on his shoulder, to execute the contents.—What an honest triumph in my uncle Toby's looks as he marched up to the ramparts! what intense pleasure swimming in his eye as he stood over the Corporal, reading the paragraph ten times over to him, as he was at work, lest, peradventure, he should make the breach an inch too wide,—or leave it an inch too narrow!—but when the chamade was beat, and the Corporal helped my uncle up it, and followed with the colours in his hand, to fix them upon the ramparts,—Heaven! Earth! Sea!—but what avail apostrophes?—with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.
{79} In this track of happiness for many years, without one interruption to it, except now and then when the wind continued to blow due west for a week or ten days together, which detained the Flanders mail, and kept them so long in torture, but still it was the torture of the happy:—in this track, I say, did my uncle Toby and Trim move for many years, every year of which, and sometimes every month, from the invention of either the one or the other of them, adding some new conceit or quirk of improvement to their operations, which always opened fresh springs of delight in carrying them on.
(Tristram Shandy.)
HORACE WALPOLE 1717-1797
THE FUNERAL OF GEORGE II
Horace Walpole to George Montagu
ARLINGTON STREET,
November 13, 1760.
Even the honeymoon of a new reign don't produce events every day. There is nothing but the common saying of addresses and kissing hands. . . For the King himself, he seems all good nature, and wishing to satisfy everybody; all his speeches are obliging.
I saw him again yesterday, and was surprised to find the levee-room had lost so entirely the air of the lion's den. This sovereign don't stand in one spot, with his eyes fixed royally on the ground, and dropping bits of {80} German news: he walks about, and speaks to everybody. I saw him afterwards on the throne where he is graceful and genteel, sits with dignity and reads his answers to addresses well; it was the Cambridge address, carried by the Duke of Newcastle in his doctor's gown, and looking like the Médecin malgré lui. He had been vehemently solicitous for attendance for fear my Lord Westmoreland, who vouchsafes himself to bring the address from Oxford, should outnumber him. Lord Litchfield and several other Jacobites have kissed hands; George Selwyn says, "They go to St James', because now there are so many Stuarts there."