ABSTRACT
69 Yes! there are Giants on the earth in these days ; but it is their great bulk, and the nearness of our view, which prevents us from perceiving their grandeur. This is how it is that the glory of the present is lost upon the contemporaries of the greatest men ; and, perhaps this was Swift’s meaning, when he said that Gulliver could not discover exactly what it was that strode among the corn-ridges in the Brobdignagian field : thus, we lose the brightness of things of our own time in consequence of their proximity.
