swerers crowd about them, and call them1 ves the writers of books; and the patron toc indolent to distinguish: thus poets e kept at a distance, while their enemies it up all their rewards at the mandarine's ble"

Leaving this part of the temple, we made p to an iron gate, through which my ompanion told me we were to pass, in order to see the monuments of the kings. Accordingly, I marched up without further ceremony, and was going to enter, when a person who held the gate in his hand told me I must pay first. I was surprised at sich a demand; and asked the man, whether the people of England kept a whether the paltry sum he deaded was not a national reproach? whether it was not more to the honour of the country to let their magnificence or their antiquities be openly seen, than thus marly to tax a curiosity which tended to thrown honour?-"As for your questars replied the gate-keeper, "to be they may be very right, because I 't understand them; but, as for that Lere threepence, I farm it from one-who ts it from another-who hires it from #ind-who leases it from the guardians the temple: and we all must live." I rected, upon paying here, to see some12 extraordinary, since what I had seen oothing filled me with so much surprise: in this I was disappointed; there was e more within than black coffins, rusty tour, tattered standards, and some few enly figures in wax. I was sorry I had t, but I comforted myself by consider12 it would be my last payment. A perattended us who without once blushing dan hundred lies: he talked of a lady ho died by pricking her finger; of a king ha golden head, and twenty such pieces absurdity. "Look ye there, gentlemen," says he, pointing to an old oak ar, "there's a curiosity for ye; in that air the kings of England were crowned: a see also a stone underneath, and that ne is Jacob's pillow." I could see no Curiosity either in the oak chair or the stone: could I, indeed, behold one of the ld kings of England seated in this, or Jacob's head laid upon the other, there might be something curious in the sight;

but in the present case, there was no more reason for my surprise, than if I should pick a stone from their streets, and call it a curiosity, merely because one of the kings happened to tread upon it as he passed in a procession.

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From hence our conductor led us through several dark walks and winding ways, uttering lies, talking to himself, and flourishing a wand which he held in his hand. He reminded me of the black magicians of Kobi. After we had been almost fatigued with a variety of objects, he at last desired me to consider attentively a certain suit of armour, which seemed to show nothing remarkable. "This armour," said he, "belonged to General Monk.""Very surprising that a general should wear armour!". And pray," added he, "observe this cap; this is General Monk's cap."-"Very strange indeed, very strange, that a general should have a cap also! Pray, friend, what might this cap have cost originally?"-"That, sir," says he, "I don't know; but this cap is all the wages I have for my trouble."—"A very small recompense, truly," said I.-"Not so very small," replied he, "for every gentleman puts some money into it, and I spend the money."-"What, more money! still more money!"-"Every gentleman gives something, sir."-"I'll give thee nothing," returned I; "the guardians of the temple should pay you your wages, friend, and not permit you to squeeze thus from every spectator. When we pay our money at the door to see a show, we never give more as we are going out. Sure, the guardians of the temple can never think they get enough. Show me the gate; if I stay longer, I may probably meet with more of those ecclesiastical beggars."

Thus leaving the temple precipitately, I returned to my lodgings, in order to ruminate over what was great, and to despise what was mean, in the occurrences of the day.

LETTER XIV.

To the same.

I WAS some days ago agreeably surprised by a message from a lady of distinction, who sent me word, that she most passionately desired the pleasure of my acquaint

ance, and with the utmost impatience expected an interview. I will not deny, my dear Fum Hoam, but that my vanity was raised at such an invitation: I flattered myself that she had seen me in some public place, and had conceived an affection for my person, which thus induced her to deviate from the usual decorums of the sex. My imagination painted her in all the bloom of youth and beauty. I fancied her attended by the Loves and Graces; and I set out with the most pleasing expectations of seeing the conquest I had made. When I was introduced into her apartment, my expectations were quickly at an end: I perceived a little shrivelled figure indolently reclined on a sofa, who nodded, by way of approbation, at my approach. This, as I was afterwards informed, was the lady herself,-a woman equally distinguished for rank, politeness, taste, and understanding. As I was dressed after the fashion of Europe, she had taken me for an Englishman, and consequently saluted me in her ordinary manner: but when the footman informed her grace that I was the gentleman from China, she instantly lifted herself from the couch, while her eyes sparkled with unusual vivacity. "Bless me! can this be the gentleman that was born so far from home? What an unusual share of somethingness in his whole appearance! Lord, how I am charmed with the outlandish cut of his face! how bewitching the exotic breadth of his forehead! I would give the world to see him in his own country dress. Pray, turn about, sir, and let me see you behind. There, there's a travelled air for you! You that attend there, bring up a plate of beef cut into small pieces; I have a violent passion to see him eat. Pray, sir, have you got your chopsticks about you? It will be so pretty to see the meat carried to the mouth with a jerk. Pray, speak a little Chinese: I have learned some of the language myself. Lord! have you nothing pretty from China about you; something that one does not know what to do with? I have got twenty things from China that are of no use in the world. Look at those jars; they are of the right pea-green: these are the furniture!"-"Dear madam,” said I, “these,

