inly have found that highly unobjectionable
publication, "Rasselas," and the "Spectator," or "Lives of Royal and
Illustrious Personages," but, of a surety, no Mary Flanders; so when
Lavengro met with Peter Williams, he would have been unprovided with a
balm to cure his ulcerated mind, and have parted from him in a way not
quite so satisfactory as the manner in which he took his leave of him;
for it is certain that he might have read "Rasselas," and all other
unexceptionable works to be found in the library of Albemarle Street,
over and over again, before he would have found any cure in them for the
case of Peter Williams. Therefore the author requests the reader to drop
any squeamish nonsense he may wish to utter about Mary Flanders, and the
manner in which Peter Williams was cured.

And now with respect to the old man who knew Chinese, but could not tell
what was o'clock. This individual was a man whose natural powers would
have been utterly buried and lost beneath a mountain of sloth and
laziness, had not God determined otherwise. He had in his early years
chalked out for himself a plan of life in which he had his own ease and
self-indulgence solely in view; he had no particular bad passions to
gratify, he only wished to live a happy quiet life, just as if the
business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond
of ease or quiet, or that Providence would permit innocent quiet drones
to occupy any portion of the earth and to cumber it. God had at any rate
decreed that this man should not cumber it as a drone. He brings a
certain affliction upon him, the agony of which produces that terrible
whirling of the brain which, unless it is stopped in time, produces
madness; he suffers indescribable misery for a period, until one morning
his attention is arrested, and his curiosity is aroused, by certain
Chinese letters on a teapot; his curiosity increases more and more, and,
of course, in proportion as his curiosity is increased with respect to
the Chinese marks, the misery in his brain, produced by his mental
affliction, decreases. He sets about learning Chinese, and after the
lapse of many years, during which his mind subsides into a certain state
of tranquillity, he acquires sufficient knowledge of Chinese to be able
to translate with ease the inscriptions to be found on its singular
crockery. Yes, the laziest of human beings, through the Providence of
God, a being too of rather inferior capacity,