So here, if it please you, we shall let it rest.

Slight as these notes have been, I would that the great founder of the system had been alive to see them.

How he had warmed and brightened, how his persuasive eloquence would have fallen on the ears of Toby; and what a letter of praise and sympathy would not the editor have received before the month was out! Alas, the thing was not to be.

Walter Shandy died and was duly buried, while yet his theory lay forgotten and neglected by his fellow-countrymen.

But, reader, the day will come, I hope, when a paternal government will stamp out, as seeds of national weakness, all depressing patronymics, and when godfathers and godmothers will soberly and earnestly debate the interest of the nameless one, and not rush blindfold to the christening.