plause?" They accepted the challenge, confident of success. The eclipse began: the Chinese produced a most splendid apparatus, and were fifteen minutes wrong; the missionary, with a single instrument, was exact to a second. This was convincing; but the court astronomers were not to be convinced; instead of acknowledging their error, they assured the emperor that their calculations were certainly exact, but that the stranger without nails had actually bewitched the moon. "Well then," cries the good emperor, smiling at their ignorance, you shall still continue to be servants of the moon; but I constitute this man her controller." China is thus replete with men, whose only pretensions to knowledge arise from external circumstances; and, in Europe, every country abounds with them in proportion to its ignorance. Spain and Flanders, who are behind the rest of Europe in learning at least three centuries, have twenty literary titles and marks of distinction unknown in France or England. They have their Clarissimi and Præclarissimi, their Accuratissimi and Minutissimi. A round cap entitles one student to argue, and a square cap permits another to teach, while a cap with a tassel almost sanctifies the head it happens to cover. But where true knowledge is culti vated, these formalities begin to disappear. The ermined cowl, the solemn beard, and sweeping train, are laid aside; philosophers dress, and talk, and think, like other men; and lamb-skin dressers, and cap-makers, and tailcarriers, now deplore a literary age. For my own part, my friend, I have seen enough of presuming ignorance, never to venerate wisdom but where it actually appears. I have received literary titles and distinctions myself; and, by the quantity of my own wisdom, know how very little wisdom they can confer. Adieu. LETTER CIV. FROM THE SAME. THE time for the young king's coronation approaches. The great and the little world look forward with impatience. A knight from the country, who has brought up his family to see and be seen on this occasion, has taken all the lower part of the house where I lodge. His wife is laying in a large quantity of silks, which the mercer tells her are to be fashionable next season; and miss, her daughter, has actually had her ears bored previous to the ceremony. In all this bustle of preparation I am considered as mere lumber, and have been shoved up two stories higher, to make room for others my landlady seems perfectly convinced are my betters; but whom, before me, she is contented with only calling very good company. His The little beau, who has now forced himself into my intimacy, was yesterday giving me a most minute detail of the intended procession. All men are eloquent upon their favourite topic; and this seemed peculiarly adapted to the size and turn of his understanding. whole mind was blazoned over with a variety of glittering images; coronets, escutcheons, lace, fringe, tassels, stones, bugles, and spun glass. "Here," cried he, "Garter is to walk; and there Rouge Dragon marches with the escutcheons on his back. Here Clarencieux moves forward; and there Blue Mantle disdains to be left behind. Here the Aldermen march two and two; and there the undaunted champion of England, no way terrified at the very numerous appearance of gentlemen and ladies, rides forward in complete armour, and, with an intrepid air, throws down his glove. Ah !" continued he, "should any be so hardy as to take up that fatal glove, and so accept the challenge, we should see fine sport; the champion would show him no mercy; he would soon teach him all his passes, with a witness. However, I am afraid we shall have none willing to try it with him upon the approaching occasion, for two reasons; first, because his antagonist would stand a chance of being killed in the single combat; and, secondly, because if he escapes the champion's arm, he would certainly be hanged for treason. No, no; I fancy none will be so hardy as to dispute it with a champion like him inured to arms; and we shall probably see him prancing unmolested away, holding his bridle thus in one hand, and brandishing his dram-cup in the other." Some men have a manner of describing, which only wraps the subject in more than former obscurity; thus I was unable, with all my companion's volubility, to form a distinct idea of the intended procession. I was certain that the inauguration of a king should be conducted with solemnity and religious awe; and I could not be persuaded, that there was much solemnity in this description. "If this be true," cried I to myself, "the people of Europe surely have a strange manner of mixing solemn and fantastic images together; pictures at once replete with burlesque and the sublime, At a time when the king enters into the most solemn compact with his people, nothing surely should be admitted to diminish from the real majesty of the ceremony. A ludicrous image, brought in at such a time, throws an air of ridicule upon the whole. It someway resembles a picture I have seen, designed by Albert Durer, where, amidst all the solemnity of that awful scene, a deity judging, and a trembling world awaiting the decree, he has introduced a merry mortal trundling a scolding wife