s think
no more about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into
Norway--crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through the small
triangular province of Angermania to the lake of Bothmia; coasting along
it through east and west Bothnia, down to Carelia, and so on, through
all those states and provinces which border upon the far side of the
Gulf of Finland, and the north-east of the Baltick, up to Petersbourg,
and just stepping into Ingria;--then stretching over directly from
thence through the north parts of the Russian empire--leaving Siberia
a little upon the left hand, till we got into the very heart of Russian
and Asiatick Tartary.

Now through this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good
people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have
just left:--for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very
attentively, you may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of
wit, with a comfortable provision of good plain houshold judgment,
which, taking the quality and quantity of it together, they make a very
good shift with--and had they more of either the one or the other,
it would destroy the proper balance betwixt them, and I am satisfied
moreover they would want occasions to put them to use.

Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more
luxuriant island, where you perceive the spring-tide of our blood and
humours runs high--where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy,
and lechery, and other whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and
subject to reason--the height of our wit, and the depth of our judgment,
you see, are exactly proportioned to the length and breadth of our
necessities--and accordingly we have them sent down amongst us in such a
flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no one thinks he has
any cause to complain.

It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot
and cold--wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular
and settled way;--so that sometimes for near half a century together,
there shall be very little wit or judgment either to be seen or heard of
amongst us:--the small channels of them shall seem quite dried up--then
all of a sudden the sluices shall break out, and take a fit of running
again like fury--you would think they would never stop:--and then it is,
that in writing, and fighting, and twenty other gallant things, we drive
all the world before us.

It is by thes