Meanwhile, however, and with spirits restored by the Southern warmth to that buoyancy which never long deserted them, Sterne had begun to set to work upon a new volume. His letters show that this was not the seventh but the eighth; and Mr. Fitzgerald's conjecture, that the materials ultimately given to the world in the former volume were originally designed for another work, appears exceedingly probable. But for some time after his arrival at Toulouse he was unable, it would seem, to resume his literary labours in any form. Ever liable, through his weakly constitution, to whatever local maladies might anywhere prevail, he had fallen ill, he writes to Hall Stevenson, "of an epidemic vile fever which killed hundreds about me. The physicians here," he adds, "are the arrantest charlatans in Europe, or the most ignorant of all pretending fools. I withdrew what was left of me out of their hands, and recommended my affairs entirely to Dame Nature. She (dear goddess) has saved me in fifty different pinching bouts, and I begin to have a kind of enthusiasm now in her favour and my own, so that one or two more escapes will make me believe I shall leave you all at last by translation, and not by fair death." Having now become "stout and foolish again as a man can wish to be, I am," he says, "busy playing the fool with my Uncle Toby, whom I have got soused over head and ears in love." Now, it is not till the eighth volume that the Widow Wadman begins to weave her spells around Captain Shandy's ingenuous heart; while the seventh volume is mainly composed of that series of travel-pictures in which Sterne has manifestly recorded his own impressions of Northern France in the person of the youthful Tristram. It is scarcely doubtful, therefore, that it is these sketches, and the use which he then proposed to make of them, that he refers to, when speaking in this letter of "hints and projects for other works." Originally intended to form a part of the volume afterwards published as the _Sentimental Journey_, it was found necessary--under pressure, it is to be supposed, of insufficient matter--to work them up instead into an interpolated seventh volume of _Tristram Shandy_. At the moment, however, he no doubt as little foresaw this as he did the delay which was to take place before any continuation of the novel appeared. He clearly contemplated no very long absence from England. "When I have reaped the benefit of the winter at Toulouse, I cannot see I have anything more to do with it. Therefore, after having gone with my wife and girl to Bagnères, I shall return from whence I came." Already, however, one can perceive signs of his having too presumptuously marked out his future. "My wife wants to stay another year, to save money; and this opposition of wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet 'twill not be as sweet as sugar." And again: "If the snows will suffer me, I propose to spend two or three months at Barége or Bagnères; but my dear wife is against all schemes of additional expense, which wicked propensity (though not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer--though, by-the-bye, laudable enough. But she may talk; I will go my own way, and she will acquiesce without a word of debate on the subject. Who can say so much in praise of his wife? Few, I trow." The tone of contemptuous amiability shows pretty clearly that the relations between husband and wife had in nowise improved. But wives do not always lose all their influence over husbands' wills along with the power over their affections; and it will be seen that Sterne did _not_ make his projected winter trip to Bagnères, and that he did remain at Toulouse for a considerable part of the second year for which Mrs. Sterne desired to prolong their stay. The place, however, was not to his taste; and he was not the first traveller in France who, delighted with the gaiety of Paris, has been disappointed at finding that French provincial towns can be as dull as dulness itself could require. It is in the somewhat unjust mood which is commonly begotten of disillusion that Sterne discovers the cause of his _ennui_ in "the eternal platitude of the French character," with its "little variety and no originality at all." "They are very civil," he admits, "but civility itself so thus uniform wearies and bothers me to death. If I do not mind I shall grow most stupid and sententious." With such apprehensions it is not surprising that he should have eagerly welcomed any distraction that chance might offer, and in December we find him joyfully informing his chief correspondent of the period, Mr.