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, though they may appear fine in your eyes,

are but paltry to a Chinese; but as t are useful utensils, it is proper they sho have a place in every apartment. 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 hono sir."-" Then they are the most cumbre and clumsy furniture in the world, as thing is truly elegant but what unites u with beauty." "I protest," says the lad "I shall begin to suspect thee of being: actual barbarian. I suppose you ho my two beautiful pagods in contempt "What!" cried I, "has Fohi spread t gross superstitions here also! Pagods all kinds are my aversion.”—“A Chines a traveller, and want taste! It surpris me. Pray, sir, examine the beauties that Chinese temple which you see at th 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 a Egyptian pyramid as a Chinese temple for that little building in view is as like th one as t'other.”—“ What, sir! is not the a Chinese temple? you must surely b mistaken. Mr. Freeze, who designed it calls it one, and nobody disputes his pre tensions to taste." I now found it vain t contradict the lady in anything she though fit to advance; so was resolved rather t act the disciple than the instructor. took me through several rooms, all fur nished, as she told me, in the Chinese man ner; sprawling dragons, squatting pagods and clumsy mandarines were stuck upor every shelf: in turning round, one mus have used caution not to demolish a par of the precarious furniture.

Sh

In a house like this, thought I, one must live continually upon the watch; the inhabitant must resemble a knight in an enchanted castle, who expects to meet an adventure at every turning. But, madam," said I, "do not accidents ever 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 servant snapped off the head of a favourite man. darine: I had scarce done grieving for that,

hen a monkey broke a beautiful jar; this took the more to heart, as the injury was >ne me by a friend! However, I surved the calamity; when yesterday crash ent half a dozen dragons upon the marble earthstone: and yet I live; I survive it 11: you can't conceive what comfort I find der afflictions from philosophy. There : Seneca, and Bolingbroke, and some thers, who guide me through life, and cach me to support its calamities." I aid not but smile at a woman who makes ver own misfortunes, and then deplores the nheries of her situation. Wherefore, tired of acting with dissimulation, and willing onge my meditations in solitude, I toklaave just as the servant was bringing in a plate of beef, pursuant to the directions of his mistress.-Adieu.

LETTER XV.

To the same.

THI better sort here pretend to the utmost capassion for animals of every kind: to bar them speak, a stranger would be apt tagine they could hardly hurt the gnat the stung them; they seem so tender, and ll of pity, that one would take them fe the harmless friends of the whole creatac, the protectors of the meanest insect or le that was privileged with existence. d yet (would you believe it?) I have the very men who have thus boasted eir tenderness, at the same time dering the flesh of six different animals bed up in a fricassee. Strange contarety of conduct! they pity, and they the objects of their compassion! The Laroars with terror over its captive; the er sends forth its hideous shriek to indate its prey; no creature shows any niness for its short-lived prisoner, except a man and a cat.

Man was born to live with innocence and simplicity, but he has deviated from more; he was born to share the bounties Heaven, but he has monopolized them; e was born to govern the brute creation, he is become their tyrant. If an epiwe now shall happen to surfeit on his last ight's feast, twenty animals the next day te to undergo the most exquisite tortures, Forder 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.

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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

England, however, they plainly prove to be a whore in man's clothes, and of burn him in effigy as an impostor. thousand books have been written either side of the question: priests eternally disputing against each oth and those mouths that want argument filled with abuse. Which party mus believe? or shall I give credit to neith When I survey the absurdities and fal hoods with which the books of Europeans are filled, I thank Heaven having been born in China, and tha have sagacity enough to detect impostu

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 absurdit of this kind which, in my reading, I h met with. I shall confine myself to accounts which some of their lettered n give of the persons of some of the inhal ants on our globe: and, not satisfied w the most solemn asseverations, they son times pretend to have been eye-witnes of what they describe.

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

You will no doubt be surprised, revi end Fum, with this author's effronter but, alas! he is not alone in this stor he has only borrowed it from sever others who wrote before him. Soln creates another nation of Cyclops, the A maspians, who inhabit those countries th border on the Caspian Sea. This auth goes on to tell us of a people of In who have but one leg and one eye, a

are extremely active, run with great iftness, and live by hunting. These ope we scarce know how to pity or mire: but the men whom Pliny calls namici, who have got the heads of really deserve our compassion: inad of language, they express their senments by barking. Solinus confirms what liny neations; and Simon Mayole, a "reich bishop, talks of them as of partiuhr and familiar acquaintances. "After ng the deserts of Egypt," says he, we met with the Kunokephaloi, who nhabit those regions that border on Ethiya: they live by hunting; they cannot cak, but whistle; their chins resemble a sameat's head; their hands are armed with long sharp claws; their breast resembles that of a greyhound; and they excel in sartess and agility." Would you think itayihend, that these odd kind of people notwithstanding their figure, excesSTA delicate? not even an alderman's WeChinese mandarine, can excel them this particular. "These people," conas our faithful bishop, "never refuse we; love roast and boiled meat: they are Picularly curious in having their meat el dressed, and spurn at it if in the least uted." When the Ptolemies reigned | Egypt," says he, a little farther on, se men with dogs' heads taught gramzar and music.' For men who had no s to teach music, and who could not k, to teach grammar, is, I confess, de extraordinary. Did ever the dises of Fohi broach anything more aculous?

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litherto we have seen men with heads Krangely deformed, and with dogs' heads; what would you say if you heard of without any heads at all? PompoMela, Solinus, and Aulus Gellius Enscribe them to our hand: "The Blemia re a nose, eyes, and mouth on their east; or, as others will have it, placed on their shoulders."

One would think that these authors had antipathy to the human form, and were solved to make a new figure of their wn; but let us do them justice. Though they sometimes deprive us of a leg, an arm, a head, or some such trifling part of the body, they often as liberally bestow

upon us something that we wanted before. Simon Mayole seems our particular friend in this respect; if he has denied heads to one part of mankind, he has given tails to another. He describes many of the English of his time, which is more than an hundred years ago, as having tails. His own words are as follow: In England there are some families which have tails, as a punishment for deriding an Augustin friar sent by St. Gregory, and who preached in Dorsetshire. They sewed the tails of different animals to his clothes; but soon they found those tails entailed upon them and their posterity for ever." It is certain that the author had some ground for this description. Many of the English wear tails to their wigs to this very day; as a mark, I suppose, of the antiquity of their families, and perhaps as a symbol of those tails with which they were formerly distinguished by nature.

You see, my friend, there is nothing so ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. The writers of books in Europe seem to think themselves authorized to say what they please; and an ingenious philosopher among them has openly asserted, that he would undertake to persuade the whole republic of readers to believe, that the sun was neither the cause of light nor heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.-Farewell.

LETTER XVII.

To the same.

WERE an Asiatic politician to read the treaties of peace and friendship that have been annually making for more than an hundred years among the inhabitants of Europe, he would probably be surprised how it should ever happen that Christian princes could quarrel among each other. Their compacts for peace are drawn up with the utmost precision, and ratified with the greatest solemnity: to these each party promises a sincere and inviolable obedience, and all wears the appearance of open friendship and unreserved reconciliation.

Yet, notwithstanding those treaties, the people of Europe are almost continually