ons of the four
great monarchies; and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian,
floats as _first_ in my fancy. I make the widest conjectures
concerning Egypt, and her shepherd kings. My friend _M._, with great
painstaking, got me to think I understood the first proposition in
Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely
unacquainted with the modern languages; and, like a better man than
myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to the
shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers--not from
the circumstance of my being town-born--for I should have brought the
same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I first seen it
in "on Devon's leafy shores,"--and am no less at a loss among purely
town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes.--Not that I affect
ignorance--but my head has not many mansions, nor spacious; and I have
been obliged to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold
without aching. I sometimes wonder, how I have passed my probation
with so little discredit in the world, as I have done, upon so meagre
a stock. But the fact is, a man may do very well with a very little
knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed company; every body is so
much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your
acquisitions. But in a _tete-a-tete_ there is no shuffling. The truth
will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as the being left
alone for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed man,
that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this sort.--

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and Shacklewell, the
coach stopped to take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the wrong
side of thirty, who was giving his parting directions (while the
steps were adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth,
who seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor his servant, but
something partaking of all three. The youth was dismissed, and
we drove on. As we were the sole passengers, he naturally enough
addressed his conversation to me; and we discussed the merits of the
fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver; the circumstance of
an opposition coach having been lately set up, with the probabilities
of its success--to all which I was enabled to return pretty
satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette
by some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage
aforesaid--