Will it be believed, that, as the Chinese ceremonial requires, the head of him admitted to the Royal presence to be knocked nine times against the floor, and were this obeisance once, and once only, omitted, it is deemed high treason, and requires the utmost severity of punishment; so from the lack of some such attentions to this high and mighty person, there are many individuals who have reason to deplore, in bitterness of sorrow, their unpardoned inconsiderateness; and can ascribe their ruin to nothing, but the seeming want of reverence to his consequential importance? No, no, no, none of these things can possibly be within the reach of the wildest suppositions; they can only have existence in the chimerical dreams of the most extravagant fancy. Nor will it ever obtain a moment’s credit, except indeed a similar representation should be made from ⸺. But here prudence bids pause— Securus licet Æneam rutulumque ferocem Committas: nulli gravis est percussus Achilles. Tollimur in cœlum curvato gurgite, et idem Subducta ad manes imos desidimus unda. CHAPTER XXIII. From such princes of the people, let us once more descend to notice an individual, whose fortunes indeed were very different, but whose abilities, although exerted in contrary pursuits, were not at all inferior, and whose peculiarities were of the most singular and striking kind. His father followed the occupation of a sadler, in a town of considerable eminence in a remote province. The family consisted of this son and two daughters, who, on their father’s decease, found themselves left with a very scanty provision. The young man had a taste and turn for learning, to gratify which the more easily, he went for some years to the continent, where, among other attainments, he so acquired the manners, singularity, and even grimace of the people, among whom he sojourned, that on his return the Agnomen of Abbé was spontaneously and universally given him.