What a fatal thing is the popular pride of a free city! cries one historian --The _Strasburgers_ deemed it a diminution of their freedom to receive an imperial garrison----so fell a prey to a _French_ one. The fate, says another, of the _Strasburgers_, may be a warning to all free people to save their money. ------They anticipated their revenues----brought themselves under taxes, exhausted their strength, and in the end became so weak a people, they had not strength to keep their gates shut, and so the _French_ pushed them open. Alas! alas! cries _Slawkenbergius_, ’twas not the _French_, ----’twas CURIOSITY pushed them open ------The _French_ indeed, who are ever upon the catch, when they saw the _Strasburgers_, men, women, and children, all marched out to follow the stranger’s nose----each man followed his own, and marched in. Trade and manufactures have decayed and gradually grown down ever since--but not from any cause which commercial heads have assigned; for it is owing to this only, that Noses have ever so run in their heads, that the _Strasburgers_ could not follow their business. Alas! alas! cries _Slawkenbergius_, making an exclamation--it is not the first----and I fear will not be the last fortress that has been either won----or lost by NOSES. The End Of _Slawkenbergius’s_ TALE [Footnote 4.1: As _Hafen Slawkenbergius de Nasis_ is extremely scarce, it may not be unacceptable to the learned reader to see the specimen of a few pages of his original; I will make no reflection upon it, but that his story-telling Latin is much more concise than his philosophic--and, I think, has more of Latinity in it.] [Footnote 4.2: _Hafen Slawkenbergius_ means the Benedictine nuns of _Cluny_, founded in the year 940, by _Odo_, abbé de _Cluny_.] [Footnote 4.3: Mr. _Shandy’s_ compliments to orators----is very sensible that _Slawkenbergius_ has here changed his metaphor------which he is very guilty of: ----that as a translator, Mr. _Shandy_ has all along done what he could to make him stick to it--but that here ’twas impossible.]