lihood 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, tooth-stainers,
eyebrow-pluckers would all want bread should their neighbors want
vanity. These vanities, however, employ much fewer hands in China than
in England; and a fine gentleman or a fine lady here, drest up to the
fashion, seems scarcely to have a single limb that does not suffer
some distortions from art.

To make a fine gentleman, several trades are 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 neighbors
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 been now 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 that
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 horribly ugly; I
can hardly endure the sight of them; they no wa