This
is good Swiss-policy," he adds; and the idea (which was never carried
out) had certainly the merit of ingenuity, if no other.
The words "as soon as I get to Toulouse," in a letter written from
Paris on the 10th of April, might well have reminded Sterne of the
strange way in which he had carried out his intention of "wintering
in the South." He insists, however, upon the curative effects of his
winter of gaiety in Paris. "I am recovered greatly," he says; "and if
I could spend one whole winter at Toulouse, I should be fortified in
my inner man beyond all danger of relapsing." There was another, too,
for whom this change of climate had become imperatively necessary.
For three winters past his daughter Lydia, now fourteen years old,
had been suffering severely from asthma, and needed to try "the last
remedy of a warmer and softer air." Her father, therefore, was about
to solicit passports for his wife and daughter, with a view to their
joining him at once in Paris, whence, after a month's stay, they were
to depart together for the South. This application for passports he
intended, he said, to make "this week:" and it would seem that the
intention was carried out; but, for reasons explained in a letter
which Mr.
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