Gulliver's Travels

he author leaves Laputa; is conveyed to Balnibarbi; arrives at the
metropolis. A description of the metropolis, and the country adjoining.
The author hospitably received by a great lord. His conversation with
that lord.

Although I cannot say that I was ill treated in this island, yet I must
confess I thought myself too much neglected, not without some degree of
contempt; for neither prince nor people appeared to be curious in any
part of knowledge, except mathematics and music, wherein I was far
their inferior, and upon that account very little regarded.

On the other side, after having seen all the curiosities of the island,
I was very desirous to leave it, being heartily weary of those people.
They were indeed excellent in two sciences for which I have great
esteem, and wherein I am not unversed; but, at the same time, so
abstracted and involved in speculation, that I never met with such
disagreeable companions. I conversed only with women, tradesmen,
flappers, and court-pages, during two months of my abode there; by
which, at last, I rendered myself extremely contemptible; yet these
were the only people from whom I could ever receive a reasonable
answer.

I had obtained, by hard study, a good degree of knowledge in their
language; I was weary of being confined to an island where I received
so little countenance, and resolved to leave it with the first
opportunity.

There was a great lord at court, nearly related to the king, and for
that reason alone used with respect. He was universally reckoned the
most ignorant and stupid person among them. He had performed many
eminent services for the crown, had great natural and acquired parts,
adorned with integrity and honour; but so ill an ear for music, that
his detractors reported, “he had been often known to beat time in the
wrong place;” neither could his tutors, without extreme difficulty,
teach him to demonstrate the most easy proposition in the mathematics.
He was pleased to show me many marks of favour, often did me the honour
of a visit, desired to be informed in the affairs of Europe, the laws
and customs, the manners and learning of the several countries where I
had travelled. He listened to me with great attention, and made very
wise observations on all I spoke. He had two flappers attending him for
state, but never made use of them, except at court and in visits of
ceremony, and would always command them to withdraw, when we were alone
together.

I entreated this illustrious person, to intercede in my behalf with his
majesty, for leave to depart; which he accordingly did, as he was
pleased to tell me, with regret: for indeed he had made me several
offers very advantageous, which, however, I refused, with expressions
of the highest acknowledgment.

On the 16th day of February I took leave of his majesty and the court.
The king made me a present to the value of about two hundred pounds
English, and my protector, his kinsman, as much more, together with a
letter of recommendation to a friend of his in Lagado, the metropolis.
The island being then hovering over a mountain about two miles from it,
I was let down from the lowest gallery, in the same manner as I had
been taken up.

The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the flying
island, passes under the general name of Balnibarbi; and the
metropolis, as I said before, is called Lagado. I felt some little
satisfaction in finding myself on firm ground. I walked to the city
without any concern, being clad like one of the natives, and
sufficiently instructed to converse with them. I soon found out the
person’s house to whom I was recommended, presented my letter from his
friend the grandee in the island, and was received with much kindness.
This great lord, whose name was Munodi, ordered me an apartment in his
own house, where I continued during my stay, and was entertained in a
most hospitable manner.

The next morning after my arrival, he took me in his chariot to see the
town, which is about half the bigness of London; but the houses very
strangely built, and most of them out of repair. The people in the
streets walked fast, looked wild, their eyes fixed, and were generally
in rags. We passed through one of the town gates, and went about three
miles into the country, where I saw many labourers working with several
sorts of tools in the ground, but was not able to conjecture what they
were about; neither did I observe any expectation either of corn or
grass, although the soil appeared to be excellent. I could not forbear
admiring at these odd appearances, both in town and country; and I made
bold to desire my conductor, that he would be pleased to explain to me,
what could be meant by so many busy heads, hands, and faces, both in
the streets and the fields, because I did not discover any good effects
they produced; but, on the contrary, I never knew a soil so unhappily
cultivated, houses so ill contrived and so ruinous, or a people whose
countenances and habit expressed so much misery and want.

This lord Munodi was a person of the first rank, and had been some
years governor of Lagado; but, by a cabal of ministers, was discharged
for insufficiency. However, the king treated him with tenderness, as a
well-meaning man, but of a low contemptible understanding.