gth they may appear fine in your eyes,

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are but paltry to a Chinese; but as are useful utensils, it is proper they sho have a place in every apartment.”—“U ful, sir!" replied the lady; sure mistake; they are of no use in the worl "What! are they not filled with an fusion of tea, as in China?" replied "Quite empty and useless, upon my honc sir."- "Then they are the most cumbr and clumsy furniture in the world, as 1 thing is truly elegant but what unites with beauty.' I protest," says the la "I shall begin to suspect thee of being actual barbarian. I suppose you h my two beautiful pagods in contemp "What!" cried I, "has Fohi spread gross superstitions here also! Pagods all kinds are my aversion.". A Chine a traveller, and want taste! It surpris me. Pray, sir, examine the beauties that Chinese temple which you see at t end of the garden. Is there anything China more beautiful?"-"Where I stan I see nothing, madam, at the end of t garden, that may not as well be called : Egyptian pyramid as a Chinese templ for that little building in view is as like th one as t'other."-" What, sir! is not th a Chinese temple? you must surely mistaken. Mr. Freeze, who designed i calls it one, and nobody disputes his pr tensions to taste.' I now found it vain contradict the lady in anything she though fit to advance; so was resolved rather act the disciple than the instructor. took me through several rooms, all fu nished, as she told me, in the Chinese mar ner; sprawling dragons, squatting pagod and clumsy mandarines were stuck upo every shelf: in turning round, one mus have used caution not to demolish a pa of the precarious furniture.

S

In a house like this, thought I, on must live continually upon the watch; th inhabitant must resemble a knight in a enchanted castle, who expects to mee an adventure at every turning. "But madam," said I, "do not accidents eve happen to all this finery?"—" Man, sir, replied the lady, "is born to misfortunes and it is but fit I should have a share Three weeks ago, a careless servan snapped off the head of a favourite man darine: I had scarce done grieving for that

then a monkey broke a beautiful jar; this took the more to heart, as the injury was one me by a friend! However, I surived the calamity; when yesterday crash rent half a dozen dragons upon the marble earthstone: and yet I live; I survive it 11: you can't conceive what comfort I find nder afflictions from philosophy. There 3 Seneca, and Bolingbroke, and some then, who guide me through life, and each me to support its calamities." I coll not but smile at a woman who makes her own misfortunes, and then deplores the miseries of her situation. Wherefore, tired of acting with dissimulation, and willing to duge my meditations in solitude, tock leave just as the servant was bringing În a plate of beef, pursuant to the directions of his mistress.-Adieu.

LETTER XV.

To the same.

The better sort here pretend to the utmost capassion for animals of every kind: to bar them speak, a stranger would be apt toimagine they could hardly hurt the gnat the sung them; they seem so tender, and Sell of pity, that one would take them Se the harmless friends of the whole creath, the protectors of the meanest insect or rule that was privileged with existence. Ai yet (would you believe it?) I have the very men who have thus boasted d their tenderness, at the same time deing the flesh of six different animals fed up in a fricassee. Strange conrety of conduct! they pity, and they the objects of their compassion! The roars with terror over its captive; the sends forth its hideous shriek to inidate its prey; no creature shows any Indness for its short-lived prisoner, except ime and a cat.

Man was born to live with innocence ad simplicity, but he has deviated from store; he was born to share the bounties Heaven, but he has monopolized them; was born to govern the brute creation, t he is become their tyrant. If an epie now shall happen to surfeit on his last ht's feast, twenty animals the next day to undergo the most exquisite tortures, ørder to provoke his appetite to another

guilty meal. Hail, O ye simple, honest brahmins of the East! ye inoffensive friends of all that were born to happiness as well as you! You never sought a shortlived pleasure from the miseries of other creatures! You never studied the tormenting arts of ingenious refinement; you never surfeited upon a guilty meal! How much more purified and refined are all your sensations than ours! You distinguish every element with the utmost precision: a stream untasted before is a new luxury, a change of air is a new banquet, too refined for Western imaginations to conceive.

