chain was let down from the lowest gallery, with a seat fastened to the bottom, to which I fixed myself, and was drawn up by pullies.
CHAP. II.
AT my alighting, I was surrounded with a crowd of people, but those who stood nearest, seemed to be of better quality. They beheld me with all the marks and circumstances of wonder, neither indeed was I much in their debt; having never till then, seen a race of mortals, so singular in their shapes, habits, and countenances. Their heads were all reclined, either to the right, or the left; one of their eyes turned inward, and the other directly up to the zenith[1]. Their outward garments were adorned with the figures of suns, moons, and stars; interwoven with those of fiddles, flutes, harps, trumpets, guitars, harpsicords, and many other instruments of musick, unknown to us in Europe. I observed, here and there many in the
- ↑ By this description the author intended to ridicule those who waste life in speculative sciences, the powers of whose minds are as absurdly employed as the eyes of the Laputians.
