ld be kept as
professional borees. When I heard this, it occurred to me that some
rumours of its substance might perhaps have become current among
Chowbok's people; for the agony of his fear had been too great to have
been inspired by the mere dread of being burnt alive before the statues.

I also questioned them about the museum of old machines, and the cause of
the apparent retrogression in all arts, sciences, and inventions. I
learnt that about four hundred years previously, the state of mechanical
knowledge was far beyond our own, and was advancing with prodigious
rapidity, until one of the most learned professors of hypothetics wrote
an extraordinary book (from which I propose to give extracts later on),
proving that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race
of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as different from, and
superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life. So convincing
was his reasoning, or unreasoning, to this effect, that he carried the
country with him; and they made a clean sweep of all machinery that had
not been in use for more than two hundred and seventy-one years (which
period was arrived at after a series of compromises), and strictly
forbade all further improvements and inventions under pain of being
considered in the eye of the law to be labouring under typhus fever,
which they regard as one of the worst of all crimes.

This is the only case in which they have confounded mental and physical
diseases, and they do it even here as by an avowed legal fiction. I
became uneasy when I remembered about my watch; but they comforted me
with the assurance that transgression in this matter was now so unheard
of, that the law could afford to be lenient towards an utter stranger,
especially towards one who had such a good character (they meant
physique), and such beautiful light hair. Moreover the watch was a real
curiosity, and would be a welcome addition to the metropolitan
collection; so they did not think I need let it trouble me seriously.

I will write, however, more fully upon this subject when I deal with the
Colleges of Unreason, and the Book of the Machines.

In about a month from the time of our starting I was told that our
journey was nearly over. The bandage was now dispensed with, for it
seemed impossible that I should ever be able to find my way back without
being captured. Then we rolled merrily along through the streets of a
handsome town, and