eight in the morning
-- One of a hundred a year , or so , is all I wish -- I would not be at the plague of paying land-tax for a larger . 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 -LRB- which by the bye is excellently good for a consumption , but you must boil the milk and coffee together -- otherwise ’t is only coffee and milk -RRB- -- 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 -LRB- not in the _ Tartarean _ , but -RRB- 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 .