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my repose a hundred times disturbed by invad ing savages, and have seen, without shrinking, the desert sands rise like a troubled ocean all around me. Against these calamities I was armed with resolution; but in my passage to England, though nothing occurred that gave the mariners any uneasiness, to one who was never at sea before all was a subject of astonishment and terror. To find the land disappear

The bearer of this is my friend, therefore let him be yours. He is a native of Honan in China, and one who did me signal services, when he was a mandarin, and I a factor, at Canton. By frequently conversing with the English there, he has learned the language, though entirely a stranger to their manners and customs. I am told he is a philosopher; I am sure he is an honest man: that to you will be his best recommendation, next to the considera--to see our ship mount the waves, swift as an tion of his being the friend of, Sir,

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London.

FRIEND OF MY HEART,-May the wings of peace rest upon thy dwelling, and the shield of conscience preserve thee from vice and misery! For all thy favours accept my gratitude and esteem, the only tributes a poor philosophic wanderer can return. Sure, fortune is resolved to make me unhappy, when she gives others a power of testifying their friendship by actions, and leaves me only words to express the sin cerity of mine.

I am perfectly sensible of the delicacy with which you endeavour to lessen your own merit and my obligations. By calling your late in stances of friendship only a return for former favours, you would induce me to impute to your justice what I owe to your generosity.

The services I did you at Canton, justice, humanity, and my office bade me perform; those you have done me since my arrival at

Amsterdam, no laws obliged you to, no justice required. Even half your favours would have been greater than my most sanguine expecta

tions.

The sum of money, therefore, which you privately conveyed into my baggage when I was leaving Holland, and which I was ignorant of till my arrival in London, I must beg leave to

return. You have been bred a merchant, and I a scholar; you consequently love money better than I. You can find pleasure in superfluity; I am perfectly content with what is sufficient. Take therefore what is yours: it may give you some pleasure, even though you have no occasion to use it; my happiness it cannot improve, for I have already all that I want.

land was

My passage by sea from Rotterdam to Engmore painful to me than all the journeys I ever made on land. I have traversed the immeasurable wilds of Mogul Tartary; felt all the rigours of Siberian skies: I have had

arrow from the Tartar bow-to hear the wind howling through the cordage-to feel a sickness which depresses even the spirits of the brave,-these were unexpected distresses, and consequently assaulted me, unprepared to receive them.

You men of Europe think nothing of a voyWith us of China a man who has age by sea. been from sight of land is regarded upon his return with admiration. I have known some provinces where there is not even a name for the ocean. What a strange people, therefore, am I got amongst, who have founded an empire on this unstable element, who build cities upon billows that rise higher than the mountains of Tipartala,1 and make the deep more formidable than the wildest tempest!

Such accounts as these, I must confess, were These my first motives for seeing England. hundred painful days, in order to examine its induced me to undertake a journey of seven

factures, on the spot. Judge, then, my disapopulence, buildings, sciences, arts, and manupointment on entering London, to see no signs wherever I turn I am presented with a gloomy of that opulence so much talked of abroad: solemnity in the houses, the streets, and the

inhabitants; none of that beautiful gilding architecture. The streets of Nankin are somewhich makes a principal ornament in Chinese times strewed with gold leaf; very different are those of London: in the midst of their pavement a great lazy puddle moves muddily along; thickness, crowd up every passage: so that a heavy-laden machines, with wheels of unwieldy stranger, instead of finding time for observation, 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 seems to be doors or windows,2 at once a proof of their a paltry piece of painting hung out at their indigence and vanity: their vanity, in each having one of those pictures exposed to public view; and their indigence, in being unable to

1 Unidentified.

2 House or door signs were formerly extensively used in London in place of numbers.

get them better painted. In this respect the fancy of their painters is also deplorable. Could you believe it? I have seen five black lions and three blue boars in less than the circuit of half a mile; and yet you know that animals of these colours are nowhere to be found, except in the wild imaginations of Europe.

From these circumstances in their buildings, and from the dismal looks of the inhabitants, I am induced to conclude that the nation is actually poor; and that, like the Persians, they make a splendid figure everywhere but at home. The proverb of Xixofou is, that a man's riches may be seen in his eyes: if we judge of the English by this rule, there is not a poorer nation under the sun.

pleasure till the gloss of novelty is worn away. When I have ceased to wonder, I may possibly grow wise; I may then call the reasoning principle to my aid, and compare those objects with each other, which were before examined without reflection.

