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224 us as still more little by putting one of us amid the giants of Brobdingnag. In Laputa and in Balnibarbi we find our madnesses enlarged and deformed as in a convex mirror. In the island of Glubbdubdrib we find our past; in the land of the Houyhnhnms we find our foul bestiality. Nothing escapes Swift's black hatred. Political divisions are no more important than the division between those who wear high heels and those who wear low heels; religious divisions are like the division between those who crack eggs on the side and those who crack them at the end; ministers of state win their positions by proficiency in dancing on the tight-rope. Kings are proud and pitiless in proportion to their weakness. Woman's beauty appears full of stains and ugliness when it is magnified. All that to us seems glorious and majestic would be but a pygmy's farce to beings greater and wiser than we—as to the King of Brobdingnag, who observed:

But with the hairs of this king's beard, Gulliver makes himself a comb! The same king,