Note (return) — NOTES OF A READER.

Instead of the dear lock, Popanilla finds a chest saved from the wreck, and filled with "Useful Knowledge Tracts," books on "the Hamiltonian system," &c. which our adventurer, like Faustus and his bible, turns to bad account; he falls asleep, is swallowed by a whale, and spouted forth again. "The dreamer awoke amidst real chattering, and scuffling, and clamour. A troop of green monkeys had been aroused by his unusual occupation, and had taken the opportunity of his slumber to become acquainted with some of the first principles of science. What progress they had made it is difficult to ascertain. It is said, however, that some monkeys have been since seen skipping about the island, with their tails cut off; and that they have even succeeded in passing themselves for human beings among those people who do not read novels, and are consequently unacquainted with mankind. As for Popanilla, he took up a treatise on hydrostatics, and read it straight through on the spot. For the rest of the day he was hydrostatically mad; nor could the commonest incident connected with the action or conveyance of water take place, without his speculating on its cause and consequence." So much for the first steps of "intellect;" now for the "march." Popanilla soon becomes a man of science: his wit flies off in tangents, and he tries to prove his sovereign a lantern, and himself a sun,10 by undertaking to re-shape all the institutions of Fantaisie. Then follow a string of dogmas about utility, &c.; and man being a developing animal, till he decides that "there is no such thing as Nature; Nature is Art, or Art is Nature; that which is most useful is most natural, because utility is the test of Nature; therefore, a steam-engine is in fact a much more natural production than a mountain." Here, observing a smile upon his majesty's countenance, Popanilla tells the king that he is only a chief magistrate, and he has no more right to laugh at him than a constable. This is "too bad" for the royal mind; Popanilla is cut; rather crest-fallen, he sneaks home, and consoles himself for having nobody to speak to, by reading some very amusing "Conversations on Political Economy." But he sinks to rise again. He obtains many pupils, who had no sooner mastered the first principles of science, than they began to throw off their retired habits and uncommunicative manners. "Being not utterly ignorant of some of the rudiments of knowledge, and consequently having completed their education, it was now their duty, as members of society, to instruct and not to study; and on all occasions they seized opportunities of assisting the spread of knowledge. The voices of boys lecturing upon every lecturable topic, resounded in every part of the island. Their tones were so shrill, their manners so presuming, their knowledge so crude, and their general demeanour so completely unamiable, that it was impossible to hear them without the greatest, delight, 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." Then follow some quips on the shell question (currency), and Mr. Secretary Perriwinkle, the most eminent conchologist, and the "debt" of the richest nation in the world; although, "a golden pyramid, with a base as big as the whole earth and an apex touching the heavens, would not supply sufficient metal to satisfy the creditors." "The annual interest upon our debt exceeds the whole wealth of the rest of the world; therefore we must be the richest nation in the world."