Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 3).pdf/99

 is wanted,—so not one spark is given. Angels and ministers of grace defend us! What a dismal thing would it have been to have governed a kingdom, to have fought a battle, or made a treaty, or run a match, or wrote a book, or got a child, or held a provincial chapter there, with so plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about us! for mercy's sake! let us think no more about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into Norway,—crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through the small triangular province of Angermania to the lake of Bothnia; coasting along it through east and west Bothnia, down to Carelia, and so on, through all those states and provinces which border upon the far side of the Gulf of Finland, and the north east of the Baltick, up to Petersbourg, and just stepping into Ingria;—then stretching over directly from thence