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20 - Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift · Classic Adventure Books Library

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  Chapter four, the author leaves Laputa is conveyed to Balnababi, arrives at the
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  metropolis. A description of the metropolis and the country adjoining the author hospitably received
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  by a great lord his conversation with that lord. Although I cannot say that
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  I was ill treated in this island, yet I must confess I thought myself
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  too much neglected, not without some degree of contempt, For neither Prince nor
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  people appeared to be curious in any part of knowledge except mathematics and music,
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  wherein I was far their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded.
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  On the other side, After having seen all the curiosities of the island,
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  I was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people.
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  They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great esteem, and
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  wherein I am not unverse, but at the same time so abstracted and involved
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  in speculation, that I have never met with such disagreeable companions. I confessed
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  only with women, tradesmen, flappers, and court pages during two months of
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  my abode, there by which at least I rendered myself extremely contemptible. Yet
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  these were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable answer.
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  I had obtained, by hard study a good degree of knowledge in their language.
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  I was weary of being confined to an island where I received so little
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  countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first opportunity. There was a
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  great lord at court, nearly related to the King, and for that reason
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  alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned, the most ignorant and stupid
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  person among them. He had performed many eminent services for the crown, had
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  great natural and acquired parts, adorned with integrity and honor, but so ill
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  an ear for music that his detractors reported he had been often known to beat
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  time in the wrong place. Neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty,
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  teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematics. He was pleased
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  to show me many marks of favour, often did me the honor of a
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  visit. Desired to be informed in the affairs of Europe, the laws and
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  customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where I had traveled.
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  He listened to me with great attention, and made very wise observations on all
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  I spoke. He had two flappers attending him for state, but never made
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  use of them except at court and in visits of ceremony, and would always
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  command them to withdraw when we were alone together. I entreated this illustrious person
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  to intercede in my behalf with his Majesty for leave to depart, which he
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  accordingly did, as he was pleased to tell me, with great regret,
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  for indeed he had made me several offers very advantageous, which however, I
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  refused, with expressions of the highest acknowledgment. On the sixteenth of February I
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  took leave of his Majesty in the court. The King made me a present
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  to the value of about two hundred pounds English, and my protector his kinsman
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  as much more, together with a letter of recommendation to a friend of his
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  in Laggardo the Metropolis, the island being then hovering over a mountain about two
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  miles from it, I was let down from the lowest gallery. In the
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  same manner I had been taken up. The continent, as far as it
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  is subject to the monarch of the Flying Island passes under the general name of
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  Boune Barbie, and the metropolis, as I have said before, is called
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  Laggardo. I felt some little satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I
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  walked to the city without any concern, being clad like one of the natives
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  and sufficiently instructed to converse with them. I soon found out the person's house
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  to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his friend, the Grandee
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  in the island, and was received with much kindness. This great lord,
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  whose name was Minodi, ordered me an apartment in his own house, where
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  I continued during my stay, and was entertained in a most hospitable manner.
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  The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see
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  the town, which is about half the bigness of London, but the houses
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  very strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in
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  the streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally
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  in rags. We passed through one of the town gates. I went about
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  three miles into the country or I saw many laborers working with several sorts of
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  tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they were about.
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  Neither did observe any expectation either of corn or grass, although the soil
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  appeared to be excellent. I could not forbear admiring at these odd appearances,
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  both in town and country, and I made bold to desire my conductor that
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  he would be pleased to explain to me what could be meant by so many
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  busy heads, hands and faces, both in the streets and the fields,
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  because I did not discover any good effects they produced. But on the contrary,
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  I never knew a soil so unhappily cultivated, houses so ill contrived and
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  so ruinous, or a people whose countenances and habit expressed so much misery and
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  want. This Lord Manodie was a person of the first rank, and had
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  been some years governor of Laggardo, but by a cable of ministers, was
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  discharged for insufficiency. However, the King treated him with tenderness, as a
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  well meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding. When I gave that
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  free censure of the country and his inhabitants, he made no further answer than
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  by telling me that I had not been long enough among them to form a
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  judgment, and that the different nations of the world had different customs with other
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  common topics to the same purpose. But when we returned to his palace.
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  He asked me how I liked the building, what absurdities I observed, and
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  what quarrel I had with the dress or look of his domestics. This he
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  might safely do, because everything about him was magnificent, regular, and polite.
