{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4243/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4243","id":"gutenberg_4243","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4243","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","More, Thomas, Saint, 1478-1535","Social problems"],"text":"COLLOQUIES ON SOCIETY.\n\n\nBY\nROBERT SOUTHEY.\n\nCASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:\n_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.\n1887.\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nIt was in 1824 that Robert Southey, then fifty years old, published \"Sir\nThomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society,\" a\nbook in two octavo volumes with plates illustrating lake scenery.  There\nwere later editions of the book in 1829, and in 1831, and there was an\nedition in one volume in 1837, at the beginning of the reign of Queen\nVictoria.\n\nThese dialogues with a meditative and patriotic ghost form separate\ndissertations upon various questions that concern the progress of\nsociety.  Omitting a few dissertations that have lost the interest they\nhad when the subjects they discussed were burning questions of the time,\nthis volume retains the whole machinery of Southey's book.  It gives\nunabridged the Colloquies that deal with the main principles of social\nlife as Southey saw them in his latter days; and it includes, of course,\nthe pleasant Colloquy that presents to us Southey himself, happy in his\nlibrary, descanting on the course of time as illustrated by the bodies\nand the souls of books.  As this volume does not reproduce all the\nColloquies arranged by Southey under the main title of \"Sir Thomas More,\"\nit avoids use of the main title, and ventures only to describe itself as\n\"Colloquies on Society, by Robert Southey.\"\n\nThey are of great interest, for they present to us the form and character\nof the conservative reaction in a mind that was in youth impatient for\nreform.  In Southey, as in Wordsworth, the reaction followed on\nexperience of failure in the way taken by the revolutionists of France,\nwith whose aims for the regeneration of Europe they had been in warmest\naccord.  Neither Wordsworth nor Southey ever lowered the ideal of a\nhigher life for man on earth.  Southey retains it in these Colloquies,\nalthough he balances his own hope with the questionings of the ghost, and\nif he does look for a crowning race, regards it, with Tennyson, as a\n\n      \"_far off_ divine event\n   To which the whole Creation moves.\"\n\nThe conviction brought to men like Wordsworth and Southey by the failure\nof the French Revolution to attain its aim in the sudden elevation of\nsociety was not of vanity in the aim, but of vanity in any hope of its\nimmediate attainment by main force.  Southey makes More say to himself\nupon this question (page 37), \"I admit that such an improved condition of\nsociety as you contemplate is possible, and that it ought always to be\nkept in view; but the error of supposing it too near, of fancying that\nthere is a short road to it, is, of all the errors of these times, the\nmost pernicious, because it seduces the young and generous, and betrays\nthem imperceptibly into an alliance with whatever is flagitious and\ndetestable.\"  All strong reaction of mind tends towards excess in the\nopposite direction.  Southey's detestation of the excesses of vile men\nthat brought shame upon a revolutionary movement to which some of the\npurest hopes of earnest youth had given impulse, drove him, as it drove\nWordsworth, into dread of everything that sought with passionate energy\nimmediate change of evil into good.  But in his own way no man ever\nstrove more patiently than Southey to make evil good; and in his own home\nand his own life he gave good reason to one to whom he was as a father,\nand who knew his daily thoughts and deeds, to speak of him as \"upon the\nwhole the best man I have ever known.\"\n\nIn the days when this book was written, Southey lived at Greta Hall, by\nKeswick, and had gathered a large library about him.  He was Poet\nLaureate.  He had a pension from the Civil List, worth less than 200\npounds a year, and he was living at peace upon a little income enlarged\nby his yearly earnings as a writer.  In 1818 his whole private fortune\nwas 400 pounds in consols.  In 1821 he had added to that some savings,\nand gave all to a ruined friend who had been good to him in former years.\nYet in those days he refused an offer of 2,000 pounds a year to come to\nLondon and write for the _Times_.  He was happiest in his home by\nSkiddaw, with his books about him and his wife about him.\n\nTen years after the publishing of these Colloquies, Southey's wife, who\nhad been, as Southey said, \"for forty years the life of his life,\" had to\nbe placed in a lunatic asylum.  She returned to him to die, and then his\ngentleness became still gentler as his own mind failed.  He died in 1843.\nThree years before his death his friend Wordsworth visited him at\nKeswick, and was not recognised.  But when Southey was told who it was,\n\"then,\" Wordsworth wrote, \"his eyes flashed for a moment with their\nformer brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had found him,\npatting with both his hands his books affectionately, like a child.