such zealous asserters. He said, "that new systems
of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even
those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles,
would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that
was determined."

I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient learned.
I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the governor to
call up Heliogabalus's cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not
show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot of Agesilaus
made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get down a second
spoonful.

The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were pressed by their
private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in seeing some
of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure, for two or three
hundred years past, in our own and other countries of Europe; and having
been always a great admirer of old illustrious families, I desired the
governor would call up a dozen or two of kings, with their ancestors in
order for eight or nine generations. But my disappointment was grievous
and unexpected. For, instead of a long train with royal diadems, I saw
in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers, and an Italian
prelate. In another, a barber, an abbot, and two cardinals. I have too
great a veneration for crowned heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a
subject. But as to counts, marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was
not so scrupulous. And I confess, it was not without some pleasure, that
I found myself able to trace the particular features, by which certain
families are distinguished, up to their originals. I could plainly
discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded
with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third
happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it
came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, _Nec vir
fortis_, _nec foemina casta_; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew
to be characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much
as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house,
which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity.
Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of
lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers,
players, captains, and