By the direction of my worthy friend, Mr. _Nokes_, who liberally supply’d me with money to carry on this affair, I took a spacious house in the great _Piazza_ here, then empty by the death of one of the most eminent physicians of this famous city. This you must own to me, gentlemen, was as favourable a step at my first setting out, as a man could possibly wish; for you cannot be ignorant how many sorry brothers of the faculty in _London_ keep their coaches, and wriggle themselves into business, with no other merit to recommend them, than that of dwelling in the same house where a celebrated doctor lived before them. For this reason, I suppose, it was, (if you can pardon so short a digression) that the popes came to monopolize the ecclesiastical practice of the western world to themselves, by succeeding so great a bishop as St. _Peter_. So much is the world govern’d by appearances, and so apt to be cheated, as if knowledge and learning were bequeath’d to one house or place; and like a piece of common furniture, went to the next inhabiter. But to dismiss this speculation, which perhaps may seem somewhat odd, from a man of my merry character; having provided my house with every thing convenient, adorn’d my hall with the pictures of _Galen_, _Hippocrates_, _Albumazar_, and _Paracelsus_; cramm’d my library with a vast collection of books, in all arts and languages, (tho’ under the rose be it spoken, my worthy friends, your humble servant does not understand a syllable of them) furnish’d it with a pair of globes curiously painted, with the _exuviæ_ of two or three _East-India_ animals, a rattlesnake and a crocodile; and set up a fine elaboratory in my court-yard. In short, after having taken care to set off my hall, parlour and study, with all those noble decorations that serve to amuse the multitude, and create strange ideas in them, I order’d a spacious stage to be erected before my own habitation, got my bills ready printed, together with a long catalogue of the cures perform’d by me, during the time of my practising physick in your upper world; and then I broke out with a greater expectation and _eclat_ than any doctor before me was ever known to do.