to hell in a wheel-barrow." My companion, who mistook my silence during this interval of reflection, for the rapture of astonishment, proceeded to describe those frivolous parts of the show that most : arguments were so often and so strongly en- struck his imagination; and to assure me, that if I stayed in this country some months longer, I should see fine things. For my own part," continued he, "I know already of fifteen suits of clothes, that would stand on one end with gold lace, all designed to be first shown there and as for diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls, we shall see them as thick as brass nails in a sedan chair. And then we are all to walk so majestically thus; this foot always behind the foot before. The ladies are to fling nosegays; the court poets to scatter verses; the spectators are to be all in full dress; Mrs Tibbs in a new sack, ruffles, and frenched hair look where you will, one thing finer than another; Mrs Tibbs courtesies to the duchess; her Grace returns the compliment with a bow. Largess,' cries the herald. 'Make room,' cries the gentle-ing for that, since I am resolved to have that man usher. 'Knock him down,' cries the pleasure, whether I am there or no !" guard. Ah!" continued he, amazed at his own description, "what an astonishing scene of grandeur can art produce from the smallest circumstance, when it thus actually turns to wonder one man putting on another man's hat." : I now found his mind was entirely set upon the fopperies of the pageant, and quite regardless of the real meaning of such costly preparations. "Pageants," says Bacon, "are pretty things; but we should rather study to make them elegant than expensive." Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery, furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tirewomen, mechanically influence the mind into veneration. An emperor in his night-cap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a glittering crown. Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain method of bringing either into contempt. The weak must have their inducements to admiration as well as the wise; and it is the business of a sensible government to impress all ranks with a sense of subordination, whether this be effected by a diamond buckle, or a virtuous edict, a sumptuary law or a glass necklace. This interval of reflection only gave my companion spirits to begin his description afresh ; and, as a greater inducement to raise my curiosity, he informed me of the vast sums that were given by the spectators for places. "That the ceremony must be fine," cries he, "is very evident from the fine price that is paid for seeing it. Several ladies have assured me, they would willingly part with one eye rather than be prevented from looking on with the other. Come, come," continues he, "I have a friend, who, for my sake, will supply us with places at the most reasonable rates; I'll take care you shall not be imposed upon; and be will inform you of the use, finery, rapture, splendour, and enchantment of the whole ceremony, better than I." Follies often repeated lose their absurdity, and assume the appearance of reason. His I am conscious, my friend, that this is but a very confused description of the intended ceremony. You may object, that I neither settle rank, precedency, nor place; that I seem ignorant whether Gules walks before, or behind Garter; that I have neither mentioned the dimensions of a lord's cap, nor measured the length of a lady's tail. I know your delight is in minute description: and this I am unhappily disqualified from furnishing; yet upon the whole, I fancy it will be no way comparable to the magnificence of our late emperor Whangti's procession, when he was married to the moon, at which Fum Hoam himself presided in person. Adieu. LETTER CV. FROM THE SAME. Ir was formerly the custom here, when men of distinction died, for their surviving acquaintance to throw each a slight present into the grave. Several things of little value were made use of for that purpose; perfumes, relics, spices, bitter herbs, camomile, wormwood, and verses. This custom, however, is almost discontinued, and nothing but verses alone are now lavished on such occasions; an oblation which they suppose may be interred with the dead without any injury to the living. Upon the death of the great, therefore, the poets and undertakers are sure of employment. While one provides the long cloak, black staff, and mourning coach, the other produces the pastoral or elegy, the monody, or apotheosis. The nobility need be under no apprehensions, but die as fast as they think proper, the poet and undertaker are ready to supply them; these can find metaphorical tears and family escutcheons at half an hour's warning: and when the one has soberly laid the body in the grave, the other is ready to fix it figuratively among the stars. There are several ways of being poetically sorrowful on such occasions. The bard is now some pensive youth of science, who sits deploring among the tombs; again, he is Thyrsis complaining in a circle of harmless sheep. Now Britannia sits upon her own shore, and gives a loose to maternal tender. ness; at another time, Parnassus, even the mountain Parnassus, gives way to sorrow, and is bathed in tears of distress. But the most usual manner is this: Damon meets Menalcas, who hast got a most gloomy countenance. The shepherd asks his friend, whence that look of distress? to which the other replies, that Pollio is no more. “ If that be the case then," cries Damon, "let us retire to yonder bower at some distance off, where the cypress and the jessamine add fragrance to the breeze; and let us weep alternately for Polio, the friend of shepherds, and the patron of every muse."