SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS. by &. Whatmous & PHILADELPHIA: C. SHERMAN, PRINTER, 19 ST. JAMES STREET. 1844. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, BY C. SHERMAN, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 955 W336 scr 1844 ΤΟ HIS MOST CELESTIAL MAJESTY KIANG-FOO, EMPEROR OF CHINA, AND BROTHER TO THE SUN AND MOON. DEEPLY sensible of the favours it has pleased your Celestial Majesty at divers and sundry times to bestow, and grateful for the distinguished facilities afforded me in the early publication of some of your mighty proclamations-with all respect, I dedicate the following pages to your Imperial Majesty. I do so, with a belief, that your Serenity will not only be amused by them at your autumnal palace of Yuenmin-Yuen, upon the banks of the sparkling Taie-ho; but that they will give your Majesty some insight into the mysteries of barbaric diplomacy, which, it has pleased your Majesty privately to inform me, owing to some late incidents, you were anxious to comprehend. Amongst so many sovereigns, to be selected by your Imperial Majesty as worthy of your confidence, I esteem a most signal mark of favour; and with no disposition to overrate my literary effusions, yet I feel confident your Majesty will derive quite as much instruction, if not more, than any other reader from my little volume. M370728 If it should please your Celestial Highness to be fond of fishing, the letters of Isaac Walton, Jr., are most particularly recommended to your notice. They pretend to no literary merit, but are the effusions of a plain man, in character with his life and the primitive simplicity of his peaceful sport. The immortal Confucius has declared, that Hong-hæ chulan-tee to war ti bung, Con owhar spung ti nittle colee tung. "Patience and perseverance are cardinal virtues, and without which, man cannot hope for success in life." Isaac affords some striking and practical illustrations of the truth of the precept, which may be useful to your sedentary subjects, and perhaps salutary in their effects upon those of a more roving and unquiet disposition. Seldom aspiring beyond a glorious nibble, his perseverance has been rewarded in having caught the attention of an emperor. "To catch a Tartar," has not heretofore been esteemed a desirable event or one to boast of; but we apprehend the world will concede the present instance to be a brilliant exception. The immeasurable distance between your Majesty's golden throne, and the "Fisher in Small Streams," affords him but a telescopic view of your magnificence, warmed, however, and cherished by those mitigated beams into an ephemeral and fluttering existence without the danger of being singed by the intolerable effulgence. It is, therefore, a subject more for congratulation than regret; though prevented the honour of personally bumping his head at your Imperial footstool according to the ceremony of the Ko-leou. A ceremony founded upon principles of the profoundest wisdom, and which should be strictly enforced upon every candidate for literary favour, more especially in my country, where the brain is supposed to be the seat of intelligence, and the capability of the author might quickly be ascertained by the peculiar sound of his skull when performing these prostrations. The Chinese theory, however, that the stomach is the seat of the soul, is plausible, more especially as most of our distinguished literary men have no stomachs to brag of, wasted perhaps by their untiring exertions. With the passing remark, that amongst Barbarians there is a sort of abstract KiangFoo, called public opinion, at which authors great and small must all bow, and before which the subscriber prostrates himself with great humility for want of a better, he remains with high consideration and respect, your Majesty's friend, co-sovereign and servant. A FISHER IN SMALL STREAMS. |