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battles, rather as allies and confederates than as slaves. But let us turn our eyes towards these smaller and more curious objects,—the numerous and devouring insects on the trees in these wide plains. How shining, strong, and lasting are the subtle threads spun from their artful mouths! Who beside the All-wise has taught them to compose the beautiful soft shells, in which recluse and buried, yet still alive, they undergo such a surprising change, when not destroyed by men, who clothe and adorn themselves with the labours and lives of these weak creatures, and are proud of wearing such inglorious spoils? How sumptuously apparelled, gay, and splendid are all the various insects which feed on the other plants of this warm region! How beautiful the plants themselves in all their various growths, from the triumphant palm down to the humble

moss!

Now may we see that happy country where precious gums and balsams flow from trees, and nature yields her most delicious fruits. How tame and tractable, how patient of labour and of thirst, are those large creatures, who, lifting up their lofty heads, go led and laden through those dry and barren places! Their shape and temper show them framed by nature to submit to man, and fitted for his service, who from hence ought to be more sensible of his wants, and of the divine bounty thus supplying them.

But see! not far from us, that fertilest of lands, watered and fed by a friendly generous stream, which, ere it enters the sea, divides itself into many branches, to dispense more equally the rich and nitrous manure it bestows so kindly and in due time on the adjacent plains. Fair image of that fruitful and exuberant nature, who with a flood of bounty blesses all things, and parent-like, out of her many breasts, sends the nutritious draught in various streams to her rejoicing offspring! Innumerable are the dubious forms and unknown species which drink the slimy current: whether they are such as, leaving the scorched deserts, satiate here their ardent thirst, and, promiscuously engendering, beget a monstrous race; or whether (as tis said) by the sun's genial heat active on the fermenting ooze, new forms are generated, and issue from the river's fertile bed. See there the noted tyrant of the flood, and terror of its borders! When suddenly displaying his horrid form, the amphibious ravager invades the land, quitting his watery den, and from the deep emerging, with hideous rush, sweeps o'er the trembling plain. The natives from afar behold with wonder the enormous bulk, sprung from so small an egg. With horror they relate the monster's nature, cruel and deceitful; how he, with dire hypocrisy and false tears, beguiles the simple-hearted; and, inspiring tenderness and kind compassion, kills with pious fraud. Sad emblem of that spiritual plague, dire superstition! Native of this soil, where first religion grew unsociable, and among different worshippers bred mutual hatred and abhorrence of each others' temples. The infection spreads; and nations, now profane one to another, war fiercer, and in religion's cause forget humanity: whilst savage zeal, with meek and pious

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semblance, works dreadful massacre, and for Heaven's sake (horrid pretence !) makes desolate the earth.

Here let us leave these monsters (glad if we could here confine them!), and detesting the dire prolific soil, fly to the vast deserts of these parts. All ghastly and hideous as they appear, they want not their peculiar beauties. The wildness pleases. We seem to live alone with nature. We view her in her inmost recesses, and contemplate her with more delight in these original wilds than in the artificial labyrinths and feigned wildernesses of the palace. The objects of the place, the scaly serpents, the savage beasts, and poisonous insects, how terrible soever, or how contrary to human nature, are beauteous in themselves, and fit to raise our thoughts in admiration of that divine wisdom, so far superior to our short views.

Unable to declare the use or service of all things in this universe, we are yet assured of the perfection of all, and of the justice of that economy to which all things are subservient, and in respect of which things seemingly deformed are amiable, disorder becomes regular, corruption wholesome, and poisons (such as these we have seen) prove healing and beneficial.

But behold through a vast tract of sky before us, the mighty Atlas rears his lofty head, covered with snow, above the clouds. Beneath the mountain's foot the rocky country rises into hills, a proper basis of the ponderous mass above, where huge embodied rocks lie piled on one another, and seem to prop the high arch of heaven. See! with what trembling steps poor mankind tread the narrow brink of the deep precipices! From whence, with giddy horror, they look down, mistrusting even the ground which bears them, whilst they hear the hollow sound of torrents underneath, and see the ruin of the impending rock, with falling trees which hang with their roots upwards, and seem to drive more ruin after them. Here thoughtless men, seized with the newness of such objects, become thoughtful, and willingly contemplate the incessant changes of this earth's surface. They see, as in one instant, the revolutions of past ages, the fleeting forms of things, and the decay even of this our globe, whose youth and first formation they consider, whilst the apparent spoil and irreparable breaches of the wasted mountain show them the world itself only as a noble ruin, and make them think of its approaching period. But here midway the mountain, a spacious border of thick wood harbours our wearied travellers, who now are come among the ever-green and lofty pines, the firs, and noble cedars, whose towering heads seem endless in the sky, the rest of trees appearing only as shrubs beside them. And here a different horror seizes our sheltered travellers, when they see the day diminished by the deep shades of the vast wood; which closing thick above, spreads darkness and eternal night below. The faint and gloomy light looks horrid as the shade itself; and the profound stillness of these places imposes silence upon men, struck with the hoarse echoings of every sound within the spacious caverns of the wood. Here space astonishes. Silence itself seems pregnant;

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whilst an unknown force works on the mind, and dubious objects move the wakeful sense. Mysterious voices are either heard or fancied, and various forms of deity seem to present themselves, and appear more manifest in these sacred sylvan scenes, such as of old gave rise to temples, and favoured the religion of the ancient world. Even we ourselves, who in plain characters may read divinity from so many bright parts of earth, chuse rather these obscurer places to spell out that mysterious Being, which to our weak eyes appears at best under a veil of cloud.

