g top, and go round with it."

(January 4th, 1795.) As we were talking of the king of Poland's little
dwarf, S---- recollected by contrast the Irish giant whom he had seen
at Bristol. "I liked the Irish giant very much, because," said S----,
"though he was so large, he was not surly; and when my father asked
him to take out his shoe-buckle to try whether it would cover my foot,
he did not seem in a hurry to do it. I suppose he did not wish to show
how little I was."

Children are nice observers of that kind of politeness which arises
from good nature; they may hence learn what really pleases in manners,
without being taught grimace.

Dwarfs and giants led us to Gulliver's Travels. S---- had never read
them, but one of the company now gave him some general account of
Lilliput and Brobdignag. He thought the account of the little people
more entertaining than that of the large ones; the carriage of
Gulliver's hat by a team of Lilliputian horses, diverted him; but,
when he was told that the queen of Brobdignag's dwarf stuck Gulliver
one day at dinner into a marrow bone, S---- looked grave, and seemed
rather shocked than amused; he said, "It must have almost suffocated
poor Gulliver, and must have spoiled his clothes." S---- wondered of
what cloth they could make him new clothes, because the cloth in
Brobdignag must have been too thick, and as thick as a board. He also
wished to know what sort of glass was used to glaze the windows in
Gulliver's wooden house; "because," said he, "their common glass must
have been so thick that it would not have been transparent to
Gulliver." He thought that Gulliver must have been extremely afraid of
setting his small wooden house on fire.

_M----._ "Why more afraid than we are? His house was as large for
Gulliver as our house is for us."

_S----._ "Yes, but what makes the fire must have been _so much_
larger! One cinder, one spark of theirs would have filled his little
grate. And how did he do to read their books?"

_S----_ was told that Gulliver stood at the topmost line of the page,
and ran along as fast as he read, till he got to the bottom of the
page. It was suggested, that Gulliver might have used a diminishing
glass. S----immediately exclaimed, "How entertaining it must have been
to him to look through their telescopes." An instance of invention
arising from _contrast_.

If the conversation had not here been interrupted, S---- would
probably have invented a greater variety o