s on a corresponding scale. Gulliver eats a whole
herd of cattle for breakfast and drinks several hogsheads of liquor.
He captures an entire fleet of warships. A rival race of pygmies
endeavors to secure his services so as to obtain the balance of power.
The quarrels between these little people seem ridiculous, and so petty
as to be almost beneath contempt.

Gulliver next visits Brobdingnag, where the inhabitants are sixty feet
tall, and the affairs of ordinary human beings appear petty and
insignificant. The cats are as large as three oxen, and the dogs
attain the size of four elephants. Gulliver eats on a table thirty
feet high, and trembles lest he may fall and break his neck. The baby
seizes Gulliver and tries to swallow his head. Afterward the hero
fights a desperate battle with two rats. A monkey catches him and
carries him to the almost infinite height of the house top. Certainly,
the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag merit Leslie Stephen's
criticism of being "almost the most delightful children's book ever
written."

The third voyage, which takes him to Laputa, satirizes the
philosophers. We are taken through the academy at Lagado and are shown
a typical philosopher:--

"He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams
out of cucumbers, which were to be put in vials, 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."

In this voyage the Struldbrugs are described. They are a race of men
who, after the loss of every faculty and of every tie that binds them
to earth, are doomed to continue living. Dante never painted a
stronger or a ghastlier picture.

On his fourth voyage, he visits the country of the Houyhnhnms and
describes the Yahoos, who are the embodiment of all the detestable
qualities of human beings. The last two voyages are not pleasant
reading, and one might wish that the author of two such inimitable
tales as the adventures in Lilliput and Brobdingnag had stopped with
these.

Children read _Gulliver's Travels_ for the story, but there is much
more than a story in the work. In its pages the historian finds
allusions that throw much light on the history of the age. Among the
Lilliputians, for example, there is one party, known as the
Bigendians, which insists that all eggs shall be broken open at the
big