—" Ah," returns his fellow shepherd, "what think you rather of that grotto by the fountain side! the murmuring stream will help to assist our complaints, and a nightingale on a neighbouring tree will join her voice to the concert!" When the place is thus settled, they begin; the brook stands still to hear their lamentations; the cows forget to graze; and the very tigers start from the forest with sympathetic concern. By the tombs of our ancestors, my dear Fum, I am quite unaffected in all this distress: the whole is liquid laudanum to my spirits; and a tiger of common sensibility has twenty times more tenderness than I. But though I could never weep with the complaining shepherd, yet I am sometimes induced to pity the poet, whose trade is thus to make demigods and heroes for a dinner. There is not in nature a more dismal figure than a man who sits down to premeditated flattery: every stanza he writes tacitly reproaches the meanness of his occupation, till at last his stupidity becomes more stupid, and his dulness more diminutive. How sad the groves and plains appear, Ev'n pitying hills would drop a tear- His bounty in exalted strain And hark! I hear the tuneful throng He still shall live, shall live as long- LETTER CVI. FROM THE SAME. It is the most usual method in every report, first to examine its probability, and then act as the conjuncture may require. The English, however, exert a different spirit in such citcumstances; they first act, and, when too late, begin to examine. From a knowledge of this disposition, there are several here, who make it their business to frame new reports at every convenient interval, all tending to denounce ruin both on their contemporaries and their posterity. This denunciation is eagerly caught up by the public: away they fling to propagate the distress; sell out at one place, buy in at another, grumble at their governors, shout in mobs, and when they have thus for some time behaved like fools, sit down coolly to argue and talk wisdom, to puzzle each other with syllogisms, and prepare for the next report that prevails, which is always attended with the same success. Thus are they ever rising above one report only to sink into another. They resemble a dog in a well, pawing to get free. When he has raised his upper parts above water, and every spectator imagines him disengaged, his lower parts drag him down again, and sink him to the nose; he makes new efforts to emerge, and every effort increasing his weakness, only tends to sink him the deeper. I am amazed, therefore, that none have yet found out the secret of flattering the worthless, There are some here who, I am told, make and yet of preserving a safe conscience. I a tolerable subsistence by the credulity of their have often wished for some method, by which countrymen. As they find the people fond a man might do himself and his deceased pa- of blood, wounds, and death, they contrive tron justice, without being under the hateful political ruins suited to every month in the reproach of self-conviction. After long lucu-year. This month the people are to be eaten bration, I have hit upon such an expedient: and send you the specimen of a poem upon the decease of a great man, in which the flattery is perfectly fine, and yet the poet perfectly inno cent. On the Death of the Right Honourable Ye muses, pour the pitying tear For Pollio snatched away: O, had he lived another year He had not died to-day. O, were he born to bless mankind Heroes themselves had fallen behind- up by the French in flat-bottomed boats; the next, by the soldiers designed to beat the French back. Now the people are going to jump down the gulph of luxury; and now nothing but a herring subscription can fish them up again. Time passes on; the report proves false; new circumstances produce new changes; but the people never change, they are persevering in folly. In other countries, those boding politicians would be left to fret over their own schemes alone and grow splenetic without hopes of infecting others: but England seems to be the very region where spleen delights to dwell; a man not only can give an unbounded scope to the disorder in himself, but may if he pleases, propagate it over the whole kingdom, with a certainty of success. He has only to cry out to the government, the government is all wrong; that their schemes are leading to ruin; the Britons are no more ;—every good member of the commonwealth thinks it his duty, in such a case, to deplore the universal decadence with sympathetic sorrow, and by fancying the constitution in a decay, absolutely to impair its vigour. This people would laugh at my simplicity, should I advise them to be