accusation; and yet I own I am neither sorry nor surprised to see it in print. Not sorry, because I can so fully confute it, that with all ingenuous readers it will turn to my applause ;-not surprised, because I expected such usage from the spirit of Phalarism. I am morally sure that the very persons that printed this story knew how to give a good answer to it; for I heard of it by some common friends some time before it was printed, who, I question not, gave them an account how I justified myself; but, however, it seems they would not lay aside this calumny; for, as in war sometimes it is an useful stratagem to spread a false report, though it certainly must be dispersed in two or three days; so here it was thought a serviceable falsehood, if it could be credited for a few months. Besides that, it is the old rule to accuse strenuously, and something will stick; and it is almost the same thing with men's reputations as with their lives: he that is prodigal of his own, is master of another man's.

Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris.

THE CHANGE OF LANGUAGE.

BUT, since tyrants will not be confined by laws, let us suppose, if you will, that our Phalaris might make use of the Attic, for no reason at all but his own arbitrary humour and pleasure; yet we have still another indictment against the credit of the Epistles; for even the Attic of the true Phalaris's age is not there represented; but a more recent idiom and style, that by the whole thread and colour of it betrays itself to be many centuries younger than he. Every living language, like the perspiring bodies of living creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration; some words go off, and become obsolete; others are taken in, and by degrees grow into common use; or the same word is inverted to a new sense and notion, which in tract of time makes as observable a change in the air and features of a language, as age makes in the lines and mien of a face. All are sensible of this in their own native tongue, where continual use makes every man a critic; for what Englishman does not think

was indeed nothing else but restoring of the primitive and apostolical doctrine, should have been chiefly carried on by a man so eminent in all primitive and apostolical virtues. And to those who upbraided the reformed with his fall, it was answered, that Liberius, whom they so much magnify, had fallen as foully upon a much slighter temptation, only out of a desire to re-enter to his see, from which he had been banished; and that he persisted much longer in it.

History of Reformation.

In any of their church, i.e., in any one.

P. 119, 1. 15. P. 120, 1. 7. Heat seems here to have the sense which we now colloquially assign to "hot water." "Notwithstanding the troubles into which he got as regarded them." It cannot mean “his zeal for them."

P. 121, 1. 36. merit.

Rate, in its proper sense of "rank" or "order," with no allusion to

P. 122, 1. 5. Liberius, who, in A.D. 355, refused to concur in the condemnation of Athanasius, despite the commands of the Emperor Constantius. Banishment broke his resolution and he submitted, but afterwards repented of his complaisance.

JONATHAN SWIFT.

Jonathan Swift, an Englishman of Englishmen, was born at Dublin in 1667, and was educated at Trinity College. After being dependent on Temple, he obtained some small livings in Ireland, drifted into connection with the English Tories, was made Dean of St. Patrick's, and died in 1745. In most qualifications of the prose writer Swift has few equals and no superiors in English.

THE TRANSPORT OF GULLIVER TO THE CAPITAL.

THESE people are most excellent mathematicians, and

arrived to a great perfection in mechanics, by the countenance and encouragement of the emperor, who is a renowned patron of learning. This prince has several machines fixed on wheels, for the carriage of trees and other great weights. He often builds his largest men-of-war, whereof some are nine feet long, in the woods where the timber grows, and has them carried on these engines three or four hundred yards to the sea. Five hundred carpenters and engineers were immediately set at work to prepare the greatest engine they had. It was a frame of wood raised three inches from the ground, about seven feet long, and four wide, moving upon twenty-two wheels. The shout I heard was upon the arrival of this engine, which, it seems, set out in four hours after my landing. It was brought parallel to me as I lay. But the principal difficulty was to raise and place me in this vehicle. Eighty poles, each of one foot high, were erected for this purpose, and very strong cords, of the bigness of pack-thread, were fastened by hooks to many bandages, which the workmen had girt round my neck, my

hands, my body, and my legs. Nine hundred of the strongest men were employed to draw up these cords, by many pulleys fastened on the poles; and thus, in less than three hours, I was raised and slung into the engine, and there tied fast. All this I was told; for, while the whole operation was performing, I lay in a profound sleep, by the force of that soporiferous medicine infused into my liquor. Fifteen hundred of the emperor's largest horses, each about four inches and a half high, were employed to draw me towards the metropolis, which, as I said, was half a mile distant.

About four hours after we began our journey, I awaked by a very ridiculous accident; for the carriage being stopped awhile, to adjust something that was out of order, two or three of the young natives had the curiosity to see how I looked when I was asleep; they climbed up into the engine, and advancing very softly to my face, one of them, an officer in the guards, put the sharp end of his half-pike a good way up into my left nostril, which tickled my nose like a straw, and made me sneeze violently; whereupon they stole off unperceived, and it was three weeks before I knew the cause of my waking so suddenly. We made a long march the remaining part of the day, and rested at night with five hundred guards on each side of me, half with torches, and half with bows and arrows, ready to shoot me if I should offer to stir. The next morning at sunrise we continued our march, and arrived within two hundred yards of the city gates about noon. The emperor, and all his court, came out to meet us, but his great officers would by no means suffer his majesty to endanger his person, by mounting on my body.

At the place where the carriage stopped there stood an ancient temple, esteemed to be the largest in the whole kingdom; which, having been polluted some years before by an unnatural murder, was, according to the zeal of those people, looked upon as profane, and therefore had been applied to common use, and all the ornaments and furniture carried away. In this edifice it was determined I should lodge. The great gate fronting to the north, was about four feet high, and almost two feet wide, through which I could easily creep. On each side of the gate was a small window, not above six inches from the ground: into

that on the left side, the king's smith conveyed fourscore and eleven chains, like those that hang to a lady's watch in Europe, and almost as large, which were locked to my left leg with sixand-thirty padlocks. Over against this temple, on the other side of the great highway, at twenty feet distance, there was a turret at least five feet high. Here the emperor ascended, with many principal lords of his court, to have an opportunity of viewing me, as I was told, for I could not see them. It was reckoned that above a hundred thousand inhabitants came out of the town upon the same errand; and, in spite of my guards, I believe there could not be fewer than ten thousand at several times, who mounted my body by the help of ladders. But a proclamation was soon issued, to forbid it upon pain of death. When the workmen found it was impossible for me to break loose, they cut all the strings that bound me; whereupon I rose up, with as melancholy a disposition as ever I had in my life. But the noise and astonishment of the people, at seeing me rise and walk, are not to be expressed. The chains that held my left leg were about two yards long, and gave me not only liberty of walking backwards and forwards in a semicircle, but being fixed within four inches of the gate, allowed me to creep in, and lie at my full length in the temple.

A Voyage to Lilliput.

THE KING'S OPINIONS ON GUNPOWDER.

IN hopes to ingratiate myself farther into his majesty's favour, I told him of “an invention, discovered between three and four hundred years ago, to make a certain powder, into a heap of which, the smallest spark of fire falling, would kindle the whole in a moment, although it were as big as a mountain, and make it all fly up in the air together, with a noise and agitation greater than thunder. That a proper quantity of this powder, rammed into a hollow tube of brass or iron, according to its bigness, would drive a ball of iron or lead with such violence and speed, as nothing was able to sustain its force. That the largest balls, thus discharged, would not only destroy whole ranks of an army