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Gulliver's Travels: Brobdingnagians

Of the Lilliputians, I used to say that they were people without a blemish in their persons, and the Brobdingnagians coarse beyond description; but later reflection induces me to think that the Lilliputians had blemishes proportionate to their size, the same being too tiny for me to estimate; and that possibly the Brobdingnagians appeared more vulgar than they truly were, their colossal proportions magnifying every defect. In some matters these large people were at least larger-minded. Thus, in the matter of whether it was proper to break an egg on the little or big end--which had almost split the Lilliputian kingdom in twain--as to that matter the Brobdingnagians would have lost little sleep. I judge this from a comment by the Brobdingnagian king on a political matter which I spoke of in connection with my own country--England. "It is tyranny," he said, "for a government to require those who hold differing opinions to change or not to change them." His Majesty was much interested to hear of England; whereat I related at length her history, which astonished him. He protested that it seemed no more than a sequence of conspiracies, murders, revolutions, banishments, the worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, hatred, lust, malice, and ambition could produce. "What a pernicious race of odious vermin to be allowed to crawl upon the earth!" he said; which injurious judgment of my noble and beloved country pained me exceedingly.

Now, while I had become a favorite of a great nation, it was upon such a footing as ill became the dignity of humankind. I wished to be once more with people of my own mind; also I longed for a whiff of that sea which looked toward my own land. In response to my entreaties, I was taken to the seacoast. My little nurse Glumdalclitch being ill, I was put in charge of a page, who left me alone on the shore while he sought for birds' eggs. While thus alone, the traveling-cabinet in which I lay was seized by a great bird who took it far out to sea and then let it drop, almost at the exact moment that an English ship happened by to pick me up. Thus was I singularly rescued and brought once more safely to England.

I made other voyages and had divers adventures, a most singular one being that of my rescue from a desert continent by the people of an island which flew in the air, the same being made to rise and fall by means of an immense loadstone. The people of the flying island held themselves as a superior race, for no greater reason that I could see than that they had one eye turned inward and one turned upward.