1827.] [ 597 } 



A LECTURE ON GIANTS. 



Monsieur Louis. 



THERE is something very singular in gaping at a man of extraordinary 

 size or height comparing his various dimensions and treating him, in 

 fact, like an animal whom you would very calmly measure from " the tip 

 of the snout to the insertion of the tail." 



This thought would intrude itself when we went to see that most 

 respectable figure, Monsieur Louis, seven feet and a half in height, with 

 stoutness in proportion a man, beneath whose extended arm a creature of 

 six feet might walk comfortably. We were, in the emphatic language of 

 Scripture, as " grasshoppers in his sight." He received us with all the 

 affability of his countrymen being a native of happy France, where all 

 are gay and debonair, without November's dulnesses and most inscrutable 

 fogs. " There's a fist!" said the great and noble animal, propelling one 

 which might have done justice to the glove of Entellus, and exulting in the 

 bodily superiority in which he seemed to revel with fearful confidence. 

 But as remarkable an appearance of this phenomenon as can be imagined, 

 is when he emerges from an adjoining room. " Monsieur Louis will wait 

 upon you directly," says an obliging attendant ; and forthwith, while you 

 are fixing in your mind the spot on the door-post which his head may pro- 

 bably reach' slow, stately, and delving low beneath the lintel, advances 

 the towering head, and rears itself, one would almost write, jusquau 

 del! It is truly a chose dvoir et d vanter, and, if properly appreciated, 

 will lead to many useful considerations. This is said thus meditatively, 

 because some people will be asking odd and irrelevant questions of these 

 great personages, subject to a risk of being suddenly ejected from the 

 room which is reported to have happened under the directions of poor giant 

 O'Bryan, of seven or eight feet memory. How a surgeon must rejoice in 

 the idea of cutting up a vast hill of flesh, such as these colossi carry about 

 with them ! But we are straying from M. Louis, the wonder of Lorraine. 

 It is most remarkable, that neither of his parents were elevated by Nature 

 above the ordinary standard his father being somewhere about five feet 

 ten inches his mother only five feet. Yet this son of their's was not the 

 only giant of the family ; for the eldest brother, who died in the great 

 frost at Moscow, measured six feet ten inches ; and there was yet another 

 a giantess who rose to six feet two a very sufficient Brobdignag lady, 

 when petticoats are considered ! The curious may like to be made 

 acquainted with the weight of the magnificent giant above mentioned, and 

 with some of his proportions. The former came to twenty-one stone and 

 seven pounds ; from the ground to his hip were four feet eight inches ; from 

 the end of his fore-finger to the end of his elbow (taking it, according to 

 the cubit measure, inwards), two feet one inch ; the length of his foot 

 was fourteen inches ; from the end of his fore-finger to the top of his hand, 

 ten inches; from the ground to his knee, two feet four inches. The dis- 

 tinguishing superiority of this high personage is most visibly observed in his 

 symmetry ; for, respecting men of common stature, it is a just remark, 

 where one overtops his fellow a few inches, that he has a great column to 

 support Nature having exhausted herself in the creation of shanks, con- 

 formably with her favourite principle of making her children equal in the 

 middle of their bodies. The usually fine proportions, however, which 

 strike the eye on beholding M. Louis, together with a certain soldier-like 