\"\n\nSir Thomas More, whose ghost communicates with Robert Southey, was born\nin 1478, and at the age of fifty-seven was beheaded for fidelity to\nconscience, on the 6th of July, 1535.  He was, like Southey, a man of\npurest character, and in 1516, when his age was thirty-eight, there was\npublished at Louvain his \"Utopia,\" which sketched wittily an ideal\ncommonwealth that was based on practical and earnest thought upon what\nconstitutes a state, and in what direction to look for amendment of ills.\nMore also withdrew from his most advanced post of opinion.  When he wrote\n\"Utopia\" he advocated absolute freedom of opinion in matters of religion;\nin after years he believed it necessary to enforce conformity.  King\nHenry VIII., stiff in his own opinions, had always believed that; and\nbecause More would not say that he was of one mind with him in the matter\nof the divorce of Katherine he sent him to the scaffold.\n\nH. M.\n\n\n\n\nCOLLOQUY I.--THE INTRODUCTION.\n\n\n   \"_Posso aver certezza_, _e non paura_,\n   _Che raccontando quel che m' e accaduto_,\n   _Il ver diro_, _ne mi sara creduto_.\"\n\n   \"Orlando Innamorato,\" c. 5. st. 53.\n\nIt was during that melancholy November when the death of the Princess\nCharlotte had diffused throughout Great Britain a more general sorrow\nthan had ever before been known in these kingdoms; I was sitting alone at\nevening in my library, and my thoughts had wandered from the book before\nme to the circumstances which made this national calamity be felt almost\nlike a private affliction.  While I was thus musing the post-woman\narrived.  My letters told me there was nothing exaggerated in the public\naccounts of the impression which this sudden loss had produced; that\nwherever you went you found the women of the family weeping, and that men\ncould scarcely speak of the event without tears; that in all the better\nparts of the metropolis there was a sort of palsied feeling which seemed\nto affect the whole current of active life; and that for several days\nthere prevailed in the streets a stillness like that of the Sabbath, but\nwithout its repose.  I opened the newspaper; it was still bordered with\nbroad mourning lines, and was filled with details concerning the deceased\nPrincess.  Her coffin and the ceremonies at her funeral were described as\nminutely as the order of her nuptials and her bridal dress had been, in\nthe same journal, scarce eighteen months before.  \"Man,\" says Sir Thomas\nBrown, \"is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave;\nsolemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting\nceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.\"  These things led me\nin spirit to the vault, and I thought of the memorable dead among whom\nher mortal remains were now deposited.  Possessed with such imaginations\nI leaned back upon the sofa and closed my eyes.\n\nEre long I was awakened from that conscious state of slumber in which the\nstream of fancy floweth as it listeth by the entrance of an elderly\npersonage of grave and dignified appearance.  His countenance and manner\nwere remarkably benign, and announced a high degree of intellectual rank,\nand he accosted me in a voice of uncommon sweetness, saying, \"Montesinos,\na stranger from a distant country may intrude upon you without those\ncredentials which in other cases you have a right to require.\"  \"From\nAmerica!\" I replied, rising to salute him.  Some of the most gratifying\nvisits which I have ever received have been from that part of the world.\nIt gives me indeed more pleasure than I can express to welcome such\ntravellers as have sometimes found their way from New England to those\nlakes and mountains; men who have not forgotten what they owe to their\nancient mother; whose principles, and talents, and attainments would\nrender them an ornament to any country, and might almost lead me to hope\nthat their republican constitution may be more permanent than all other\nconsiderations would induce me either to suppose or wish.\n\n\"You judge of me,\" he made answer, \"by my speech.  I am, however, English\nby birth, and come now from a more distant country than America, wherein\nI have long been naturalised.\"  Without explaining himself further, or\nallowing me time to make the inquiry which would naturally have followed,\nhe asked me if I were not thinking of the Princess Charlotte when he\ndisturbed me.  \"That,\" said I, \"may easily be divined.  All persons whose\nhearts are not filled with their own grief are thinking of her at this\ntime.  It had just occurred to me that on two former occasions when the\nheir apparent of England was cut off in the prime of life the nation was\non the eve of a religious revolution in the first instance, and of a\npolitical one in the second.\"\n\n\"Prince Arthur and Prince Henry,\" he replied.  \"Do you notice this as\nominous, or merely as remarkable?\"\n\n\"Merely as remarkable,\" was my answer.  \"Yet there are certain moods of\nmind in which we can scarcely help ascribing an ominous importance to any\nremarkable coincidence wherein things of moment are concerned.