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  I answered that his Excellency's prudence, quality, and fortune had exempted him
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  from those defects which Folly and Beggary had produced in others. He said,
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  if I would go with him to his country house, about twenty miles distant,
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  whereas estate lay, there would be more leisure for this kind of conversation.
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  I told his Excellency that I was entirely at his disposal, and accordingly
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  we set out next morning. During our journey he made me observe the several
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  methods used by farmers in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable
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  for. Except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear
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  of corn or blade of grass. But in three hours traveling the scene was
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  wholly altered. We came into a most beautiful country, farmers houses at small
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  distances, neatly built, the fields enclosed, containing vineyards, corn ground and
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  meadows. Neither do I remember to have seen a more delightful prospect. His
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  excellency observed my countenance to cheer up. He told me with a sigh,
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  that there his estate began, and would continue the same till we should come
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  to his house, that his countrymen ridiculed and despised him for managing his affairs
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  no better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom, which
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  however, was followed by very few such as were old and wilful, and
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  weak like himself. We came at length to the house, which was indeed
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  a noble structure, built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. The
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  fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves were all disposed with exact
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  judgment and taste. I gave due praises to everything I saw, whereof his
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  Excellency took not the least notice till after supper, when there being no third
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  companion, who told me, with a very melancholy air, that he doubted
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  he must throw down his houses in town and country, to rebuild them after
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  the present mode, destroy all his plantations and cast others into such a form
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  as modern usage required, and give the same directions to all his tenants,
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  unless he would submit to incur the censure of pride, singularity, affectation,
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  ignorance, caprice, and perhaps increase His Majesty's displeasure, that the admiration I
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  appeared to be under would cease or diminish. When he had informed me of
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  some particulars which probably I had never heard of at court, the people there
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  being too much taken up in their own speculations to have regard to what passed
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  here below. The sum of his discourse was to this effect, that,
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  about forty years ago, certain persons went up to the either upon business or
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  diversion, and after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering
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  in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region. That
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  these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of everything below,
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  and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and
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  mechanics upon a new foot. To this end, they procured a royal patent
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  for erecting an academy of projectors in Legado, and the humor prevailed so strongly
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  among the people that there is not a town of any consequence in the Kingdom
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  without such an academy. In these colleges, the professors contrived neurals and methods
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  of agriculture and building, and new instruments and new tools for all trades and
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  manufacturers. Whereby, as the undertake one man shall do the work of ten,
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  a palace may be built in a whey of materials so durable as to
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  last forever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity
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  at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase one hundredfold more than
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  they do at present, with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is
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  that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection, and in the meantime
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  the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruin, and the people
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  without food or clothes, by all which, instead of being discouraged, they
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  are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by
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  hope and despair. But as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit,
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  he was content to go on in the old forms, to live in
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  a house as his ancestors had built, and act as they did in every
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  part of life, without innovation. That some few other persons of quality gentry
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  had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and
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  ill will, as enemies to art ignorant and ill Commonwealth's men, preferring their
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  own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country. His lordship added
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  that he would not, by any further particulars, prevent the pleasure I should
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  certainly take in viewing the grand academy, whither he was resolved I should go.
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  He only desired me to observe a ruined building upon the side of a
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  mountain about three miles distant of which he gave me this account. There had
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  been a very convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by
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  a current from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as
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  well as a great number of his tenants, that about seven years ago a
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  club of those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill and build
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  another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge, whereof a
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  long canal must be cut for a repository of water to be conveyed up by
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  pipes and engines to supply the mill. Because the wind and air upon a
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  height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion, and because
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  the water descending down into clevity would turn the mill with half the current of
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  a river whose course is more upon a level. He said that, being
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  then not very well with the court, and pressed by many of his friends,
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  he complied with the proposal, and after employing a hundred men for two
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  years, the work miscarried. The projectors went off, laying the blame entirely
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  upon him, railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same
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  experiment with equal assurance of success as well as equal disappointment. In a few
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  days we came back to town, and his Excellency, considering the bad character
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  he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but recommended
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  me to a friend of his to bear me company Thither. My Lord was
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  pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person of
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  much curiosity and easy belief, which indeed was not without truth, for I
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  had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days. And a part
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  three Chapter four