Behold me, then, in London, gazing at the strangers, and they at me. It seems they find somewhat absurd in my figure; and had I never been from home, it is possible 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 just quitted my native country, and crossed the Chinese wall, I fancied every deviation from the customs and manners of I have been here but two days, so will not China was a departing from nature. I smiled be hasty in my decisions. Such letters as I at the blue lips and red foreheads of the shall write to Fipsihi in Moscow I beg you will Tonguese; 3 and could hardly contain when I endeavor to forward with all diligence; I shall saw the Daures dress their heads with horns. send them open, in order that you may take The Ostiacs5 powdered with red earth, and the copies or translations, as you are equally versed | Calmucks beauties, tricked out in all the finery in the Dutch and Chinese languages. Dear of sheepskin, appeared highly ridiculous. But friend, think of my absence with regret, as II soon perceived that the ridicule lay not in sincerely regret yours; even while I write, I lament our separation. Farewell.

LETTER III

From Lien Chi Altangi to the care of Fipsihi, resident in Moscow; to be forwarded by the Russian caravan to Fum Hoam, First President of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China. THINK not, O thou guide of my youth, that absence can impair my respect, or interposing trackless deserts blot your reverend figure from my memory. The farther I travel I feel the pain of separation with stronger force; those ties that bind me to my native country and you are still unbroken. By every remove I only drag a greater length of chain.

them but in me; that I falsely condemned others for absurdity, because they happened to differ from a standard 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 possible they only endeavour to improve her simple plan, since every extravagance in dress proceeds from a desire of and this is so harmless a vanity, that I not only becoming more beautiful than nature made us; pardon, but approve it. A desire to be more excellent than others is what actually makes us so; and as thousands find a livelihood in society

by such appetites, none but the ignorant inveigh

against them.

You are not insensible, most reverend Fum Hoam, what numberless trades, even among the Chinese, subsist by the harmless pride of each other. Your nose-borers, feet-swathers, teethstainers, eyebrow-pluckers, would all want bread, should their neighbours want vanity. These vanities, however, employ much fewer hands in China than in England; and a fine gentleman or a fine lady here, dressed up to the fashion, seems scarcely to have a single limb that does not suffer some distortions from art.

Could I find aught worth transmitting from so remote a region as this to which I have wandered, I should gladly send it; but, instead of this, you must be contented with a renewal of my former professions, and an imperfect account of a people with whom I am as yet but superficially acquainted. The remarks of a man who has been but three days in the country can only be those obvious circumstances which force themselves upon the imagination. I consider myself here as a newly created being introduced into a new world. Every object strikes with wonder and surprise. The imagination, still unsated, seems the only active principle of the mind. The most trifling occurrences give & Western Mongols.

To make a fine gentleman several trades are 3 The Tunguses, Mongolians of eastern Siberia. 4 The Daurians, in Manchuria. 5 A tribe of western Siberia.

required, but chiefly a barber. You have undoubtedly heard of the Jewish champion? whose strength lay in his hair. One would think that the English were for placing all wisdom there. To appear wise, nothing more is requisite 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 distributors of law and physic stick on such quantities, that it is almost impossible, even in idea, to distinguish between the head and the hair.

Those whom I have now been describing affect the gravity of the lion; those I am going to describe more resemble the pert vivacity of smaller animals. The barber, who is still master of the ceremonies, cuts their hair close to the crown; and then, with a composition of meal and hog's-lard, plasters the whole in such a manner as to make it impossible to distinguish whether the patient wears a cap or a plaster; but, to make the picture more perfectly striking, conceive the tail of some beast, a greyhound's tail, or a pig's tail, for instance, appended to the back of the head, and reaching down to the place where tails in other animals are generally seen to begin; thus betailed and bepowdered, the man of taste fancies he improves in beauty, dresses up his hard-featured face in smiles, and attempts to look hideously tender. Thus equipped, he is qualified to make love, and hopes for success more from the powder on the outside of his head than the sentiments within.

