-the whole close of the cathedral was in one eternal commotion;such a cause of restlessness and disquietude, and such a zealous inquiry into the cause of that restlessness, had never happened in Strasburg, since Martin Luther, with his doctrines, had turned the city upside down.

If the stranger's nose took this liberty of thrusting itself thus into the dishes* of religious orders, &c. what a carnival did his nose make of it, in those of the laity!-'tis more than my pen, worn to the stump as it is, has power to describe; though I acknowledge, (cries Slawkenbergius with more gaiety of thought than I could have expected from him) that there is many a good simile now subsisting in the world which might give my countrymen some idea of it; but, at the close of such a folio as this, wrote for their sakes, and in which I have spent the greatest part of my life-though I own to them the simile is in being, yet would it not be unreasonable in them to expect I should have either time or inclination to search for it? Let it suffice to say, that the riot and disorder it occasioned in the Strasburgers' fantasies was so general, such an overpowering mastership had it got of all the faculties of Strasburgers' minds -so many strange things, with equal confidence on all sides, and with equal eloquence in all places, were spoken and sworn to concerning it, that it turned the whole stream of all discourse and wonder towards it-every soul, good and badrich and poor-learned and unlearned-doctor and student-mistress and maid-gentle and simple-nun's flesh and woman's flesh in Strasburg, spent their time in hearing tidings about it-every eye in Strasburg languished to see it-every finger-every thumb in Strasburg burned to touch it.

Now, what might add, if any thing may be thought necessary to add to so vehement a desire -was this, that the sentinel, the bandy-legged drummer, the trumpeter, the trumpeter's wife, the burgomaster's widow, the master of the inn, and the master of the inn's wife, how widely soever they all differed every one from another in their testimonies and descriptions of the stranger's nosc—they all agreed together in two points-namely, that he was gone to Frankfort, and would not return to Strasburg till that day month; and, secondly, whether his nose was true or false, that the stranger himself was one of the most perfect paragons of beauty the finest made man!--the most genteel!-the most generous of his purse-the most courteous in his carriage, that had ever entered the gates of Strasburg-that as he rode with his scymitar slung loosely to his wrist, through the streets -and walked with his crimson-satin breeches

across the parade-'twas with so sweet an air of careless modesty, and so manly withal-as would have put the heart in jeopardy (had his nose not stood in his way) of every virgin who had cast her eyes upon him.

I call not upon that heart which is a stranger to the throbs and yearnings of curiosity, so excited, to justify the abbess of Quedlingberg, the prioress, the deaness, the sub-chantress, for sending at noon-day for the trumpeter's wife: she went through the streets of Strasburg with her husband's trumpet in her hand, the best apparatus the straitness of the time would allow her for the illustration of her theory-she staid no longer than three days.

The sentinel and the bandy-legged drummer! nothing on this side of old Athens could equal them! they read their lectures under the city gates, to comers and goers, with all the pomp of a Chrysippus and a Crantor in their porti

coes.

The master of the inn, with his ostler on his left hand, read his also in the same style-under the portico or gateway of his stable-yard ;

his wife, her's more privately in a back-room: all flocked to their lectures; not promiscuously, but to this or that, as is ever the way, as faith and credulity marshalled them-in a word, each Strasburger came crowding for intelligenceand every Strasburger had the intelligence he wanted.

'Tis worth remarking, for the benefit of all demonstrators in natural philosophy, &c. that as soon as the trumpeter's wife had finished the abbess of Quedlingberg's private lecture, and had begun to read in public, which she did upon a stool in the middle of the great parade-she incommoded the other demonstrators mainly, by gaining incontinently the most fashionable part of the city of Strasburg for her auditory.— But when a demonstrator in philosophy (cries Slawkenbergius) has a trumpet for an apparatus, pray what rival in science can pretend to be heard beside him?

