interest upon our debt exceeds the whole wealth of the rest of the
world; therefore we must be the richest nation in the world."


[Footnote 10: "What boots it thee to call thyself a sun."]


Our traveller being now settled at a splendid hotel in Hubbabub,
Skindeep, his "gentleman in black," drives him about the city in an
elegant equipage. The western migrations of fashion are humorously
sketched, and the architecture of our metropolis comes in for a share
of the author's banter. "In general, the massy Egyptian appropriately
graced the attic stories; while the finer and more elaborate
architecture of Corinth was placed on a level with the eye, so that its
beauties might be more easily discovered. Spacious colonnades were
flanked by porticoes, surmounted by domes; nor was the number of columns
at all limited, for you occasionally met with porticoes of two tiers,
the lower one of which consisted of three, the higher one of thirty
columns. Pedestals of the purest Ionic Gothic, were ingeniously mixed
with Palladian pediments; and the surging spire exquisitely harmonized
with the horizontal architecture of the ancients. But, perhaps, after
all, the most charming effect was produced by the pyramids, surmounted
by weathercocks."

A lively sketch of "the aboriginal inhabitant" introduces some smart
satire on the agriculturists, and proves that, "between force, and fear,
and flattery, the Vraibleusians paid for their corn nearly its weight in
gold; but what did it signify to a nation with so many pink shells."
Popanilla is next introduced to an eminent bookseller, who craves
the honour of publishing a narrative of his voyage: he informs the