the girl was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand, that I might be more conveniently seen.

I was very desirous to see the chief temple, and particularly the tower belonging to it, which is reckoned the highest in the kingdom. Accordingly, one day my nurse carried me thither, but I may truly say I came back disappointed; for the height is not above three thousand feet, reckoning from the ground to the highest pinnacle top; which, allowing for the difference between the size of those people and us in Europe, is no great matter for admiration, nor at all equal in proportion (if I rightly remember) to Salisbury steeple.* But, not to detract from a nation to which, during my life, I shall acknowledge myself extremely obliged, it must be allowed, that whatever this famous tower wants in height, is amply made up in beauty and strength for the walls are near a hundred feet thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each is about forty feet square, and adorned on all sides with statues of gods and emperors, cut in marble, larger than life, placed in their several niches. I measured a little finger which had fallen down from one of these statues, and lay unperceived among some rubbish, and found it exactly four feet and an inch in length. Glumdalclitch wrapped it up in her handkerchief; and carried it home in her pocket, to keep among other trinkets of which the girl was very fond, as children at her age usually

are. +

The king's kitchen is indeed a noble building, vaulted at top, and about six hundred feet high. The great oven is not so wide, by ten

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Sir Walter Scott refers to this passage as an illustration of the curious mode in which the mind of Gulliver seems to conform to the dimensions around him, and to think of what is great or small, not according to the English standard, but that of Lilliput or Brobdingnag. Thus," he says, "Gulliver talks with solemnity of the stately trees in his Majesty's park at Lilliput, the tops of some of which he could hardly reach with his clenched fist; and celebrates with becoming admiration the prodigious leap of one of the imperial huntsmen over his footshoe and all. In like manner he undervalues the tower of the great temple in the capital of Brobdingnag, which, though 3,000 feet in height, is, he thinks, hardly equal in proportion to Salisbury steeple. And he notices the lock of his box as remarkably small and neatly executed, because he had seen one rather larger on a gentleman's gate in England. It is by this imperceptible mode of assimilating our ideas of proportion to those of his dwarfs and giants, that Swift renders lively and consistent a fable which, in other hands, would only have seemed monstrous and childish."

The gigantic figures, both of men and other animals, which have been described by travellers in Egypt surpass the description that our author here gives us of the statues of Brobdingnag. The famous colossal figure at Rhodes, to which Swift himself alludes in his "Voyage to Lilliput," must have represented a man nearly 120 feet high; consequently the little finger would have been about six feet long-far longer than that which Gulliver found among the rubbish in the temple.

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paces, as the cupola at St. Paul's: for I measured the latter on purpose, after my return. But if I should describe the kitchen grate, the prodigious pots and kettles, the joints of meat turned on the spits, with many other particulars, perhaps I should be hardly believed: at least, a severe critic would be apt to think I enlarged a little, as travellers are often suspected to do. To avoid which censure, I fear I have run too much into the other extreme; and that if this treatise should happen to be translated into the language of Brobdingnag (which is the general name of that kingdom), and transmitted thither, the king and his people would have reason to complain that I had done them an injury, by a false and diminutive representation.

His majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables : they are generally from fifty-four to sixty feet high. But when he goes abroad on solemn days, he is attended, for state, by a militia guard of five hundred horse, which, indeed, I thought was the most splendid sight that could be ever beheld, till I saw part of his battalia, whereof I shall find another occasion to speak.

army in

CHAPTER V.

SEVERAL ADVENTURES THAT HAPPENED TO THE AUTHOR.-THE EXECUTION OF A CRIMINAL.-THE AUTHOR SHOWS HIS SKILL IN NAVIGATION.

SHOULD have lived happy enough in that country, if my littleness had not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents: some of which I shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried me into the gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me

down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf apple-trees, I must needs show my wit, by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language as it does in ours. Whereupon, the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head, by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I received no other hurt, and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because I had given the provocation.*

Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In the meantime there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was immediately, by the force of it, struck to the ground: and when I was down, the hailstones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body, as if

When once we realise the diminutive dimensions of Gulliver, as compared with those of the people and things around him, we are prepared for the accidents which would continually befall him, narrated so pleasantly and so naturally by our author. The shaking down of the apples by the dwarf is a very happy idea; and though it was in some degree brought on Gulliver by his own conduct, it affords a good illustration of that propensity so natural to man, to dislike those whom he has injured; or, as it has been well expressed by Tacitus, "Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem læseris."

I had been pelted with tennis-balls; however, I made a shift to creep on all fours, and shelter myself, by lying flat on my face, on the lee-side of a border of lemon-thyme; but so bruised from head to foot, that I could not go abroad for ten days. Neither is this at all to be wondered at, because Nature, in that country, observing the same proportion through all her operations, a hailstone is near eighteen hundred

times as large as one in Europe;* which I can assert upon experience, having been so curious as to weigh and measure them.

But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, where my little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place (which I often entreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts), and having left the box at home, to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to another part of the garden with her governess and some ladies of her acquaintance. While she was absent, and out of hearing, a small white spaniel that belonged to one of the chief gardeners, having got by accident into the garden, happened to range near the place where I lay the dog, following the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his mouth, ran straight to his master wagging his tail, and set me gently on the ground. By good fortune he had been so well taught, that I was carried between his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my clothes. But the poor gardener, who knew me well, and had a great kindness for me, was in a terrible fright: he gently took me up in both his hands, and asked me how I did; but I was so amazed and out of breath, that I could not speak a word. In a few minutes I came to myself, and he carried me safe to my little nurse, who, by this time, had returned to the place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies when I did not appear, nor answer when she called. She severely reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog. But the thing was hushed up, and never known at court, for the girl was afraid of the queen's anger; and truly, as to myself, I thought it would not be for my reputation that such a story should go about.

This accident determined Glumdalclitch never to trust me abroad, for the future, out of her sight. I had been long afraid of this resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky adventures that happened in those times when I was left by myself. Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me, and if I had not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier, he would have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time, walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole through which

This is another instance of the many to be found throughout these Travels, of Swift's minute attention to the proportions which he has once established between Gulliver and those amongst whom he is cast, whether they be Lilliputians or Brobdingnagians. Taking the latter to be twelve times as large as an ordinary man, and everything in the country on the same scale, we shall, of course, have the hailstones greater than those of England by the cube of 12, that is-1,728, or, as Swift says, near eighteen hundred times."

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