less sanguine in harbouring gloomy predictions, and examine coolly before they attempt to complain. I have just heard a story, which, though transacted in a private family, serves well to describe the behaviour of the whole nation in cases of threatened calamity. As there are public, so there are private incendiaries here. One of the last, either for the amusement of his friends or to divert a fit of the spleen, lately sent a threatening letter to a worthy family in my neighbourhood, to this effect :"SIR, Knowing you to be very rich, and myself to be very poor, I think proper to inform you, that I have learned the secret of poisoning man, woman and child, without danger of detection. Don't be uneasy, Sir, you may take your choice of being poisoned in a fortnight, or poisoned in a month, or poisoned in six weeks; you shall have full time to settle all your affairs. Though I am poor, I love to do things like a gentleman. But, Sir, you must die; I have determined it within my own breast that you must die. Blood, Sir, blood is my trade; so I could wish you would this day six weeks take leave of your friends, wife, and family, for I cannot possibly allow you longer time. To convince you more certainly of the power of my art by which you may know I speak truth, take this letter; when you have read it, tear off the seal, fold it up, and give it to your favourite Dutch mastiff that sits by the fire; he will swallow it, Sir, like a buttered toast: in three hours and four minutes, after he has eaten it, he will attempt to bite off his own tongue, and half an hour after burst asunder in twenty pieces. Blood, blood, blood! So no more at present from, Sir, your most obedient, most devoted humble servant to command, till death." You may easily imagine the consternation into which this letter threw the whole goodnatured family. The poor man to whom it was addressed was the more surprised, as not knowing how he could merit such inveterate malice. All the friends of the family were convened; it was universally agreed that it was a most terrible affair, and that the government should be solicited to offer a reward and a pardon; a fellow of this kind would go on poisoning family after family and it was impossible to say where the destruction would end. In pursuance of these determinations, : the government was applied to; strict search was made after the incendiary, but all in vain. At last, therefore, they recollected that the experiment was not yet tried upon the dog; the Dutch mastiff was brought up, and placed in the midst of the friends and relations, the seal was torn off, the packet folded up with care, and soon they found, to the great surprise of all-that the dog would not eat the letter. Adieu. LETTER CVII. FROM THE SAME. I HAVE frequently been amazed at the ignorance of almost all the European travellers who have penetrated any considerable way eastward into Asia. They have been influenced either by motives of commerce or piety; and their accounts are such as might reasonably be expected from men of very narrow or very prejudiced education, the dictates of superstition or the result of ignorance. Is it not surprising, that in such a variety of adventurers not one single philosopher should be found? for as to the travels of Gemelli, the learned are long agreed that the whole is but an imposture. There is scarcely any country, how rude or uncultivated soever, where the inhabitants are not possessed of some peculiar secrets either in nature or art, which might be transplanted with success. In Siberian Tartary, for instance, the natives extract a strong spirit from milk, which is a secret probably unknown to the chemists of Europe. In the most savage parts of India, they are possessed of the secret of dying vegetable substances scarlet; and of refining lead into a metal, which, for hardness and colour, is little inferior to silver : not one of which secrets but would, in Europe, make a man's fortune. The power of the Asiatics in producing winds, or bringing down rain, the Europeans are apt to treat as fabulous, because they have no instances of the like nature among themselves; but they would have treated the secrets of gunpowder, and the mariner's compass, in the same manner, had they been told the Chinese used such arts before the invention was common with themselves at home. Of all the English philosophers, I most reverence Bacon, that great and hardy genius! he it is who allows of secrets yet unknown; who, undaunted by the seeming difficulties that oppose, prompts human curiosity to examine every part of nature, and even exhorts man to try, whether he cannot subject the tempest, the thunder, and even earthquakes, to human control! O, did a man of his daring spirit, of his genius, penetration, and learning, travel to those countries which have been visited only by the superstitious and the mercenary, what might not mankind expect! How would he enlighten the regions to which he travelled!cious observer, the advantages would be inesand what a variety of knowledge and useful improvement would he not bring back in exchange! timable. Are there not even in Europe many useful inventions known or practised but in one place? The instrument, as