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. Foley--who to his services as Sterne's banker seems to have added
those of a most helpful and trusted friend--that "there are a company
of English strollers arrived here who are to act comedies all the
Christmas, and are now busy in making dresses and preparing some of
our best comedies." These so-called strollers were, in fact, certain
members of the English colony in Toulouse, and their performances were
among the first of those "amateur theatrical" entertainments which
now-a-days may be said to rival the famous "morning drum-beat" of
Daniel Webster's oration, in marking the ubiquity of British boredom,
as the _reveil_ does that of British power over all the terrestrial
globe. "The next week," writes Sterne, "with a grand orchestra, we
play _The Busybody_, and the _Journey to London_ the week after; but
I have some thought of adapting it to our situation, and making it the
_Journey to Toulouse_, which, with the change of half-a-dozen scenes,
may be easily done. Thus, my dear Foley, for want of something better
we have recourse to ourselves, and strike out the best amusements we
can from such materials." "Recourse to ourselves," however, means,
in strict accuracy, "recourse to each other;" and when the amateur
players had played themselves out, and exhausted their powers of
contributing to each others' amusement, it is probable that
"recourse to ourselves," in the exact sense of the phrase, was found
ineffective--in Sterne's case, at any rate--to stave off _ennui_.
To him, with his copiously if somewhat oddly furnished mind, and his
natural activity of imagination, one cou