\"\n\n\"Are you superstitious?\" said he.  \"Understand me as using the word for\nwant of a more appropriate one--not in its ordinary and contemptuous\nacceptation.\"\n\nI smiled at the question, and replied, \"Many persons would apply the\nepithet to me without qualifying it.  This, you know, is the age of\nreason, and during the last hundred and fifty years men have been\nreasoning themselves out of everything that they ought to believe and\nfeel.  Among a certain miserable class, who are more numerous than is\ncommonly supposed, he who believes in a First Cause and a future state is\nregarded with contempt as a superstitionist.  The religious naturalist in\nhis turn despises the feebler mind of the Socinian; and the Socinian\nlooks with astonishment or pity at the weakness of those who, having by\nconscientious inquiry satisfied themselves of the authenticity of the\nScriptures, are contented to believe what is written, and acknowledge\nhumility to be the foundation of wisdom as well as of virtue.  But for\nmyself, many, if not most of those even who agree with me in all\nessential points, would be inclined to think me superstitious, because I\nam not ashamed to avow my persuasion that there are more things in heaven\nand earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.\"\n\n\"You believe, then, in apparitions,\" said my visitor.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Even so, sir.  That such things should be is probable _a\npriori_; and I cannot refuse assent to the strong evidence that such\nthings are, nor to the common consent which has prevailed among all\npeople, everywhere, in all ages a belief indeed which is truly catholic,\nin the widest acceptation of the word.  I am, by inquiry and conviction,\nas well as by inclination and feeling, a Christian; life would be\nintolerable to me if I were not so.  \"But,\" says Saint Evremont, \"the\nmost devout cannot always command their belief, nor the most impious\ntheir incredulity.\"  I acknowledge with Sir Thomas Brown that, \"as in\nphilosophy, so in divinity, there are sturdy doubts and boisterous\nobjections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly\nacquainteth us;\" and I confess with him that these are to be conquered,\n\"not in a martial posture, but on our knees.\"  If then there are moments\nwherein I, who have satisfied my reason, and possess a firm and assured\nfaith, feel that I have in this opinion a strong hold, I cannot but\nperceive that they who have endeavoured to dispossess the people of their\nold instinctive belief in such things have done little service to\nindividuals and much injury to the community.\n\n_Stranger_.--Do you extend this to a belief in witchcraft?\n\n_Montesinos_.--The common stories of witchcraft confute themselves, as\nmay be seen in all the trials for that offence.  Upon this subject I\nwould say with my old friend Charles Lamb--\n\n   \"I do not love to credit tales of magic!\n   Heaven's music, which is order, seems unstrung.\n   And this brave world\n   (The mystery of God) unbeautified,\n   Disordered, marred, where such strange things are acted.\"\n\nThe only inference which can be drawn from the confession of some of the\npoor wretches who have suffered upon such charges is, that they had\nattempted to commit the crime, and thereby incurred the guilt and\ndeserved the punishment.  Of this indeed there have been recent\ninstances; and in one atrocious case the criminal escaped because the\nstatute against the imaginary offence is obsolete, and there exists no\nlaw which could reach the real one.\n\n_Stranger_.--He who may wish to show with what absurd perversion the\nforms and technicalities of law are applied to obstruct the purposes of\njustice, which they were designed to further, may find excellent examples\nin England.  But leaving this allow me to ask whether you think all the\nstories which are related of an intercourse between men and beings of a\nsuperior order, good or evil, are to be disbelieved like the vulgar tales\nof witchcraft?\n\n_Montesinos_.--If you happen, sir, to have read some of those ballads\nwhich I threw off in the high spirits of youth you may judge what my\nopinion then was of the grotesque demonology of the monks and middle ages\nby the use there made of it.  But in the scale of existences there may be\nas many orders above us as below.  We know there are creatures so minute\nthat without the aid of our glasses they could never have been\ndiscovered; and this fact, if it were not notorious as well as certain,\nwould appear not less incredible to sceptical minds than that there\nshould be beings which are invisible to us because of their subtlety.\nThat there are such I am as little able to doubt as I am to affirm\nanything concerning them; but if there are such, why not evil spirits, as\nwell as wicked men?  Many travellers who have been conversant with\nsavages have been fully persuaded that their jugglers actually possessed\nsome means of communication with the invisible world, and exercised a\nsupernatural power which they derived from it.  