ble of the progressive motion made
in the air by the island. On the second morning, about eleven o'clock,
the king himself in person, attended by his nobility, courtiers, and
officers, having prepared all their musical instruments, played on them
for three hours without intermission, so that I was quite stunned with
the noise; neither could I possibly guess the meaning, till my tutor
informed me. He said that, the people of their island had their ears
adapted to hear "the music of the spheres, which always played at certain
periods, and the court was now prepared to bear their part, in whatever
instrument they most excelled."

In our journey towards Lagado, the capital city, his majesty ordered that
the island should stop over certain towns and villages, from whence he
might receive the petitions of his subjects. And to this purpose,
several packthreads were let down, with small weights at the bottom. On
these packthreads the people strung their petitions, which mounted up
directly, like the scraps of paper fastened by school boys at the end of
the string that holds their kite. Sometimes we received wine and
victuals from below, which were drawn up by pulleys.

The knowledge I had in mathematics, gave me great assistance in acquiring
their phraseology, which depended much upon that science, and music; and
in the latter I was not unskilled. Their ideas are perpetually
conversant in lines and figures. If they would, for example, praise the
beauty of a woman, or any other animal, they describe it by rhombs,
circles, parallelograms, ellipses, and other geometrical terms, or by
words of art drawn from music, needless here to repeat. I observed in
the king's kitchen all sorts of mathematical and musical instruments,
after the figures of which they cut up the joints that were served to his
majesty's table.

Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right angle
in any apartment; and this defect arises from the contempt they bear to
practical geometry, which they despise as vulgar and mechanic; those
instructions they give being too refined for the intellects of their
workmen, which occasions perpetual mistakes. And although they are
dexterous enough upon a piece of paper, in the management of the rule,
the pencil, and the divider, yet in the common actions and behaviour of
life, I have not seen a more clumsy, awkward, and unhandy people, nor so
slow and perplexed in their conceptions upon all othe