or at all equal in
proportion (if I rightly remember) to Salisbury steeple.[65] But, not to
detract from a nation, to which during my life I shall acknowledge
myself extremely obliged, it must be allowed that whatever this famous
tower wants in height is amply made up in beauty and strength. For the
walls are nearly a hundred feet thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each
is about forty feet square, and adorned on all sides with statues of
gods and emperors, cut in marble larger than life, placed in their
several niches. I measured a little finger which had fallen down from
one of these statues, and lay unperceived among some rubbish, and found
it exactly four feet and an inch in length. Glumdalclitch wrapped it up
in her handkerchief and carried it home in her pocket, to keep among
other trinkets, of which the girl was very fond, as children at her age
usually are.

The king's kitchen is indeed a noble building, vaulted at top, and about
six hundred feet high. The great oven is not so wide by ten paces as the
cupola at St. Paul's, for I measured the latter on purpose after my
return. But if I should describe the kitchen-grate, the prodigious pots
and kettles, the joints of meat turning on the spits, with many other
particulars, perhaps I should be hardly believed; at least, a severe
critic would be apt to think I enlarged a little, as travellers are
often suspected to do. To avoid which censure, I fear I have run too
much into the other extreme; and that if this treatise should happen to
be translated into the language of Brobdingnag (which is the general
name of that kingdom) and transmitted thither, the king and his people
would have reason to complain that I had done them an injury, by a false
and diminutive representation.

His majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables: they
are generally from fifty-four to sixty feet high. But when he goes
abroad on solemn days, he is attended for state by a militia guard of
five hundred horse, which indeed I thought was the most splendid sight
that could be ever beheld, till I saw part of his army in battalia,[66]
whereof I shall find another occasion to speak.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V.

SEVERAL ADVENTURES THAT HAPPENED TO THE AUTHOR. THE AUTHOR SHOWS
HIS SKILL IN NAVIGATION.

I should have lived happily enough in that country, if my littleness had
not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents, some of
which I shall v