And what are the
armies of Europe, when compared with that magnificent cavalry
manoeuvring on a parade-ground twenty miles square, each mounted
trooper ninety feet high, and all, as they draw their swords at command,
representing ten thousand flashes of lightning?
The third part contains the voyage of Gulliver--no less improbable than
the former ones--to _Laputa_, the flying island of projectors and
visionaries. This is a varied satire upon the Royal Society, the
eccentricities of the savans, empirics of all kinds, mathematical magic,
and the like. In this, political schemes to restore the pretender are
aimed at. The Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea bubble are denounced.
Here, too, in his journey to Luggnagg, he introduces the sad and revolting
picture of the Struldbrugs, those human beings who live on, losing all
their power and becoming hideously old.
In his last voyage--to the land of the _Houyhnhnms_--his misanthropy is
painfully manifest. This is the country where horses are masters, and men
a servile and degraded race; and he has painted the men so brutish and
filthy that the satire loses its point.
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