"When the time of correct reasoning shall arrive--for it will arrive some day or other--you will then take a totally opposite course, and say directly the contrary of what your predecessors have said, for you ought to change the nature of your curb in proportion as the horses become more difficult to govern. Your exterior must be more grave, your intrigues more mysterious, your secrets better guarded, your sophistry more dazzling, and your policy more refined. You will then be the pilots of a vessel which is leaky on all sides. Have under you subalterns continually employed at the pumps, and as caulkers to stop all the holes. You will navigate with difficulty, but you will still proceed, and be enabled to cast into the fire or the water, as may be most convenient, all those who would examine whether you have properly refitted the vessel. "If among the unbelievers is a prince of Calkas, a chief of the Kalmucks, a prince of Kasan, or any other powerful prince, who has unhappily too much wit, take great care not to quarrel with him. Respect him, and continually observe that you hope he will return to the holy path. As to simple citizens, spare them not, and the better men they are, the more you ought to labor to exterminate them; for being men of honor they are the most dangerous of all to you. You will exhibit the simplicity of the dove, the prudence of the serpent, and the paw of the lion, according to circumstances." The dalai-lama had scarcely pronounced these words when the earth trembled; lightnings sparkled in the firmament from one pole to the other; thunders rolled, and a celestial voice was heard to exclaim, "Adore God and not the grand lama." All the inferior lamas insisted that the voice said, "Adore God and the grand lama;" and they were believed for a long time in the kingdom of Thibet; but they are now believed no longer. PRIOR, BUTLER, AND SWIFT. It was not known to France that Prior, who was deputed by Queen Anne to adjust the treaty of Utrecht with Louis XIV., was a poet. France has since repaid England in the same coin, for Cardinal Dubois sent our Destouches to London, where he passed as little for a poet as Prior in France. Prior was originally an attendant at a tavern kept by his uncle, when the earl of Dorset, a good poet himself and a lover of the bottle, one day surprised him reading Horace; in the same manner as Lord Ailsa found his gardener reading Newton. Ailsa made his gardener a good geometrician, and Dorset made a very agreeable poet of his vintner.