Pray, sir, in your next letter to the Iroquois virtuosi,47 do me the favour to present my humble service to that illustrious body, and assure them I shall send an account of those phenomena as soon as we can determine them at Gresham.48

I have not had a line from the literati of Topinambou49 these three last ordinaries.

And now, sir, having despatched what I had to say of form or of business, let me entreat you will suffer me to proceed upon my subject, and to pardon me if I make no farther use of the epistolary style till I come to conclude.

SECTION THE FIRST.

It is recorded of Mahomet that, upon a visit he was going to pay in Paradise, he had an offer of several vehicles to conduct him upwards; as fiery chariots, winged horses, and celestial sedans; but he refused them all, and would be borne to heaven upon nothing but his ass. Now this inclination of Mahomet, as singular as it seems, has been since taken up by a great number of devout christians, and doubtless with very good reason. For, since that Arabian is known to have borrowed a moiety of his religious system from the christian faith, it is but just he should pay reprisals to such as would challenge them; wherein the good people of England, to do them all right, have not been backward; for, though there is not any other nation in the world so plentifully provided with carriages for that journey, either as to safety or ease, yet there are abundance of us who will not be satisfied with any other machine beside this of Mahomet.

For my own part, I must confess to bear a very singular respect to this animal, by whom I take human nature to be most admirably held forth in all its qualities, as well as operations; and therefore, whatever in my small reading occurs concerning this our fellow-creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of commonplace; and when I have occasion to write upon human reason, politics, eloquence, or knowledge, I lay my memorandums before me, and insert them with a wonderful facility of application. However, among all the qualifications ascribed to this distinguished brute, by ancient or modern authors, I cannot remember this talent of bearing his rider to heaven has been recorded for a part of his character, except in the two examples mentioned already; therefore I conceive the methods of this art to be a point of useful knowledge in very few hands, and which the learned world would gladly be better informed in: this is what I have undertaken to perform in the following discourse. For towards the operation already mentioned many peculiar properties are required both in the rider and the ass, which I shall endeavour to set in as clear a light as I can.