 or held a provincial chapter there, with so
plentiful a lack of wit and judgment about us! for mercy's sake! let us think no
more about it, but travel on as fast as we can southwards into Norway, --
crossing over Swedeland, if you please, through the small triangular province of
Angermania to the lake of Bothnia; coasting along it through east and west
Bothnia, down to Carelia, and so on, through all those states and provinces
which border upon the far side of the Gulf of Finland, and the north east of the
Baltick, up to Petersbourg, and just stepping into Ingria; -- then stretching
over directly from thence through the north parts of the Russian empire -
leaving Siberia a little upon the left hand till we get into the very heart of
Russian and Asiatick Tartary.
    Now throughout this long tour which I have led you, you observe the good
people are better off by far, than in the polar countries which we have just
left: - for if you hold your hand over your eyes, and look very attentively, you
may perceive some small glimmerings (as it were) of wit, with a comfortable
provision of good plain houshold judgment, which, taking the quality and
quantity of it together, they make a very good shift with, - and had they more
of either the one or the other, it would destroy the proper ballance betwixt
them, and I am satisfied moreover they would want occasions to put them to use.
    Now, Sir, if I conduct you home again into this warmer and more luxuriant
island, where you perceive the spring tide of our blood and humours runs high, -
where we have more ambition, and pride, and envy, and lechery, and other
whoreson passions upon our hands to govern and subject to reason, - the height
of our wit and the depth of our judgment, you see, are exactly proportioned to
the length and breadth of our necessities, - and accordingly, we have them sent
down amongst us in such a flowing kind of decent and creditable plenty, that no
one thinks he has any cause to complain.
    It must however be confessed on this head, that, as our air blows hot and
cold, -- wet and dry, ten times in a day, we have them in no regular and settled
way; -- so that sometimes for near half a century together, there shall be very
little wit or judgment, either to be seen or heard of amongst us: -- the small
channels of them shall seem quite dried up, - then all of
