You, O Father and Friend, complying with this our Desire, maybe an occasion of uniting in perpetual Friendship our high Empire with your European Kingdoms, and we may embrace your Laws, as the Ivy embraces the Tree; and we our selves may scatter our Royal Blood into your Provinces, warming the chief of your Princes with the amorous Fire of our Amazons, the resembling Pictures of some of which our said Mandarine’s Embassadors shall convey to you.

“We exhort you to keep in Peace two good Religious Families of Missionaries, the black Sons of Ignatius, and the white and black Sons of Dominicus; that the Counsel, both of the one and the other, may serve as a Guide to us in our Government, and a Light to interpret the Divine Law, as the Oil cast into the Sea produces Light.

“To conclude, we rising up in our Throne to embrace you, we declare you our Ally and Confederate; and have ordered this Leaf to be sealed with our Imperial Signet, in our Royal City the Head of the World, the 8th Day of the third Lunation, and the 4th Year of our Reign.”

Letters from Rome say, the whole Conversation both among Gentlemen and Ladies has turned upon the Subject of this Epistle, ever since it arrived.  The Jesuit who translated it says, it loses much of the Majesty of the Original in the Italian.  It seems there was an Offer of the same nature made by a Predecessor of the present Emperor to Lewis the XIIIth of France, but no Lady of that Court would take the Voyage, that Sex not being at that time so much used in politick Negotiations.  The manner of treating the Pope is, according to the Chinese Ceremonial, very respectful:  For the Emperor writes to him with the Quill of a Virgin Ostrich, which was never used before but in Writing Prayers.  Instructions are preparing for the Lady who shall have so much Zeal as to undertake this Pilgrimage, and be an Empress for the sake of her Religion.  The Principal of the Indian Missionaries has given in a List of the reigning Sins in China, in order to prepay the Indulgences necessary to this Lady and her Retinue, in advancing the Interests of the Roman Catholic Religion in those Kingdoms.

  To the SPECTATOR-GENERAL.

  May it please your Honour,

  ’I have of late seen French Hats, of a prodigious Magnitude, pass by
  my Observatory.

  John Sly.

T.

[Footnote 1:  No suggestion has been made as to the authorship of this squib on the Jesuits in China.]

* * * * *

No. 546.  Wednesday, November 26, 1712.  Steele.

  ’Omnia patefacienda ut ne quid omnino quod venditor norit, emptor
  ignoret.’

  Tull.