an example, There is, probably, no country so barbarous for cutting down corn in Germany, is much that would not disclose all it knew, if it receiv- more handy and expeditious, in my opinion, ed from the traveller equivalent information; than the sickle used in England. The cheap and I am apt to think, that a person who was ready and expeditious manner of making vinegar, to give more knowledge than he received, would without previous fermentation, is known only be welcome wherever he came. All his care in a part of France. If such discoveries, therein travelling should only be to suit his intellec- fore, remain still to be known at home, what tual banquet to the people with whom he con- funds of knowledge might not be collected in versed; he should not attempt to teach the un- | countries yet unexplored, or only passed through lettered Tartar astronomy, nor yet instruct the by ignorant travellers in hasty caravans ? polite Chinese in the ruder arts of subsistence. The caution with which foreigners are reHe should endeavour to improve the barbarian ceived in Asia may be alleged as an objection | in the secrets of living comfortably; and the to such a design. But how readily have severinhabitant of a more refined country in the spe- al European merchants found admission into culative pleasures of science. How much more regions the most suspecting, under the characnobly would a philosopher thus employed spend ter of Sanjapins, or northern pilgrims. his time, than by sitting at home, earnestly in- such, not even China itself denies access. tent upon adding one star more to his catalogue, or one monster more to his collection; or still, if possible, more triflingly sedulous in the incatenation of fleas, or the sculpture of a cherry-stone? Το one To send out a traveller, properly qualified for these purposes, might be an object of national concern; it would in some measure repair the breaches made by ambition; and might show that there were still some who boasted a greater name than that of patriots, who professed themselves lovers of men. The only difficulty would remain, in choosing a proper person for so arduous an enterprise. He should be a man of philosophical turn; apt to deduce consequences of general utility from particular occurrences; neither swollen with pride, nor hardened by prejudice; neither wedded to one particular system, nor instructed only in one particular science; neither wholly a botanist, nor quite an antiquarian; his mind should be tinctured with miscellaneous knowledge, and his manner humanized by an intercourse with men. He should be in some measure an enthusiast in the design; fond of travelling, from a rapid imagination and an innate love of change; furnished with a body capable of sustaining every fatigue, and a heart not easily terrified at danger. Adieu. I never consider this subject without being surprised, that none of those societies, so laudably established in England for the promotion of arts and learning, have ever thought of sending one of their members into the most Eastern parts of Asia, to make what discoveries he was able. To be convinced of the utility of such an undertaking, let them but read the relations of their own travellers. It will be there found, that they are as often deceived themselves, as they attempt to deceive others. The merchant tells us, perhaps, the price of different commodities, the method of baling them up, and the properest manner for a European to preserve his health in the country. The missionary, on the other hand, informs us, with what pleasure the country to which he was sent embraced Christianity, and the numbers he converted; what methods he took to keep lent in a region where there was no fish, or the shifts he made to celebrate the rites of his religion, in places where there was neither bread nor wine! Such accounts, with the usual appendage of marriages and funerals, inscriptions, rivers, and mountains, make up the whole of a European traveller's diary: but as to all the secrets of which the inhabitants are possessed, those are universally attributed ONE of the principal tasks I had proposed to to magic; and when the traveller can give no myself on my arrival here, was to become acother account of the wonders he sees perform- quainted with the names and characters of ed, very contentedly ascribes them to the pow-those now living, who, as scholars or wits, had er of the devil. It was a usual observation of Boyle the English chemist, That if every artist would but discover what new observations occurred to him in the exercise of his trade, philosophy would thence gain innumerable improvements. It may be observed with still greater justice, that if the useful knowledge of every country, howsoever barbarous, was gleaned by a judi LETTER CVIII. FROM THE SAME acquired the greatest share of reputation. In order to succeed in this design, I fancied the surest method would be to begin my inquiry among the ignorant, judging that his fame would be greatest, which was loud enough to be heard by the vulgar. Thus predisposed, I began the search, but only went in quest of disappointment and perplexity. I found every district had a peculiar famous man of its own. Here |