yes, and then descending gradually till I came
to the bottom: after which I mounted again, and began the other page in
the same manner, and so turned over the leaf, which I could easily do
with both my hands, for it was as thick and stiff as a pasteboard, and in
the largest folios not above eighteen or twenty feet long.

Their style is clear, masculine, and smooth, but not florid; for they
avoid nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, or using various
expressions. I have perused many of their books, especially those in
history and morality. Among the rest, I was much diverted with a little
old treatise, which always lay in Glumdalclitch's bed chamber, and
belonged to her governess, a grave elderly gentlewoman, who dealt in
writings of morality and devotion. The book treats of the weakness of
human kind, and is in little esteem, except among the women and the
vulgar. However, I was curious to see what an author of that country
could say upon such a subject. This writer went through all the usual
topics of European moralists, showing "how diminutive, contemptible, and
helpless an animal was man in his own nature; how unable to defend
himself from inclemencies of the air, or the fury of wild beasts: how
much he was excelled by one creature in strength, by another in speed, by
a third in foresight, by a fourth in industry." He added, "that nature
was degenerated in these latter declining ages of the world, and could
now produce only small abortive births, in comparison of those in ancient
times." He said "it was very reasonable to think, not only that the
species of men were originally much larger, but also that there must have
been giants in former ages; which, as it is asserted by history and
tradition, so it has been confirmed by huge bones and skulls, casually
dug up in several parts of the kingdom, far exceeding the common dwindled
race of men in our days." He argued, "that the very laws of nature
absolutely required we should have been made, in the beginning of a size
more large and robust; not so liable to destruction from every little
accident, of a tile falling from a house, or a stone cast from the hand
of a boy, or being drowned in a little brook." From this way of
reasoning, the author drew several moral applications, useful in the
conduct of life, but needless here to repeat. For my own part, I could
not avoid reflecting how universally this talent was spread, of drawing
lectures in morality,