"do you want all this money?"-"Indeed I never wanted it more," returned I. I am sorry for that," cries the scrivener, "with all my heart; for they who want money when they come to borrow, will always want money when they should come to pay."

'From him I flew with indignation to one of the best friends I had in the world, and made the same request. "Indeed, Mr Dry-bone," cries my friend, "I always thought it would come to this. You know, sir, I would not advise you but for your own good; but your conduct has hitherto been ridiculous in the highest degree, and some of your acquaintance always thought you a very silly fellow. Let me see, you want two hundred pounds. Do you only want two hundred, sir, exactly?" "To confess a a truth," returned I, "I shall want three hundred; but then I have another friend, from whom I can borrow the rest."-" Why then," replied my friend, "if you would take my advice (and you know I should not presume to advise you but for your own good) I would recommend it to you to borrow the whole sum from that other friend, and then one note will serve for all, you know."

'Poverty now began to come fast upon me; yet instead of growing more provident and cautious as I grew poor, I became every day more indolent and simple. A friend was arrested for fifty pounds; I was unable to extricate him except by becoming his bail: when at liberty he fled from his creditors, and left me to take his place. In prison I expected greater satisfaction than I had enjoyed at large. I hoped to converse with men in this new world simple and believing like myself; but I found them as cunning and as cautious as those in the world I had left behind. They spunged up my money whilst it lasted, borrowed my coals and never paid for them, and cheated me. when I played at cribbage. All this was done because they believed me to be very good-natured, and knew that I had no harm in me.

'Upon my first entrance into this mansion, which is to some the abode of despair, I felt no sensations different from those I experienced abroad. I was now on one side the door, and those who were unconfined were on the other; this was all the difference between us. At first, indeed, I felt some uneasiness, in considering how I should be able to provide this week for the wants of the week ensuing; but after some time, if I found myself sure of eating one day, I never troubled my head how I was to be supplied another. I seized every precarious meal with the utmost good-humour; indulged no rants of spleen at my situation; never called down heaven and all the stars to behold me dining upon a halfpenny-worth of radishes; my very companions were taught to believe that I liked salad better than mutton. I contented myself with thinking, that all my life I should either eat

white bread or brown; considered that all that happened was best; laughed when I was not in pain, took the world as it went, and read Tacitus often, for want of more books and company.

'How long I might have continued in this torpid state of simplicity I cannot tell, had I not been roused by seeing an old acquaintance, whom I knew to be a prudent blockhead, preferred to a place in the government. I now found that I had pursued a wrong track, and that the true way of being able to relieve others, was first to aim at independence myself; my immediate care, therefore, was to leave my present habitation, and make an entire reformation in my conduct and behaviour. For a free, open, undesigning deportment, I put on that of closeness, prudence, and economy. One of the most heroic actions I ever performed, and for which I shall praise myself as long as I live, was the refusing half-a-crown to an old acquaintance, at the time when he wanted it, and I had it to spare; for this alone I deserve to be decreed an ovation.

'I now, therefore, pursued a course of uninterrupted frugality, seldom wanted a dinner, and was, consequently, invited to twenty. I soon began to get the character of a saving hunks that had money, and insensibly grew into esteem. Neighbours have asked my advice in the disposal of their daughters; and I have always taken care not to give any. I have contracted a friendship with an alderman, only by observing, that if we take a farthing from a thousand pounds, it will be a thousand pounds no longer. I have been invited to a pawnbroker's table, by pretending to hate gravy; and am now actually upon treaty of marriage with a rich widow, for only having observed that the bread was rising. If ever I am asked a question, whether I know it or not, instead of answering, I only smile and look wise. If a charity is proposed, I go about with the hat, but put nothing in myself. If a wretch solicits my pity, I observe that the world is filled with impostors; and take a certain method of not being deceived, by never relieving. In short, I now find the truest way of finding esteem even from the indigent, is to give away nothing, and thus have much in our power to give.'

LETTER X.

AN INVITATION TO DINNER.

I AM disgusted, O Fum Hoam, even to sickness disgusted. Is it possible to bear the presumption of those islanders, when they pretend to instruct me in the ceremonies of China? They lay it down as a maxim, that every person who comes from thence must express himself in metaphor; swear by Alla, rail against wine, and behave and talk and write like a Turk or Persian. They make no distinction between our elegant manners, and the voluptuous barbarities of our eastern neighbours. Wherever I come, I raise either diffidence or astonishment: some fancy me no Chinese, because I am formed more like a man than a monster; and others wonder to find one, born five thousand miles from England, endued with common sense. Strange, say they, that a man who has received his education at such a distance from London should have common sense; to be born out of England, and yet have common sense! impossible! He must be some Englishman in disguise; his very visage has nothing of the true exotic barbarity.

I yesterday received an invitation from a lady of distinction, who it seems had collected all her knowledge of eastern manners from fictions every day propagated here under the titles of eastern tales and oriental histories: she received me very politely, but seemed to wonder that I neglected bringing opium and a tobaccobox. When chairs were drawn for the rest of the company, I was assigned my place on a cushion on the floor. It was in vain that I protested the Chinese used chairs as in Europe; she understood decorums too well to entertain me with the ordinary civilities.

