down a declivity, would turn the mill with half the
current of a river whose course is more upon a level.”
He said, “that being then not very well with
the court, and pressed by many of his friends, he
complied with the proposal; and after employing a
hundred men for two years, the work miscarried, the
projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon
him, railing at him ever since, and putting others
upon the same experiment, with equal assurance of
success, as well as equal disappointment.”
In a few days we came back to town; and his excellency,
considering the bad character he had in the academy,
would not go with me himself, but recommended me to
a friend of his, to bear me company thither.
My lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer
of projects, and a person of much curiosity and easy
belief; which, indeed, was not without truth; for
I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger
days.
[The author permitted to see the grand academy of
Lagado. The academy largely described.
The arts wherein the professors employ themselves.]
This academy is not an entire single building, but
a continuation of several houses on both sides of
a street, which growing waste, was purchased and applied
to that use.
I was received very kindly by the warden, and went
for many days to the academy. Every room has
in it one or more projectors; and I believe I could
not be in fewer than five hundred rooms.
The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty
hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and
singed in several places. His clothes, shirt,
and skin, were all of the same colour. He has
been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams
out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically
sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement
summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that,
in eight years more, he should be able to supply the
governor’s gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable
rate: but he complained that his stock was low,
and entreated me “to give him something as an
encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this
had been a very dear season for cucumbers.”
I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished
me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice
of begging from all who go to see them.
I went into another chamber, but was ready to hasten
back, being almost overcome with a horrible stink.
My conductor pressed me forward, conjuring me in
a whisper “to give no offence, which would be
highly resented;” and therefore I durst not so
much as stop my nose. The projector of this
cell was the most ancient student of the academy;
his face and beard were of a pale yellow; his hands
and clothes daubed over with filth. When I was
presented to him, he gave me a close embrace, a compliment
I could well have excused. His employment, from
his first coming into the academy, was an operation
to reduce human excrement to its original food, by
separating the several parts, removing the tincture
which it receives from the gall, making the odour
exhale, and scumming off the saliva. He had
a weekly allowance, from the society, of a vessel
filled with human ordure, about the bigness of a Bristol
barrel.