Whilst the unlearned, through these conduits of intelligence, were all busied in getting down to the bottom of the well, where TRUTH keeps her little court-were the learned in their way as busy in pumping her up through the conduits of dialect induction-they concerned themselves not with facts-they reasoned.-

Not one profession had thrown more light upon this subject than the faculty-had not all their disputes about it run into the affair of wens and oedematous swellings; they could not keep clear of them for their bloods and souls: -the stranger's nose had nothing to do either with wens or oedematous swellings.

It was demonstrated, however, very satisfac

torily, that such a ponderous mass of heterogeneous matter could not be congested and conglomerated to the nose, whilst the infant was in utero, without destroying the statical balance of the fetus, and throwing it plump upon its head nine months before the time.

-The opponents granted the theory-they denied the consequences.

And if a suitable provision of veins, arteries, &c. said they, was not laid in, for the due nourishment of such a nose, in the very first stamia and rudiments of its formation before it came into the world, (bating the case of wens,) it could not regularly grow and be sustained afterwards.

- This was all answered by a dissertation upon nutriment, and the effect which nutriment had in extending the vessels, and in the increase and prolongation of the muscular parts to the greatest growth and expansion imaginableIn the triumph of which theory, they went so far as to affirm, that there was no cause in nature, why a nose might not grow to the size of the man himself.

The respondents satisfied the world this event could never happen to them, so long as a man had but one stomach and one pair of lungs.For the stomach, said they, being the only organ destined for the reception of food, and turning it into chyle, and the lungs the only engine of sanguification-it could possibly work off no more, than what the appetite brought it: or, admitting the possibility of a man's overloading his stomach, nature had set bounds, however, to his lungs-the engine was of a determined size and strength, and could elaborate but a certain quantity in a given time-that is, it could produce just as much blood as was sufficient for one single man, and no more; so that, if there was as much nose as man-they proved a mortification must necessarily ensue; and forasmuch as there could not be a support for both, that the nose must either fall off from the man, or the man inevitably fall off from his

nose.

ded about the nose at last, almost as much as the faculty itself.

They amicably laid it down, that there was a just and geometrical arrangement and proportion of the several parts of the human frame to its scveral destinations, offices, and functions, which could not be transgressed but within certain limits that Nature, though she sported-she sported within a certain circle ;-and they could not agree about the diameter of it.

The logicians stuck much closer to the point before them than any of the classes of the literati;—they began and ended with the word Nose; and had it not been for a petitio principii, which one of the ablest of them ran his head against in the beginning of the combat, the whole controversy had been settled at once.

A nose, argued the logician, cannot bleed without blood-and not only blood--but blood circulating in it to supply the phenomenon with a succession of drops (a stream being but a quicker succession of drops, that is included, said he)-Now death, continued the logician, being nothing but the stagnation of the blood

I deny the definition-Death is the separation of the soul from the body, said his antagonist

-Then we don't agree about our weapons, said the logician-Then there is an end of the dispute, replied the antagonist.

The civilians were still more concise; what they offered being more in the nature of a decree-than a dispute.

-Such a monstrous nose, said they, had it been a true nose, could not possibly have been suffered in civil society;-and if false-to impose upon society with such false signs and tokens was a still greater violation of its rights, and must have had still less mercy shewn it.

The only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved the stranger's nose was neither true nor false.

-It happens otherwise-replied the opponents.

Noses, and had got one of the goodliest, &c. &c. -To this it was answered, it was impossible there should be such a place as the Promontory of Noses, and the learned be ignorant where it lay. The commissary of the Bishop of Strasburg undertook the advocate's part, explained this matter in a treatise upon proverbial phrases, shewing them, that the Promontory of Noses was a mere allegoric expression, importing no more, than that nature had given him a long nose: in proof of which, with great learning, he cited the under-written authorities,* which had decided the point incontestibly, had it not ap

peared, that a dispute about some franchises of dean and chapter lands had been determined by it nineteen years before.

It happened-I must not say unluckily for Truth, because they were giving her a lift another way in so doing; that the two universities of Strasburg-the Lutheran, founded in the year 1538, by Jacobus Sturmius, counsellor of the senate, and the Popish, founded by Leopold, Archduke of Austria, were, during all this time, employing the whole depth of their knowledge (except just what the affair of the abbess of Quedlingberg's placket-holes required)-in determining the point of Martin Luther's damnation.

The popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate, à priori, that from the necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of October, 1483;-when the moon was in the twelfth house Jupiter, Mars, and Venus in the third-the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury all got together in the fourth-that he must in course, and unavoidably, be a damned man-and that his doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be damned doctrines too.

By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all at once with Scorpio* (in reading this, my father would always shake his head) in the ninth house which the Arabians allotted to religion,-it appeared that Martin Luther did not care one stiver about the matter; and that, from the horoscope directed to the conjunction of Mars,-they made it plain likewise he must die cursing and blaspheming; -with the blast of which his soul (being steeped in guilt) sailed before the wind in the lake of Hell-fire.

The little objection of the Lutheran doctors to this, was, that it must certainly be the soul of another man, born October 22, 83, which was forced to sail down before the wind in that manner,―inasmuch as it appeared, from the register of Islaben, in the county of Mansfelt, that Luther was not born in the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the 22d day of October, but on the 10th of November, the eve of Martinmas-day, from whence he had the name of Martin.

I must break off my translation for a moment; for, if I did not, I know I should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than the abbess of Quedlingberg.—It is to tell the reader,

that my father never read this passage of Slawkenbergius to my uncle Toby, but with triumph, -not over my uncle Toby, for he never opposed him in it, but over the whole world.

-Now you see, brother Toby, he would say, looking up, "that christian names are not such "indifferent things:"-had Luther here been called by any other name but Martin, he would have been damned to all eternity;-not that I look upon Martin, he would add, as a good name, far from it, 'tis something better than a neutral, and but a little ;-yet, little as it is, you see it was of some service to him.

My father knew the weakness of this prop to his hypothesis, as well as the best logician could shew him, yet so strange is the weakness of man, at the same time, as it fell in his way, he could not for his life but make use of it; and it was certainly for this reason, that though there are many stories in Hafen Slawkenbergius's Decades full as entertaining as this I am translating, yet there is not one amongst them which my father read over with half the delight;-it flattered two of his strangest hypotheses together,— his Names and his Noses. I will be bold to say, he might have read all the books in the Alexandrian Library, had not fate taken other care of them, and not have met with a book or passage in one, which hit two such nails as these upon the head at one stroke.]

The two universities of Strasburg were hard tugging at this affair of Luther's navigation. The Protestant doctors had demonstrated, that he had not sailed right before the wind, as the Popish doctors had pretended; and as every one knew there was no sailing full in the teeth of it, they were going to settle, in case he had sailed, how many points he was off; whether Martin had doubled the Cape, or had fallen upon a leeshore; and, no doubt, as it was an inquiry of much edification, at least to those who understood this sort of navigation, they had gone on with it in spite of the size of the stranger's nose, had not the size of the stranger's nose drawn off the attention of the world from what they were about:-it was their business to follow.

The abbess of Quedlingberg and her four dignitaries were no stop; for the enormity of the stranger's nose running full as much in their fancies as their case of conscience, the affair of their placket-holes kept cold:-in a word, the

printers were ordered to distribute their types :all controversies dropped.

'Twas a square cap with a silver tassel upon the crown of it-to a nut-shell,-to have guessed on which side of the nose the two universities would split.

What was to be done?-No delay;-the uproar increased, every one in disorder,-the city-gates set open.

Unfortunate Strasburgers!-was there in the storehouse of nature,-was there in the lumberrooms of learning,-was there in the great ar

'Tis below reason, cried the others.

'Tis faith, cried one.

'Tis a fiddlestick, said the other.
'Tis possible, cried the one.
'Tis impossible, said the other.

God's power is infinite, cried the Nosarians; he can do any thing.

He can do nothing, replied the Antinosarians, which implies contradictions.

He can make matter think, said the Nosari

ans.

As certainly as you can make a velvet cap out of a sow's ear, replied the Antinosarians.

