court-guides, and bon-bons; music, pictures, ladies' maids, scrapbooks,
buckles, boxing-gloves, guitars, and snuff-boxes; together with a
company of opera-singers, a band of comedians, a popular preacher, some
quacks, lecturers, artists, and literary gentlemen, principally
sketch-book men, quitted, one day, with a favourable wind, and amid the
exultation of the inhabitants, the port of Hubbabub!

When his Excellency Prince Popanilla heard of the contents of this
stupendous cargo, notwithstanding his implicit confidence in the
superior genius and useful knowledge of the Vraibleusians, he could not
refrain from expressing a doubt whether, in the present undeveloped
state of his native land, any returns could be made proportionate to so
curious and elaborate an importation; but whenever he ventured to
intimate his opinion to any of the most commercial nation in the world
he was only listened to with an incredulous smile which seemed to pity
his inexperience, or told, with an air of profound self-complacency,
that in Fantaisie 'there must be great resources.'

In the meantime, public companies were formed for working the mines,
colonizing the waste lands, and cutting the coral rocks of the Indian
Isle, of all which associations Popanilla was chosen Director by
acclamation. These, however, it must be confessed, were speculations of
a somewhat doubtful nature; but the Branch Bank Society of the Isle of
Fantaisie really held out flattering prospects.

When the fleet had sailed they gave Popanilla a public dinner. It was
attended by all the principal men in the island, and he made a speech,
which was received in a rather different manner than was his sunset
oration by the monarch whom he now represented. Faintaisie and its
accomplished Envoy were at the same time the highest and the universal