And not missionaries only\nhave believed this, and old travellers who lived in ages of credulity,\nbut more recent observers, such as Carver and Bruce, whose testimony is\nof great weight, and who were neither ignorant, nor weak, nor credulous\nmen.  What I have read concerning ordeals also staggers me; and I am\nsometimes inclined to think it more possible that when there has been\nfull faith on all sides these appeals to divine justice may have been\nanswered by Him who sees the secrets of all hearts than that modes of\ntrial should have prevailed so long and so generally, from some of which\nno person could ever have escaped without an interposition of Providence.\nThus it has appeared to me in my calm and unbiassed judgment.  Yet I\nconfess I should want faith to make the trial.  May it not be, that by\nsuch means in dark ages, and among blind nations, the purpose is effected\nof preserving conscience and the belief of our immortality, without which\nthe life of our life would be extinct?  And with regard to the conjurers\nof the African and American savages, would it be unreasonable to suppose\nthat, as the most elevated devotion brings us into fellowship with the\nHoly Spirit, a correspondent degree of wickedness may effect a communion\nwith evil intelligences?  These are mere speculations which I advance for\nas little as they are worth.  My serious belief amounts to this, that\npreternatural impressions are sometimes communicated to us for wise\npurposes: and that departed spirits are sometimes permitted to manifest\nthemselves.\n\n_Stranger_.--If a ghost, then, were disposed to pay you a visit, you\nwould be in a proper state of mind for receiving such a visitor?\n\n_Montesinos_.--I should not credit my senses lightly; neither should I\nobstinately distrust them, after I had put the reality of the appearance\nto the proof, as far as that were possible.\n\n_Stranger_.--Should you like to have an opportunity afforded you?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Heaven forbid!  I have suffered so much in dreams from\nconversing with those whom even in sleep I knew to be departed, that an\nactual presence might perhaps be more than I could bear.\n\n_Stranger_.--But if it were the spirit of one with whom you had no near\nties of relationship or love, how then would it affect you?\n\n_Montesinos_.--That would of course be according to the circumstances on\nboth sides.  But I entreat you not to imagine that I am any way desirous\nof enduring the experiment.\n\n_Stranger_.--Suppose, for example, he were to present himself as I have\ndone; the purport of his coming friendly; the place and opportunity\nsuiting, as at present; the time also considerately chosen--after dinner;\nand the spirit not more abrupt in his appearance nor more formidable in\naspect than the being who now addresses you?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Why, sir, to so substantial a ghost, and of such\nrespectable appearance, I might, perhaps, have courage enough to say with\nHamlet,\n\n   \"Thou com'st in such a questionable shape,\n   That I will speak to thee!\"\n\n_Stranger_.--Then, sir, let me introduce myself in that character, now\nthat our conversation has conducted us so happily to the point.  I told\nyou truly that I was English by birth, but that I came from a more\ndistant country than America, and had long been naturalised there.  The\ncountry whence I come is not the New World, but the other one: and I now\ndeclare myself in sober earnest to be a ghost.\n\n_Montesinos_.--A ghost!\n\n_Stranger_.--A veritable ghost, and an honest one, who went out of the\nworld with so good a character that he will hardly escape canonisation if\never you get a Roman Catholic king upon the throne.  And now what test do\nyou require?\n\n_Montesinos_.--I can detect no smell of brimstone; and the candle burns\nas it did before, without the slightest tinge of blue in its flame.  You\nlook, indeed, like a spirit of health, and I might be disposed to give\nentire belief to that countenance, if it were not for the tongue that\nbelongs to it.  But you are a queer spirit, whether good or evil!\n\n_Stranger_.--The headsman thought so, when he made a ghost of me almost\nthree hundred years ago.  I had a character through life of loving a\njest, and did not belie it at the last.  But I had also as general a\nreputation for sincerity, and of that also conclusive proof was given at\nthe same time.  In serious truth, then, I am a disembodied spirit, and\nthe form in which I now manifest myself is subject to none of the\naccidents of matter.  You are still incredulous!  Feel, then, and be\nconvinced!\n\nMy incomprehensible guest extended his hand toward me as he spoke.  I\nheld forth mine to accept it, not, indeed, believing him, and yet not\naltogether without some apprehensive emotion, as if I were about to\nreceive an electrical shock.  The effect was more startling than\nelectricity would have produced.  His hand had neither weight nor\nsubstance; my fingers, when they would have closed upon it, found nothing\nthat they could grasp: it was intangible, though it had all the reality\nof form.\n\n\"In the name of God,\" I exclaimed, \"who are you, and wherefore are you\ncome?