He cannot make two and two five, replied the Popish doctors.'Tis false, said their other opponents.

Infinite power is infinite power, said the doctors who maintained the reality of the nose.It extends only to all possible things, replied the Lutherans.

By God in Heaven, cried the Popish doctors, he can make a nose, if he thinks fit, as big as the steeple of Strasburg.

Now the steeple of Strasburg being the biggest and the tallest church-steeple to be seen in the whole world, the Antinosarians denied that a nose of 575 geometrical feet in length could be worn, at least by a middle-sized man.-The Popish doctors swore it could :—the Lutheran doctors said No;-it could not.

This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great way, upon the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of God. That controversy led them naturally into Thomas Aquinas; and Thomas Aquinas to the Devil.

The stranger's nose was no more heard of in the dispute;-it just served as a frigate to launch them into the gulf of school-divinity, and then they all sailed before the wind.

Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.

The controversy about the attributes, &c. instead of cooling, on the contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers' imaginations to a most inordinate degree.—The less they understood of the matter, the greater was their wonder about it; -they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied, saw their doctors, the Parchmentarians, the Brassarians, the Turpentarians, on one side, the Popish doctors on the other, like Pantagruel and his companions in quest of the oracle of the bottle, all embarked out of sight. The poor Strasburgers left upon the

beach!

forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your desires, which was not pointed by the hand of Fate to play upon your hearts?—I dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves, 'tis to write your panegyric. Shew me a city so macerated with expectation,—who neither eat, or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or nature, for seven-and-twenty days together, who could have held out one day longer.

On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to Strasburg.

Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergiusmust certainly have made some mistake in his numerical characters) 7000 coaches,-15,000 singlehorse chairs,-20,000 waggons, crowded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors, syndics,-beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, concubines, all in their coaches:-The abbess of Quedlingberg with the prioress, the deaness, and sub-chantress, leading the proces sion in one coach, and the dean of Strasburg, with the four dignitaries of his chapter, on her left hand, the rest following higglety-pigglety as they could; some on horseback, some on foot-some led,—some driven, some down the Rhine,-some this way, some that, all set out at sun-rise to meet the courteous stranger on the road.

Haste we now towards the catastrophe of my tale-I say catastrophe (cries Slawkenbergius) inasmuch as a tale, with parts rightly disposed, not only rejoiceth (gaudet) in the Catastrophe and Peripeteia of a DRAMA, but rejoiceth moreover in all the essential and integrant parts of it ;-it has its Protasis, Epitasis, Catastasis, its Catastrophe or Peripeteia, growing one out of the other in it, in the order Aristotle first planted them,-without which a tale had better never be told at all, says Slawkenbergius, but be kept to a man's self.

In all my ten tales, in all my ten decades, have I, Slawkenbergius, tied down every tale of them as tightly to this rule, as I have done this of the stranger and his nose.

-From his first parley with the sentinel, to his leaving the city of Strasburg, after pulling off his crimson-satin pair of breeches, is the Protasis, or first entrance,-where the characters of the Persona Dramatis are just touched on, and the subject slightly begun.

The Epitasis, wherein the action is more fully entered upon and heightened till it arrives at its state or height, called the Catastasis, and which usually takes up the second and third act, is included within that busy period of my tale, be

twixt the first night's uproar about the nose, to the conclusion of the trumpeter's wife's lectures upon it in the middle of the grand parade: and from the first embarking of the learned in the dispute to the doctor's finally sailing away, and leaving the Strasburgers upon the beach in distress, is the Catastasis, or the ripening of the incidents and passions for their bursting forth in the fifth act.

This commences with the setting out of the Strasburgers on the Frankfort road, and terminates in unwinding the labyrinth, and bringing the hero out of a state of agitation (as Aristotle calls it) to a state of rest and quietness.

This, says Hafen Slawkenbergius, constitutes the Catastrophe or Peripeteia of my tale-and that is the part of it I am going to relate.

