<p class="gutsumm">The 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>On the 16th 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.</p>
<p>The continent, as far as it is subject to the monarch of the
flying island, passes under the general name of
<i>Balnibarbi</i>; and the metropolis, as I said before, is
called <i>Lagado</i>. 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.</p>
<p>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 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>III - CHAPTER V.</h3>
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