ne to
obstruct my salvation, I was received into the bosom of the church, and,
by way of penance, enjoined to walk barefoot to Rome in the habit of a
pilgrim.

"During my peregrination through Spain, I was detained as a spy, until
I could procure credentials from the Inquisition at Lisbon; and behaved
with such resolution and reserve, that, after being released, I
was deemed a proper person to be employed in quality of a secret
intelligencer at a certain court. This office I undertook without
hesitation; and being furnished with money and bills of credit, crossed
the Pyrenees, with intention to revenge myself upon the Spaniards for
the severities I had undergone during my captivity.

"Having therefore effectually disguised myself by a change of dress, and
a large patch on one eye, I hired an equipage, and appeared at Bologna
in quality of an itinerant physician; in which capacity I succeeded
tolerably well, till my servants decamped in the night with my baggage,
and left me in the condition of Adam. In short, I have travelled over
the greatest part of Europe, as a beggar, pilgrim, priest, soldier,
gamester, and quack; and felt the extremes of indigence and opulence,
with the inclemency of weather in all its vicissitudes. I have learned
that the characters of mankind are everywhere the same; that common
sense and honesty bear an infinitely small proportion to folly and vice;
and that life is at best a paltry province.

"After having suffered innumerable hardships, dangers, and disgraces, I
returned to London, where I lived some years in a garret, and picked up
a subsistence, such as it was, by vending purges in the streets, from
the back of a pied horse, in which situation I used to harangue the mob
in broken English, under pretence of being an High German doctor.

"At last an uncle died, by whom I inherited an estate of three hundred
pounds per annum, though, in his lifetime, he would not have parted with
a sixpence to save my soul and body from perdition.

"I now appear in the world, not as a member of any community, or what
is called a social creature, but merely as a spectator, who entertains
himself with the grimaces of a jack-pudding, and banquets his spleen in
beholding his enemies at loggerheads. That I may enjoy this disposition,
abstracted from all interruption, danger, and participation, I feign
myself deaf; an expedient by which I not only avoid all disputes and
their consequences, but also become master