\"\n\n\"Be not alarmed,\" he replied.  \"Your reason, which has shown you the\npossibility of such an appearance as you now witness, must have convinced\nyou also that it would never be permitted for an evil end.  Examine my\nfeatures well, and see if you do not recognise them.  Hans Holbein was\nexcellent at a likeness.\"\n\nI had now for the first time in my life a distinct sense of that sort of\nporcupinish motion over the whole scalp which is so frequently described\nby the Latin poets.  It was considerably allayed by the benignity of his\ncountenance and the manner of his speech, and after looking him steadily\nin the face I ventured to say, for the likeness had previously struck me,\n\"Is it Sir Thomas More?\"\n\n\"The same,\" he made answer, and lifting up his chin, displayed a circle\nround the neck brighter in colour than the ruby.  \"The marks of\nmartyrdom,\" he continued, \"are our insignia of honour.  Fisher and I have\nthe purple collar, as Friar Forrest and Cranmer have the robe of fire.\"\n\nA mingled feeling of fear and veneration kept me silent, till I perceived\nby his look that he expected and encouraged me to speak; and collecting\nmy spirits as well as I could, I asked him wherefore he had thought\nproper to appear, and why to me rather than to any other person?\n\nHe replied, \"We reap as we have sown.  Men bear with them from this world\ninto the intermediate state their habits of mind and stores of knowledge,\ntheir dispositions and affections and desires; and these become a part of\nour punishment, or of our reward, according to their kind.  Those\npersons, therefore, in whom the virtue of patriotism has predominated\ncontinue to regard with interest their native land, unless it be so\nutterly sunk in degradation that the moral relationship between them is\ndissolved.  Epaminondas can have no sympathy at this time with Thebes,\nnor Cicero with Rome, nor Belisarius with the imperial city of the East.\nBut the worthies of England retain their affection for their noble\ncountry, behold its advancement with joy, and when serious danger appears\nto threaten the goodly structure of its institutions they feel as much\nanxiety as is compatible with their state of beatitude.\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--What, then, may doubt and anxiety consist with the\nhappiness of heaven?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Heaven and hell may be said to begin on your side the\ngrave.  In the intermediate state conscience anticipates with unerring\ncertainty the result of judgment.  We, therefore, who have done well can\nhave no fear for ourselves.  But inasmuch as the world has any hold upon\nour affections we are liable to that anxiety which is inseparable from\nterrestrial hopes.  And as parents who are in bliss regard still with\nparental love the children whom they have left on earth, we, in like\nmanner, though with a feeling different in kind and inferior in degree,\nlook with apprehension upon the perils of our country.\n\n         \"_sub pectore forti_\n   _Vivit adhuc patriae pietas_; _stimulatque sepultum_\n   _Libertatis amor_: _pondus mortale necari_\n   _Si potuit_, _veteres animo post funera vires_\n   _Mansere_, _et prisci vivit non immemor aevi_.\"\n\nThey are the words of old Mantuan.\n\n_Montesinos_.--I am to understand, then, that you cannot see into the\nways of futurity?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Enlarged as our faculties are, you must not suppose\nthat we partake of prescience.  For human actions are free, and we exist\nin time.  The future is to us therefore as uncertain as to you; except\nonly that having a clearer and more comprehensive knowledge of the past,\nwe are enabled to reason better from causes to consequences, and by what\nhas been to judge of what is likely to be.  We have this advantage also,\nthat we are divested of all those passions which cloud the intellects and\nwarp the understandings of men.  You are thinking, I perceive, how much\nyou have to learn, and what you should first inquire of me.  But expect\nno revelations!  Enough was revealed when man was assured of judgment\nafter death, and the means of salvation were afforded him.  I neither\ncome to discover secret things nor hidden treasures; but to discourse\nwith you concerning these portentous and monster-breeding times; for it\nis your lot, as it was mine, to live during one of the grand climacterics\nof the world.  And I come to you, rather than to any other person,\nbecause you have been led to meditate upon the corresponding changes\nwhereby your age and mine are distinguished; and because, notwithstanding\nmany discrepancies and some dispathies between us (speaking of myself as\nI was, and as you know me), there are certain points of sympathy and\nresemblance which bring us into contact, and enable us at once to\nunderstand each other.\n\n_Montesinos_.--_Et in Utopia ego_.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You apprehend me.  We have both speculated in the\njoys and freedom of our youth upon the possible improvement of society;\nand both in like manner have lived to dread with reason the effects of\nthat restless spirit which, like the Titaness Mutability described by\nyour immortal master, insults heaven and disturbs the earth.  