Though the Europeans do not hold the transmigration of souls, yet one of their doctors has, with great force of argument and great plausibility of reasoning, endeavoured to prove that the bodies of animals are the habitations of demons and wicked spirits, which are obliged to reside in these prisons till the resurrection pronounces their everlasting punishment; but are previously condemned to suffer all the pains and hardships inflicted upon them by man, or by each other, here. If this be the case, it may frequently happen, that while we whip pigs to death, or boil live lobsters, we are putting some old acquaintance, some near relation, to excruciating tortures, and are serving him up to the very same table where he was once the most welcome companion.

was

"Kabul," says the Zendavesta, born on the rushy banks of the river Mawra; his possessions were great, and his luxuries kept pace with the affluence of his fortune; he hated the harmless brahmins, and despised their holy religion; every day his table was decked out with the flesh of an hundred different animals, and his cooks had an hundred different ways of dressing it, to solicit even satiety.

"Notwithstanding all his eating, he did not arrive at old age; he died of a surfeit caused by intemperance: upon this his soul was carried off, in order to take its trial before a select assembly of the souls of those animals which his gluttony had caused to be slain, and who were now appointed his judges.

'He trembled before a tribunal, to every member of which he had formerly acted as an unmerciful tyrant: he sought for

pity, but found none disposed to grant it. 'Does he not remember,' cries the angry boar, 'to what agonies I was put, not to satisfy his hunger, but his vanity? I was first hunted to death, and my flesh scarce thought worthy of coming once to his table. Were my advice followed, he should do penance in the shape of an hog, which in life he most resembled.'

"I am rather,' cries a sheep upon the bench, 'for having him suffer under the appearance of a lamb; we may then send him through four or five transmigrations in the space of a month.'-Were my voice of any weight in the assembly,' cries a calf, 'he should rather assume such a form as mine; I was bled every day, in order to make my flesh white, and at last killed without mercy.'-'Would it not be wiser,' cries a hen, to cram him in the shape of a fowl, and then smother him in his own blood, as I was served?' The majority of the assembly were pleased with this punishment, and were going to condemn him without further delay, when the ox rose up to give his opinion, I am informed,' says this counsellor, 'that the prisoner at the bar has left a wife with child behind him. By my knowledge in divination, I foresee that this child will be a son, decrepit, feeble, sickly, a plague to himself and all about him. What say you, then, my companions, if we condemn the father to animate the body of his own son; and by this means make him feel in himself those miseries his intemperance must otherwise have entailed upon his posterity?' The whole court applauded the ingenuity of his torture: they thanked him for his advice. Kabul was driven once more to revisit the earth; and his soul, in the body of his own son, passed a period of thirty years, loaded with misery, anxiety, and disease."

LETTER XVI.

To the same.

I KNOW not whether I am more obliged to the Chinese missionaries for the instruction I have received from them, or prejudiced by the falsehoods they have made me believe. By them I was told that the Pope was universally allowed to be a man, and placed at the head of the church; in

The Europeans reproach us with fa history and fabulous chronology: h should they blush to see their own boo many of which are written by the doct of their religion, filled with the most m strous fables, and attested with the utm solemnity! The bounds of a letter do permit me to mention all the absurdi of this kind which, in my reading, I h met with. I shall confine myself to accounts which some of their lettered r give of the persons of some of the inha ants on our globe: and, not satisfied v the most solemn asseverations, they so times pretend to have been eye-witne of what they describe.

A Christian doctor, in one of his p cipal performances, says, that it was impossible for a whole nation to have one eye in the middle of the forehe He is not satisfied with leaving it in dou but, in another work, assures us, that fact was certain, and that he himself an eye-witness of it. When," ," says "I took a journey into Ethiopia, in c pany with several other servants of Ch in order to preach the Gospel, the beheld, in the southern provinces of country, a nation which had only one in the midst of their foreheads.'

You will no doubt be surprised, re end Fum, with this author's effront but, alas! he is not alone in this st he has only borrowed it from se others who wrote before him. Sal creates another nation of Cyclops, the maspians, who inhabit those countries border on the Caspian Sea. This at goes on to tell us of a people of 1 who have but one leg and one eye,