have no occafion to ufe it; my happiness it cannot improve, for I have already all that I want.

My paffage by fea from Rotterdam to England was more painful to me than all the journies I ever made on land. I have traverfed the immeasurable wilds of Mogul Tartary; felt all the rigours of Siberian fkies; I have had my repofe an hundred times difturbed by invading favages, and have feen, without fhrinking, the defart fands rife like a troubled ocean all around me; against these calamities I was armed with refolution; but in my paffage to England, though nothing occurred that gave the mariners any uneafinefs, to one who was never at fea before, all was a fubject of aftonishment and terror. To find the land disappear, to see our thip mount the waves fwift as an arrow from the Tartar bow, to hear the wind howling through the cordage, to feel a ficknefs which depreffes even the spirits of the brave; these were unexpected diftreffes, and confequently affaulted me unprepared to receive them.

You men of Europe think nothing of a voyage by fea. With us of China, a man who has been from fight of land is regarded upon his return with admiration. I have known fome provinces where there is not even a name for the ocean. What a strange people therefore am I got amongft, who have founded an empire on this unstable element, who build cities upon billows that rife higher than the mountains of Tipartala, and make the deep more formidable than the wildest tempeft.

Such accounts as thefe, I muft confefs, were my firft motives for feeing England. Thefe induced me to undertake a journey of feven hundred painful days, in order to examine its opulence, buildings, fciences, arts and manufactures, on the fpot. Judge then my disappointment on entering London, to fee no figns of that opulence fo much talked of abroad;

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wherever

wherever I turn, I am prefented with a gloomy folemnity in the houses, the ftreets and the inhabitants; none of that beautiful gilding which makes a principal ornament in Chinese architecture. The ftreets of Nankin are fometimes ftrewed with gold leaf; very different are those of London: in the midst of their pavements, a great lazy puddle moves muddily along; heavy-laden machines, with wheels of unwieldy thicknefs, crowd up every paffage; fo that a ftranger, inftead of finding time for obfervation, is often happy if he has time to escape from being crushed to pieces.

The houses borrow very few ornaments from architecture; their chief decoration feems to be a paltry piece of painting, hung out at their doors or windows, at once a proof of their indigence and vanity their vanity, in each having one of those pictures exposed to public view; and their indigence, in being unable to get them better painted. In this refpect, the fancy of their painters is alfo deplorable. Could you believe it? I have feen five black lions and three blue boars in lefs than the circuit of half a mile; and yet you know that animals of thefe colours are no where to be found except in the wild imaginations of Europe.

From thefe circumftances in their buildings, and from the difmal looks of the inhabitants, I am induced to conclude that the nation is actually poor; and that, like the Perfians, they make a fplendid figure every where but at home. The proverb of Xixofou is, that a man's riches may be feen in his eyes; if we judge of the English by this rule, there is not a poorer nation under the fun.

I have been here but two days, fo will not be hafty in my decifions; fuch letters as I fhall write to Fipfihi in Moscow, I beg you'll endeavour to forward with all diligence; I fhall fend them open, in order that you may take copies or tranflations, as

you

you are equally verfed in the Dutch and Chinese languages. Dear friend, think of my absence with regret, as I fincerely regret yours; even while I write, I lament our feparation. Farewell.

LETTER III.

From Lien Chi Altangi, to the care of Fipfibi, refident in Moscow; to be forwarded by the Ruffian caravan to Fum Hoam, first president of the ceremonial Academy at Pekin in China.

THINK not, O thou guide of my youth, that abfence can impair my refpect, or interpofing tracklefs defarts blot your reverend figure from my memory. The farther I travel I feel the pain of feparation with ftronger force; thofe ties that bind me to my native country, and you, are ftill unbroken. By every remove, I only drag a greater length of chain *.

Could I find aught worth tranfmitting from so remote a region as this to which I have wandered, I fhould gladly fend it; but, inftead of this, you must be contented with a renewal of my former profeffions, and an imperfect account of a people with whom I am as yet but fuperficially acquainted. The remarks of a man who has been but three days in the country can only be thofe obvious circumstances which force themselves upon the imagination: I confider myself here as a newly-created Being introduced into a new world; every object ftrikes with wonder and furprife. The imagination, ftill unfated, seems the only active principle of the * We find a repetition of this beautiful and affecting image in the Traveller:

And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.'

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mind.

mind. The moft trifling occurrences give pleasure, till the glofs of novelty is worn away. When I have ceafed to wonder, I may poffibly grow wife; I may then call the reafoning principle to my aid, and compare thofe objects with each other, which were before examined without reflection.

Behold me then in London, gazing at the ftrangers, and they at me; it feems they find fomewhat abfurd in my figure; and had I been never from home it is poffible I might find an infinite fund of ridicule in theirs; but by long travelling I am taught to laugh at folly alone, and to find nothing truly ridiculous but villainy and vice.

When I had juft quitted my native country, and croffed the Chinese wall, I fancied every deviation from the customs and manners of China was a departing from nature: I fmiled at the blue lips and red foreheads of the Tonguefe; and could hardly contain when I faw the Daures drefs their heads with horns. The Oftiacs powdered with red earth; and the Calmuck beauties, tricked out in all the finery of theep-fkin, appeared highly ridiculous ; but I foon perceived that the ridicule lay not in them but in me; that I falfely condemned others for abfurdity, because they happened to differ from a ftandard originally founded in prejudice or partiality.

I find no pleasure therefore in taxing the English with departing from Nature in their external appearance, which is all I yet know of their character; it is poffible they only endeavour to improve her fimple plan, fince every extravagance in drefs proceeds from a defire of becoming more beautiful than Nature made us; and this is fo harmless a vanity that I not only pardon but approve it: a defire to be more excellent than others is what actually makes us fo, and, as thousands find a livelihood in fociety by fuch appetites, none but the ignorant inveigh against them.

You

-You are not infenfible, moft reverend Fum Hoam, what numberless trades, even among the Chinese, fubfift by the harmless pride of each other. Your nofe-borers, feet-fwathers, tooth-ftainers, eye-brow pluckers, would all want bread, fhould their neighbours want vanity. Thefe vanities, however, employ much fewer hands in China than in England; and a fine gentleman, or a fine lady, here dreffed up to the fashion, feems fcarcely to have a fingle limb that does not fuffer fome diftortions from art.

To make a fine gentleman, feveral trades are required, but chiefly a barber: you have undoubtedly heard of the Jewish champion, whofe ftrength lay in his hair one would think that the English were for placing all wifdom there: to appear wife, nothing more is requifite here than for a man to borrow hair from the heads of all his neighbours, and clap it like a bush on his own: the diftributors of law and phyfic ftick on fuch quantities, that it is almoft impoffible, even in idea, to distinguish between the head and the hair.

Those whom I have been now defcribing affect the gravity of the lion: thofe I am going to defcribe more resemble the pert vivacity of fmaller animals. The barber, who is ftill mafter of the ceremonies, cuts their hair close to the crown; and then with a compofition of meal and hog's lard plafters the whole in fuch a manner, as to make it impoffible to diftinguish whether the patient wears a cap or a plaifter; but, to make the picture more perfectly ftriking, conceive the tail of fome beaft, a greyhound's tail, or a pig's tail for inftance, appended to the back of the head, and reaching down to that place where tails in other animals are generally feen to begin; thus betailed and bepowdered, the man of tafte fancies he improves in beauty, dreffes up his hard-featured face in fmiles, and attempts to look hideoufly tender. Thus equipped, he is qualified to make

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love,