This is but the “Companion to the Map.”  The Voyage to the several Islands of the Great World, “is in a frame-work of the adventures of Sir Heedless Headlong, who neither reaches the Great World by a balloon, nor Perkins’s steam-gun.  He cruises about St. James’s Straits, makes for Idler’s Harbour, in Alba; is repulsed, but with a friend, Jack Rashleigh, journeys to Society Island, lands at Small Talk Bay, and makes for the capital, Flirtington.  He first visits a general assembly of the leaders of the isle.  At the house of assembly the rush of charioteers was so great, that it is impossible to say what might have been the consequence of the general confusion, or how many lives might have been lost, but for the interference of a little man in a flaxen wig, and broad-brimmed hat, with a cane in his hand, whose authority is said to extend equally over ladies and pickpockets of all degrees."[18] Then comes an exquisite bit of badinage on that most stupid of all stupidities, a fashionable rout.

   [18] Quasi Townsend.

“On entering the walls, my surprise may be partly conceived, at finding those persons, whom I had seen so eagerly striving to gain admittance, crowded together in a capacious vapour bath, heated to so high a temperature, that had I not been aware of the strict prohibition of science, I should have imagined the meeting to have been held for the purpose of ascertaining, by experiment, the greatest degree of heat which the human frame is capable of supporting.  That they should choose such a place for their deliberations upon the welfare of the island, appeared to me extraordinary, and only to be accounted for upon the supposition that it was intended to carry off, by evaporation, that internal heat to which the assemblies of legislators of some other countries are known to be subject.  Judging from the grave and melancholy countenances of the persons assembled, I councluded the affairs of the island to be in a very disasterous state; and I could discover very little either said or done, at all calculated to advance its interests.  Of the capital itself, some members said a few words; but, to use the language of our Globe, in so inaudible a tone of voice, that we could scarcely catch their import.  The principal subject of their discussion consisted of complaining of the extreme heat of the bath, and mutual inquiries respecting their intention of immersing themselves in any others that were open the same night.”

He next satirizes a fashionable dinner, the parks, the Horticultural Society, some pleasant jokes upon a rosy mother and her parsnip-pale daughters, and an admirable piece of fun upon the female oligarchy of Almacks.