To those who call vexations, VEXATIONS, as knowing what they are, there
could not be a greater, than to be the best part of a day at _Lyons_,
the most opulent and flourishing city in _France_, enriched with the
most fragments of antiquity--and not be able to see it. To be withheld
upon _any_ account, must be a vexation; but to be withheld _by_ a
vexation----must certainly be, what philosophy justly calls
VEXATION
upon
VEXATION.
I had got my two dishes of milk coffee (which by the bye is excellently
good for a consumption, but you must boil the milk and coffee
together--otherwise ’tis only coffee and milk)--and as it was no more
than eight in the morning, and the boat did not go off till noon, I had
time to see enough of _Lyons_ to tire the patience of all the friends I
had in the world with it. I will take a walk to the cathedral, said I,
looking at my list, and see the wonderful mechanism of this great clock
of _Lippius_ of _Basil_, in the first place----
Now, of all things in the world, I understand the least of
mechanism ----I have neither genius, or taste, or fancy--and have a brain
so entirely unapt for everything of that kind, that I solemnly declare I
was never yet able to comprehend the principles of motion of a squirrel
cage, or a common knife-grinder’s wheel--tho’ I have many an hour of my
life look’d up with great devotion at the one--and stood by with as much
patience as any christian ever could do, at the other----
I’ll go see the surprising movements of this great clock, said I, the
very first thing I do: and then I will pay a visit to the great library
of the Jesuits, and procure, if possible, a sight of the thirty volumes
of the general history of _China_, wrote (not in the _Tartarean_, but)
in the _Chinese_ language, and in the _Chinese_ character too.
Now I almost know as little of the _Chinese_ language, as I do of the
mechanism of _Lippius’s_ clock-work; so, why these should have jostled
themselves into the two first articles of my list ----I leave to the
curious as a problem of Nature. I own it looks like one of her
ladyship’s obliquities; and they who court her, are interested in
finding out her humour as much as I.
When these curiosities are seen, quoth I, half addressing myself to my
_valet de place_, who stood behind me----’twill be no hurt if we go to
the church of St. _Irenæus_, and see the pillar to which _Christ_ was
tied----and after that, the house where _Pontius Pilate_ lived----’Twas
at the next town, said the _valet de place_--at _Vienne_; I am glad of
it, said I, rising briskly from my chair, and walking across the room
with strides twice as long as my usual pace---- “for so much the sooner
shall I be at the _Tomb of the two lovers_.”
What was the cause of this movement, and why I took such long strides in
uttering this ----I might leave to the curious too; but as no principle
of clock-work is concerned in it----’twill be as well for the reader if
I explain it myself.