Yet when I consider what sort of a creature the fine lady is to whom he is supposed to pay his addresses, it is not strange to find him thus equipped in order to please. She is herself every whit as fond of powder, and tails, and hog's lard, as he. To speak my secret sentiments, most reverend Fum, the ladies here are horridly ugly; I can hardly endure the sight of them; they no way resemble the beauties of China: the Europeans have a quite different idea of beauty from us. When I reflect on the small-footed perfections of an Eastern beauty, how is it possible I should have eyes for a woman whose feet are ten inches long? I shall never forget the beauties of my native city of Nangfew. How very broad their faces! how very short their noses! how very little their eyes! how very thin their lips! how very black their teeth! the snow on the tops of Baos is not fairer than their cheeks; and their eyebrows are small as the line by the pencil of Quamsi. Here a lady with such perfections would be frightful. Dutch and Chinese beauties, indeed, 7 Samson (Judges xvi, 17)

have some resemblance, but English women are entirely different; red cheeks, big eyes, and teeth of a most odious whiteness, are not only seen here, but wished for; and then they have such masculine feet, as actually serve some for walking!

Yet, uncivil as nature has been, they seem resolved to outdo her in unkindness: they use white powder, blue powder, and black powder for their hair, and a red powder for the face on some particular occasions.

They like to have the face of various colours, as among the Tartars of Koreki,s frequently sticking on, with spittle, little black patches on every part of it, except on the tip of the nose, which I have never seen with a patch. You'll have a better idea of their manner of placing these spots when I have finished a map of an English face patched up to the fashion, which shall shortly be sent to increase your curious collection of paintings, medals, and monsters.

But what surprises more than all the rest is what I have just now been credibly informed of by one of this country. "Most ladies here,'' says he, "have two faces; one face to sleep in, and another to show in company. The first is generally reserved for the husband and family at home; the other put on to please strangers abroad. The family face is often indifferent enough, but the out-door one looks something better; this is always made at the toilet, where the looking-glass and toad-eater sit in council, and settle the complexion of the day."

I cannot ascertain the truth of this remark: however, it is actually certain that they wear more clothes within doors than without; and I have seen a lady, who seemed to shudder at a breeze in her own apartment, appear half naked in the streets. Farewell.

LETTER IV

To the Same

THE English seem as silent as the Japanese, yet vainer than the inhabitants of Siam. Upon my arrival I attributed that reserve to modesty, which, I now find, has its origin in pride. Condescend to address them first, and you are sure of their acquaintance; stoop to flattery, and you conciliate their friendship and esteem. They bear hunger, cold, fatigue, and all the miseries of life, without shrinking; danger only calls forth their fortitude; they even exult in calamity: but contempt is what they cannot bear. An Englishman fears contempt more 8 Unidentified: possibly invented. flattering attendant

than death; he often flies to death as a refuge from its pressure, and dies when he fancies the world has ceased to esteem him.

Pride seems the source not only of their national vices, but of their national virtues also. An Englishman is taught to love his king as his friend, but to acknowledge no other master than the laws which himself has contributed to enact. He despises those nations who, that one may be free, are all content to be slaves; who first lift a tyrant into terror, and then shrink under his power as if delegated from Heaven. Liberty is echoed in all their assemblies: and thousands might be found ready to offer up their lives for the sound, though perhaps not one of all the number understands its meaning. The lowest mechanic, however, looks upon it as his duty to be a watchful guardian of his country's freedom, and often uses a language that might seem haughty even in the mouth of the great emperor who traces his ancestry to the Moon.

A few days ago, passing by one of their prisons, I could not avoid stopping, in order to listen to a dialogue which I thought might afford me some entertainment. The conversa tion was carried on between a debtor through the grate of his prison, a porter who had stopped to rest his burden, and a soldier at the window. The subject was upon a threatened invasion from France, and each seemed extremely anxious to rescue his country from the impending danger. "For my part," cries the prisoner, "the greatest of my apprehensions is for our freedom; if the French should conquer, what would become of English liberty? My dear friends, liberty is the Englishman's prerogative; we must preserve that at the expense of our lives; of that the French shall never deprive us. It is not to be expected that men who are slaves themselves would preserve our freedom should they happen to conquer." "Ay. slaves,' cries the porter, "they are all slaves, fit only to carry burdens, every one of them. Before I would stoop to slavery may this be my poison (and he held the goblet in his hand), may this be my poison-but I would sooner list for a soldier."

his lips, and confirmed his sentiments with a ceremony of the most persevering devotion.

