nd besides I was not only endowed with the faculty of
speech, but likewise with some rudiments of reason, to a degree that,
with all his acquaintance, I passed for a prodigy."

He made me observe, "that among the _Houyhnhnms_, the white, the sorrel,
and the iron-gray, were not so exactly shaped as the bay, the
dapple-gray, and the black; nor born with equal talents of mind, or a
capacity to improve them; and therefore continued always in the condition
of servants, without ever aspiring to match out of their own race, which
in that country would be reckoned monstrous and unnatural."

I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he
was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, "that my
birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents,
who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among
us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our
young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury;
that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and
contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are
almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person,
and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate
and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally
scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family
seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to
provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to
improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre
countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood;
and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality,
that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a
coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his
body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice,
sensuality, and pride.

"Without the consent of this illustrious body, no law can be enacted,
repealed, or altered: and these nobles have likewise the decision of all
our possessions, without appeal." {514}

CHAPTER VII.

The author's great love of his native country. His master's observations
upon the constitution and administration of England, as described by the
author, with parallel cases and comparisons. His master's observations
upo