The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 322, July 12, 1828Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 322, July 12, 1828
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
advantage, and admiration." The king at last becomes impregnated with
the liberal spirit of the age; Popanilla is "sent for" to court; he is
overpowered with promotion, told that "with the aid of a treatise or
two," he will make "a consummate naval commander," although he has
"never been at sea in the whole course of his life," and at length
thrust into a canoe, with some fresh water, bread, fruit, dried fish,
and a basket of alligator pears. "Unhappy Popanilla! and all from that
unlucky lock of hair!" His fright is ludicrously sketched. "Poor fellow!
how could he know better? He certainly had enjoyed a seat at the
Admiralty Board of Fantaisie, but then he was a lay-lord." Among his
discoveries, on the second day, at 25 m. past 3 p.m., though at a
considerable distance, he saw a mountain and an island: he called the
first Alligator Mountain, in gratitude to the pears; and christened the
second after his mistress; but the happy discoverer further found the
mountain to be a mist, and the island a sea-weed. At length, on the
third day, after being in a valley formed by two waves, each 3,000 feet
high, and in as tremendous a tempest as ever raged in Chelsea or
Battersea-reach, "great, square and solid, black clouds drew off like
curtains, and revealed to him a magnificent city rising out of the sea.
Tower and dome, arch, and column, and spire, and obelisk, and lofty
terraces, and many-windowed palaces, rose in all directions from a mass
of building, which appeared each instant to grow more huge, till at
length it seemed to occupy the whole horizon." On his landing he is
pestered with questions from the natives; but, thanks to the Hamiltonian
system, "Popanilla, under these circumstances, was more loquacious than
could have been Capt. Parry." He announces himself as the "most injured
of human beings;" the women weep, the men shake hands with him, and all
the boys huzza: he then narrates his ill-fortunes at Fantaisie, not
forgetting the never-enough-to-be-lamented lock of hair. Other danger
awaits him, for "to be strangled was not much better than to be starved;
and certainly with half a dozen highly respectable females clinging
round his neck, he was not reminded, for the first time in his life,
what a domestic bowstring is an affectionate woman." He is next joined
by an "influential personage," who informs him that he is in _Hubbabub_
(London)--the largest city, not only that exists, but that ever did
exist, and the capital of the Island of _Vraibleusia_, the most famous
island, not only that is known, but that ever was known. "He provides
himself with a purse, and exchanges his money with a banker, who offers
him during his stay in Vraibleusia, the use of a couple of equipages, a
villa, an opera box; insists upon sending to his hotel some pineapples
and very rare wine; and gives him a perpetual ticket to his
picture-gallery." Popanilla leaves his gold and takes the banker's pink
shells, for "no genteel person has ever anything else in his pocket."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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