In short, every man here pretends to be a politician; even the fair sex are sometimes found to mix the severity of national altercation with the blandishments of love, and often become conquerors by more weapons of destruction than their eyes.

This universal passion for politics is gratified by daily gazettes, as with us in China. But as in ours the emperor endeavours to instruct his people, in theirs the people endeavour to instruct the administration. You must not, however, imagine that they who compile these papers have any actual knowledge of the polities or the government of a state; they only collect their materials from the oracle of some coffee-house, which oracle has himself gathered them the night before from a beau at a gaming-table, who has pillaged his knowledge from a great man's porter, who has had his information from the great man's gentleman, 10 who has invented the whole story for his own amusement the night preceding.

The English, in general, seem fonder of gaining the esteem than the love of those they converse with. This gives a formality to their amusements: their gayest conversations have something too wise for innocent relaxation: though in company you are seldom disgusted with the absurdity of a fool, you are seldom lifted into rapture by those strokes of vivacity which give instant though not permanent pleasure.

What they want, however, in gaiety, they make up in politeness. You smile at hearing me praise the English for their politeness; you who have heard very different accounts from the missionaries at Pekin, who have seen such a different behaviour in their merchants and seamen at home. But I must still repeat it, the English seem more polite than any of their neighbours; their great art in this respect lies in endeavouring, while they oblige, to lessen the force of the favour. Other countries are fond of obliging a stranger; but seem desirous that he should be sensible of the obligation. The English confer their kindness with an appearance of indifference, and give away benefits with an air as if they despised them.

The soldier, taking the goblet from his friend, with much awe fervently cried out, "It is not so much our liberties, as our religion, Walking, a few days ago, between an English that would suffer by such a change: ay, our and a French man, into the suburbs of the city, religion, my lads. May the devil sink me into we were overtaken by a heavy shower of rain, flames (such was the solemnity of his adjura-I was unprepared; but they had each large tion), if the French should come over, but our coats, which defended them from what seemed religion would be utterly undone!'' So saying,

instead of a libation, he applied the goblet to 10 valet

to me a perfect inundation. The Englishman, The young contending as the old surveyed; 20 seeing me shrink from the weather, accosted me And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground, thus: "Pshaw, man, what dost shrink at? And sleights of art and feats of strength went Here, take this coat; I don't want it; I find it round! no way useful to me; I had as lief be without it." The Frenchman began to show his politeness in turn. "My dear friend," cries he, "why won't you oblige me by making use of my coat! You see how well it defends me from the rain; I should not choose to part with it to others, but to such a friend as you I could even part with my skin to do him service.'

From such minute instances as these, most reverend Fum Hoam, I am sensible your sagacity will collect instruction. The volume of nature is the book of knowledge; and he becomes most wise who makes the most judicious selection. Farewell.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE *

SWEET AUBURN! loveliest village of the plain,

Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,

Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,

10

How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,
The decent church that topt the neighbouring
hill,

The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,

For talking age and whispering lovers made!
How often have I blest the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree,
While many a pastime circled in the shade,

1 Probably Lissoy, where Goldsmith spent his childhood.

This poem was inspired by Goldsmith's conviction of the steady depopulation of Ireland. In the letter in which he inscribed the poem to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he wrote: "In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries: and here also I expect a shout of modern

politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages. Still, I must continue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states by which SO many vices are introduced, and SO many kingdoms have been undone."

And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;
The dancing pair that simply sought renown
By holding out to tire each other down;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place;
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,
The matron's glance that would those looks

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These were thy charms, sweet village! sports like these,

With sweet succession, taught even toi to please;

These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed;

These were thy charms-but all these charms are fled.

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;

Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green:
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 40
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But choked with sedges, works its weedy way;
Along thy glades, a solitary guest,
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,

And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering
wall;

And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler 's hand,

Far, far away, thy children leave the land. 50
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade—
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
A time there was, ere England's griefs
began,

When every rood of ground maintained its

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