-We left the stranger behind the curtain asleep, he enters now upon the stage.

-What dost thou prick up thy ears at ?'tis nothing but a man upon a horse, was the last word the stranger uttered to his mule. It was not proper then to tell the reader, that the mule took his master's word for it; and, without any more ifs or ands, let the traveller and his horse pass by.

The traveller was hastening with all diligence to get to Strasburg that night. What a fool am I, said the traveller to himself, when he had rode about a league farther, to think of getting into Strasburg this night!-Strasburg!-the great Strasburg!-Strasburg, the capital of Alsatia!-Strasburg, an imperial city! Strasburg, a sovereign state! Strasburg, garrisoned with five thousand of the best troops in all the world! -Alas! if I was at the gates of Strasburg this moment, I could not gain admittance into it for a ducat,-nay, a ducat and a half:-'tis too much, better go back to the last inn I have passed, than lie I not where, or give I know not what. The traveller, as he made these reflections in his mind, turned his horse's head about, and three minutes after the stranger had been conducted into his chamber, he arrived at the same inn.

-We have bacon in the house, said the host, and bread; and till eleven o'clock this night had three eggs in it ;-but a stranger, who arrived an hour ago, has had them dressed into an omelet, and we have nothing. Alas! said the traveller, harassed as I am, I want nothing but a bed. I have one as soft as is in Alsatia, said the host. -The stranger, continued he, should have slept in it, for 'tis my best bed, but upon the score of his nose-He has got a defluxion, said the traveller. Not that I know, cried the host -but it is a camp-bed, and Jacinta, said he, looking towards the maid, imagined there was not room in it to turn his nose in-Why so? cried the traveller, starting back-It is so long a nose, replied the host.-The traveller fixed his eyes upon Jacinta, then upon the ground-kneeled

upon his right knee-had just got his hand laid upon his breast-Trifle not with my anxiety, said he, rising up again-'Tis no trifle, said Jacinta, 'tis the most glorious nose !—The traveller fell upon his knee again-laid his hand upon his breast-Then, said he, looking up to Heaven, thou hast conducted me to the end of my pilgrimage-'tis Diego!

The traveller was the brother of Julia, so often invoked that night by the stranger as he rode from Strasburg upon his mule; and was come, on her part, in quest of him. He had accompanied his sister from Valladolid across the Pyrenean Mountains through France, and had many an entangled skein to wind off in pursuit of him, through the many meanders and abrupt turnings of a lover's thorny track.

Julia had sunk under it,-and had not been able to get a step farther than to Lyons, where, with the many disquietudes of a tender heart, which all talk of but few feel-she sickened, but had just strength to write a letter to Diego; and having conjured her brother never to see her face till he had found him out, and put the letter into his hands, Julia took to her bed.

Fernandez (for that was her brother's name) though the camp-bed was as soft as any one in Alsace, yet he could not shut his eyes in it.As soon as it was day he rose; and hearing Diego was risen too, he entered his chamber, and discharged his sister's commission. The letter was as follows:

cr

Sieg. DIEGO,

"Whether my suspicions of your nose were justly excited or not,-'tis not now to inquire; it is enough I have not had firmness to put them farther to trial.

"How could I know so little of myself, when I sent my duenna to forbid your coming more under my lattice? or how could I know so little of you, Diego, as to imagine you would have staid one day in Valladolid to have given ease to my doubts?-Was I to be abandoned, Diego, because I was deceived! or was it kind to take me at my word, whether my suspicions were just or no, and leave me, as you did, a prey to much uncertainty and sorrow?

"In what manner Julia has resented this,my brother, when he puts this letter into your hands, will tell you; he will tell you in how few moments she repented of the rash message she had sent you,-in what frantic haste she flew to her lattice, and how many days and nights together she leaned immovably upon her elbow, looking through it towards the way which Diego was wont to come.

"He will tell you, when she heard of your departure,-how her spirits deserted her-how her heart sickened,-how piteously she mourned,-how long she hung her head. O Diego! how many weary steps has my brother's pity