ng nobody
to speak to, by reading some very amusing "Conversations on Political
Economy." But he sinks to rise again. He obtains many pupils, who had
no sooner mastered the first principles of science, than they began to
throw off their retired habits and uncommunicative manners. "Being not
utterly ignorant of some of the rudiments of knowledge, and consequently
having completed their education, it was now their duty, as members of
society, to instruct and not to study; and on all occasions they seized
opportunities of assisting the spread of knowledge. The voices of boys
lecturing upon every lecturable topic, resounded in every part of the
island. Their tones were so shrill, their manners so presuming, their
knowledge so crude, and their general demeanour so completely unamiable,
that it was impossible to hear them without the greatest, delight,
advantage, and admiration." The king at last becomes impregnated with
the liberal spirit of the age; Popanilla is "sent for" to court; he is
overpowered with promotion, told that "with the aid of a treatise or
two," he will make "a consummate naval commander," although he has
"never been at sea in the whole course of his life," and at length
thrust into a canoe, with some fresh water, bread, fruit, dried fish,
and a basket of alligator pears. "Unhappy Popanilla! and all from that
unlucky lock of hair!" His fright is ludicrously sketched. "Poor fellow!
how could he know better? He certainly had enjoyed a seat at the
Admiralty Board of Fantaisie, but then he was a lay-lord." Among his
discoveries, on the second day, at 25 m. past 3 p.m., though at a
considerable distance, he saw a mountain and an island: he called the
first Alligator Mountain, in gratitude to the pears; and christened the
second after his mistress; but the happy discoverer further found the
mountain to be a mist, and the island a sea-weed. At length, on the
third day, after being in a valley formed by two waves, each 3,000 feet
high, and in as tremendous a tempest as ever raged in Chelsea or
Battersea-reach, "great, square and solid, black clouds drew off like
curtains, and revealed to him a magnificent city rising out of the sea.
Tower and dome, arch, and column, and spire, and obelisk, and lofty
terraces, and many-windowed palaces, rose in all directions from a mass
of building, which appeared each instant to grow more huge, till at
length it seemed to occupy the whole horizon." On his landing he is
pestered wit