When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he
made no further answer than by telling me, “that I had not been long
enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of
the world had different customs;” with other common topics to the same
purpose. But, when we returned to his palace, he asked me “how I liked
the building, what absurdities I observed, and what quarrel I had with
the dress or looks of his domestics?” This he might safely do; because
every thing about him was magnificent, regular, and polite. I answered,
“that his excellency’s prudence, quality, and fortune, had exempted him
from those defects, which folly and beggary had produced in others.” He
said, “if I would go with him to his country-house, about twenty miles
distant, where his estate lay, there would be more leisure for this
kind of conversation.” I told his excellency “that I was entirely at
his disposal;” and accordingly we set out next morning.

During our journey he made me observe the several methods used by
farmers in managing their lands, which to me were wholly unaccountable;
for, except in some very few places, I could not discover one ear of
corn or blade of grass. But, in three hours travelling, the scene was
wholly altered; we came into a most beautiful country; farmers’ houses,
at small distances, neatly built; the fields enclosed, containing
vineyards, corn-grounds, and meadows. Neither do I remember to have
seen a more delightful prospect. His excellency observed my countenance
to clear up; he told me, with a sigh, “that there his estate began, and
would continue the same, till we should come to his house: that his
countrymen ridiculed and despised him, for managing his affairs no
better, and for setting so ill an example to the kingdom; which,
however, was followed by very few, such as were old, and wilful, and
weak like himself.”

We came at length to the house, which was indeed a noble structure,
built according to the best rules of ancient architecture. The
fountains, gardens, walks, avenues, and groves, were all disposed with
exact judgment and taste. I gave due praises to every thing I saw,
whereof his excellency took not the least notice till after supper;
when, there being no third companion, he told me with a very melancholy
air “that he doubted he must throw down his houses in town and country,
to rebuild them after the present mode; destroy all his plantations,
and cast others into such a form as modern usage required, and give the
same directions to all his tenants, unless he would submit to incur the
censure of pride, singularity, affectation, ignorance, caprice, and
perhaps increase his majesty’s displeasure; that the admiration I
appeared to be under would cease or diminish, when he had informed me
of some particulars which, probably, I never heard of at court, the
people there being too much taken up in their own speculations, to have
regard to what passed here below.”

The sum of his discourse was to this effect: “That about forty years
ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or
diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very
little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired
in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to
dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of
putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.
To this end, they procured a royal patent for erecting an academy of
projectors in Lagado; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the
people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom
without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new
rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and
tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, as they undertake, one
man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of
materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the
fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think
fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at
present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience
is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in
the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in
ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of
being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon
prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair: that
as for himself, being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content to
go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built,
and act as they did, in every part of life, without innovation: that
some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but
were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art,
ignorant, and ill common-wealth’s men, preferring their own ease and
sloth before the general improvement of their country.”

His lordship added, “That he would not, by any further particulars,
prevent the pleasure I should certainly take in viewing the grand
academy, whither he was resolved I should go.” He only desired me to
observe a ruined building, upon the side of a mountain about three
miles distant, of which he gave me this account: “That he had a very
convenient mill within half a mile of his house, turned by a current
from a large river, and sufficient for his own family, as well as a
great number of his tenants; that about seven years ago, a club of
those projectors came to him with proposals to destroy this mill, and
build another on the side of that mountain, on the long ridge whereof a
long canal must be cut, for a repository of water, to be conveyed up by
pipes and engines to supply the mill, because the wind and air upon a
height agitated the water, and thereby made it fitter for motion, and
because the water, descending down a declivity, would turn the mill
with half the current of a river whose course is more upon a level.” He
said, “that being then not very well with the court, and pressed by
many of his friends, he complied with the proposal; and after employing
a hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the projectors went
off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and
putting others upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of
success, as well as equal disappointment.”

In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency, considering the
bad character he had in the academy, would not go with me himself, but
recommended me to a friend of his, to bear me company thither. My lord
was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a
person of much curiosity and easy belief; which, indeed, was not
without truth; for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger
days.