I had scarcely been seated according to her directions, when the footman was ordered to pin a napkin under my chin; this I protested against, as being no way Chinese; however, the whole company, who it seems were a club of connoisseurs, gave it unanimously against me, and the napkin was pinned accordingly.

It was impossible to be angry with people who seemed to err only from an excess of politeness, and I sat contented, expecting their importunities were now at an end; but as soon as ever dinner was served, the lady demanded whether I was for a plate of bear's claws, or a slice of bird's nests? As these were dishes with which I was utterly unacquainted, I was desirous of eating only what I knew, and therefore begged to be helped from a piece of beef that lay on the side-table: my request at once disconcerted

the whole company. A Chinese eat beef! that could never be ! there was no local propriety in Chinese beef, whatever there might be in Chinese pheasant. Sir,' said my entertainer, 'I think I have some reason to fancy myself a judge of these matters in short, the Chinese never eat beef; so that I must be permitted to recommend the pilaw. There was never better dressed at Pekin; the saffron and rice are well boiled, and the spices in perfection.'

I had no sooner begun to eat what was laid before me, than I found the whole company as much astonished as before; it seems I made no use of my chop-sticks. A grave gentleman, whom I take to be an author, harangued very learnedly (as the company seemed to think) upon the use which was made of them in China. He entered into a long argument with himself about their first introduction, without once appealing to me, who might be supposed best capable of silencing the inquiry. As the gentleman, therefore, took my silence for a mark of his own superior sagacity, he was resolved to pursue the triumph: he talked of our cities, mountains, and animals, as familiarly as if he had been born in Quamsi, but as erroneously as if a native of the moon. He attempted to prove that I had nothing of the true Chinese cut in my visage; showed that my cheek-bones should have been higher, and my forehead broader. In short, he almost reasoned me out of my country, and effectually persuaded the rest of the company to be of his opinion.

I was going to expose his mistakes, when it was insisted that I had nothing of the true eastern manner in my delivery. This gentleman's conversation,' says one of the ladies, who was a great reader, is like our own, mere chit-chat and common sense: there is nothing like sense in the true eastern style, where nothing more is required but sublimity. Oh! for a history of Abulfaouris, the grand voyager, of genii, magicians, rocks, bags of bullets, giants and enchanters, where all is great, obscure, magnificent, and unintelligible!'-'I have written many a sheet of eastern tale myself,' interrupts the author, and I defy the severest critic to say but that I have stuck close to the true manner. I have compared a lady's chin to the snow upon the mountains of Bomek; a soldier's sword, to the clouds that obscure the face of heaven. If riches are mentioned, I compare them to the flocks that graze the verdant Tefflis; if poverty, to the mists that veil the brow of mount Baku. I have used thee and thou upon all occasions; I have described fallen stars, and splitting mountains; not forgetting the little Houries, who make a pretty feature in every description: but you shall hear how I generally begin. "Eben-ben-bolo, who was the son of Ban, was born on the foggy summits of Bendera

bassi. His beard was whiter than the feathers which veil the breast of the penguin; his eyes were like the eyes of doves, when washed by the dews of the morning; his hair, which hung like the willow weeping over the glassy stream, was so beautiful that it seemed to reflect its own brightness; and his feet were as the feet of a wild deer which fleeth to the tops of the mountains." There, there is the true eastern taste for you! every advance made towards sense is only a deviation from sound. Eastern tales should always be sonorous, lofty, musical, and unmeaning.'

I could not avoid smiling to hear a native of England attempt to instruct me in the true eastern idiom; and after he looked round for some time for applause, I presumed to ask him whether he had ever travelled into the East; to which he replied in the negative. I demanded whether he understood Chinese or Arabic to which also he answered as before. Then how, sir,' said I, can you pretend to determine upon the eastern style, who are entirely unacquainted with the eastern writings? Take, sir, the word of one who is professedly a Chinese, and who is actually acquainted with the Arabian writers, that what is palmed upon you daily for an imitation of eastern writing, no way resembles their manner, either in sentiment or diction. In the East, similes are seldom used, and metaphors almost wholly unknown; but in China, particularly, the very reverse of what you allude to takes place: a cool phlegmatic method of writing prevails there. The writers of that country, ever more assiduous to instruct than to please, address rather the judgment than the fancy. Unlike many authors of Europe, who have no consideration of the reader's time, they generally leave more to be understood than they express.

'Besides, sir, you must not expect from an inhabitant of China, the same ignorance, the same unlettered simplicity, that you find in a Turk, Persian, or a native of Peru. The Chinese are versed in the sciences as well as you, and are masters of several arts unknown to the people of Europe. Many of them are instructed not only in their own national learning, but are perfectly well aequainted with the languages and learning of the West. If my word in such a case is not to be taken, consult your own travellers on this head, who affirm that the scholars of Pekin and Siam sustain theological theses in Latin. "The college of Masprend, which is but a league from Siam," says one of your travellers, came in a body to salute our ambassador. Nothing gave me more sincere pleasure than to behold a number of priests, venerable both from age and modesty, followed by a number of youths of all nations, Chinese, Japanese, Tonquinese, of Cochin China, Pegu, and Siam, all willing to pay their respects in the most polite manner ima

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