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Miscellaneous Essays by Thomas De Quincey
page 106 of 204 (51%)

Great wits jump. The very same idea had not long before struck the
celestial intellect of China. Amongst the presents carried out by our first
embassy to that country was a state-coach. It had been specially selected
as a personal gift by George III.; but the exact mode of using it was a
mystery to Pekin. The ambassador, indeed, (Lord Macartney,) had made some
dim and imperfect explanations upon the point; but as his excellency
communicated these in a diplomatic whisper, at the very moment of his
departure, the celestial mind was very feebly illuminated; and it became
necessary to call a cabinet council on the grand state question--"Where was
the emperor to sit?" The hammer-cloth happened to be unusually gorgeous;
and partly on that consideration, but partly also because the box offered
the most elevated seat, and undeniably went foremost, it was resolved by
acclamation that the box was the imperial place, and, _for the scoundrel
who drove, he might sit where he could find a perch_. The horses,
therefore, being harnessed, under a flourish of music and a salute of guns,
solemnly his imperial majesty ascended his new English throne, having the
first lord of the treasury on his right hand, and the chief jester on his
left. Pekin gloried in the spectacle; and in the whole flowery people,
constructively present by representation, there was but one discontented
person, which was the coachman. This mutinous individual, looking as
blackhearted as he really was, audaciously shouted, "Where am _I_ to sit?"
But the privy council, incensed by his disloyalty, unanimously opened the
door, and kicked him into the inside. He had all the inside places
to himself; but such is the rapacity of ambition, that he was still
dissatisfied. "I say," he cried out in an extempore petition, addressed to
the emperor through the window, "how am I to catch hold of the reins?" "Any
how," was the answer; "don't trouble _me_, man, in my glory; through the
windows, through the key-holes--how you please." Finally this contumacious
coachman lengthened the checkstrings into a sort of jury-reins,
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