finest shops.
Suppose, for example, if, instead of going to London Bridge to read, he
had gone to Albemarle Street, and had received from the proprietors of
the literary establishment in that very fashionable street permission to
read the publications on the tables of the saloons there, does the reader
think he would have met any balm in those publications for the case of
Peter Williams? does the reader suppose that he would have found Mary
Flanders there? He would certainly 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 the
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 lead an easy, quiet life, just as if the
business of this mighty world could be carried on by innocent people fond
of ease and 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