IV. JONATHAN SWIFT.

JONATHAN SWIFT was born in Dublin in 1667. Shortly before his birth his father died, and Swift, left to the care of unfeeling relations, grew up amid poverty and misery, and imbibed from his earliest years those feelings of disgust with the perfidy and cruelty of the human species which characterized him through life. After graduating at Trinity College, Dublin, he came over to England, and was received into the family of Sir William Temple, a distant connexion, through whose influence he hoped for advancement. In this, however, he was disappointed; he entered the Irish Church, but could obtain no preferment of value, and on the death of his patron he was left to rely on his own abilities. He was late in appearing as an author, but the unrivalled merits of his clear, vigorous style, and irresistible irony were at once recognised, and he was encouraged to hope for promotion from the Whigs, whose party he espoused, and who were then in office. Overlooked, however, among other literary auxiliaries of more influence, he went over to the Tories, and directed against his former associates the full power of his unwearied pen. His services were in 1713 rewarded with the Deanery of St Patrick's, and higher promotion would have followed but for the death of Anne and the consequent disgrace of the Tory ministry. From this time he lived almost constantly in Ireland, devoting himself to the service of his native country, and by his resistance to a gross fraud which the ministers designed to perpetrate on the Irish through the adulteration of the copper coinage, he acquired unbounded popularity, and his death in 1745 was lamented by the whole nation. For some years previous to his decease he laboured under mental derangement, and it is charitable to suppose that the tendency to this melancholy termination may have had something to do with the unhappy mystery that shrouds his conduct towards Stella and Vanessa. Swift's works are very numerous both in prose and verse, and consist chiefly of pamphlets written for political purposes. His largest works are "Gulliver's Travels," "Tale of a Tub," "History of the last four years of Queen Anne," and "Journal to Stella." As a writer he is distinguished by the clearness and purity of his style, the irresistible vigour of his irony, his masculine sense, his great power of observation, and his intimate knowledge of the weaknesses and supreme contempt for the

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follies and vices of mankind. He exhibits scarce any trace of imaginative powers, or of sympathy with the sublime, and sometimes condescends to low and indecent allusions; but with all his faults he is one of the great models of a pure English style, and in everything that constitutes excellence as a writer he is superior to most of the wits of Queen Anne's reign.

1. DESCRIPTION OF THE DIVERSIONS OF THE COURT AT LILLIPUT.—

(FROM "GULLIVER'S TRAVELS:" WRITTEN IN RIDICULE OF THE BRITISH COURT.)

The emperor had a mind one day to entertain me with several of the country shows, wherein they exceed all nations I have known, both for dexterity and magnificence. I was diverted with none so much as that of the rope-dancers, performed upon a slender white thread, extended about two feet, and twelve inches from the ground. Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the reader's patience, to enlarge a little.

This diversion is only practised by those persons who are candidates for great employments and high favour at court. They are trained in this art from their youth, and are not always of noble birth or liberal education. When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens), five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office. Very often the chief ministers themselves are commanded to show their skill, and to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer,' is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common pack thread in England. My friend Beldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer: the rest of the great officers are much upon a par.

These diversions are often attended with fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are on record. I myself have seen two or three candidates break a limb. But the danger is much greater when the ministers themselves are commanded to show their dexterity; for, by contending to excel themselves and their fellows, they strain so far, that there is hardly one of them who have not received a fall, and some of them two or three. I was assured that, a year or two before my arrival, Flimnap would infallibly have broke his neck, if one of the king's cushions, that accidentally lay on the ground, had not weakened the force of his fall.

There is likewise another diversion, which is only shown before

1 This is supposed to allude to Sir Robert Walpole, then prime minister.

2 This refers to the dismissal of Walpole in 1717, when he was partly screened by the Duchess of Kendal, the cushion here alluded to.

the emperor and empress and first minister, upon particular occasions. The emperor lays on the table three fine silken threads of six inches long: one is blue, the other red, and the third green. These threads are proposed as prizes for those persons whom the emperor has a mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark of his favour. The ceremony is performed in his majesty's great chamber of state, where the candidates are to undergo a trial of dexterity, very different from the former, and such as I have not observed the least resemblance of in any other country of the new or old world. The emperor holds a stick in his hands; both ends parallel to the horizon, while the candidates, advancing one by one, sometimes leap over the stick, sometimes creep under it, backward and forward, several times, according as the stick is advanced or depressed. Sometimes the emperor holds one end of the stick, and his first minister the other; sometimes the minister has it entirely to himself. Whoever performs his part with most agility, and holds out the longest in leaping and creeping, is rewarded with the bluecoloured silk; the red is given to the next, and the green to the third, which they all wear girt twice round about the middle; and you see few great persons about this court who are not adorned with one of these girdles.1

2. VISIT TO THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES AT LAGADO.—(“ GULLIVER'S TRAVELS." IN RIDICULE PARTLY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY.)

This academy is not an entire single building, but a continuation of several houses on both sides of a street, which, growing waste, was purchased and applied to that use. I was received very kindly by the warden, and went for many days to the Academy. Every room has in it one or more projectors; and I believe I could not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.

The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin were all of the same colour. He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me he did not doubt that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present; for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them. I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder, who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish.

The blue and red threads are the ribbons of the orders of the Garter and Bath.

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