When the town, with its works, was finished, my uncle Toby and the corporal began to run their first parallel⸺not at random, or anyhow⸺but from the same points and distances the allies had begun to run theirs; and regulating their approaches and attacks, by the accounts my uncle Toby received from the daily papers,—they went on, during the whole siege, step by step with the allies.
When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment,⸺my uncle Toby made a lodgment too,⸺And when the face of a bastion was battered down, or a defence ruined,—the corporal took his mattock and did as much,—and so on;⸺gaining ground, and making themselves masters of the works one after another, till the town fell into their hands.
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 hornbeam 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 avails apostrophes?⸺with all your elements, wet or dry, ye never compounded so intoxicating a draught.