By\ncomparing the great operating causes in the age of the Reformation, and\nin this age of revolutions, going back to the former age, looking at\nthings as I then beheld them, perceiving wherein I judged rightly, and\nwherein I erred, and tracing the progress of those causes which are now\ndeveloping their whole tremendous power, you will derive instruction,\nwhich you are a fit person to receive and communicate; for without being\nsolicitous concerning present effect, you are contented to cast your\nbread upon the waters.  You are now acquainted with me and my intention.\nTo-morrow you will see me again; and I shall continue to visit you\noccasionally as opportunity may serve.  Meantime say nothing of what has\npassed--not even to your wife.  She might not like the thoughts of a\nghostly visitor: and the reputation of conversing with the dead might be\nalmost as inconvenient as that of dealing with the devil.  For the\npresent, then, farewell!  I will never startle you with too sudden an\napparition; but you may learn to behold my disappearance without alarm.\n\nI was not able to behold it without emotion, although he had thus\nprepared me; for the sentence was no sooner completed than he was gone.\nInstead of rising from the chair he vanished from it.  I know not to what\nthe instantaneous disappearance can be likened.  Not to the dissolution\nof a rainbow, because the colours of the rainbow fade gradually till they\nare lost; not to the flash of cannon, or to lightning, for these things\nare gone as soon as they are come, and it is known that the instant of\ntheir appearance must be that of their departure; not to a bubble upon\nthe water, for you see it burst; not to the sudden extinction of a light,\nfor that is either succeeded by darkness or leaves a different hue upon\nthe surrounding objects.  In the same indivisible point of time when I\nbeheld the distinct, individual, and, to all sense of sight, substantial\nform--the living, moving, reasonable image--in that self-same instant it\nwas gone, as if exemplifying the difference between to _be_ and _not_ to\n_be_.  It was no dream, of this I was well assured; realities are never\nmistaken for dreams, though dreams may be mistaken for realities.\nMoreover I had long been accustomed in sleep to question my perceptions\nwith a wakeful faculty of reason, and to detect their fallacy.  But, as\nwell may be supposed, my thoughts that night, sleeping as well as waking,\nwere filled with this extraordinary interview; and when I arose the next\nmorning it was not till I had called to mind every circumstance of time\nand place that I was convinced the apparition was real, and that I might\nagain expect it.\n\n\n\n\nCOLLOQUY II.--THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD.\n\n\nOn the following evening when my spiritual visitor entered the room, that\nvolume of Dr. Wordsworth's ecclesiastical biography which contains his\nlife was lying on the table beside me.  \"I perceive,\" said he, glancing\nat the book, \"you have been gathering all you can concerning me from my\ngood gossiping chronicler, who tells you that I loved milk and fruit and\neggs, preferred beef to young meats, and brown bread to white; was fond\nof seeing strange birds and beasts, and kept an ape, a fox, a weasel, and\na ferret.\"\n\n\"I am not one of those fastidious readers,\" I replied, \"who quarrel with\na writer for telling them too much.  But these things were worth telling:\nthey show that you retained a youthful palate as well as a youthful\nheart; and I like you the better both for your diet and your menagerie.\nThe old biographer, indeed, with the best intentions, has been far from\nunderstanding the character which he desired to honour.  He seems,\nhowever, to have been a faithful reporter, and has done as well as his\ncapacity permitted.  I observe that he gives you credit for 'a deep\nforesight and judgment of the times,' and for speaking in a prophetic\nspirit of the evils, which soon afterwards were 'full heavily felt.'\"\n\n\"There could be little need for a spirit of prophecy,\" Sir Thomas made\nanswer, to \"foresee troubles which were the sure effect of the causes\nthen in operation, and which were actually close at hand.  When the rain\nis gathering from the south or west, and those flowers and herbs which\nserve as natural hygrometers close their leaves, men have no occasion to\nconsult the stars for what the clouds and the earth are telling them.  You\nwere thinking of Prince Arthur when I introduced myself yesterday, as if\nmusing upon the great events which seem to have received their bias from\nthe apparent accident of his premature death.\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--I had fallen into one of those idle reveries in which we\nspeculate upon what might have been.  Lord Bacon describes him as \"very\nstudious, and learned beyond his years, and beyond the custom of great\nprinces.\"  As this indicates a calm and thoughtful mind, it seems to show\nthat he inherited the Tudor character.  His brother took after the\nPlantagenets; but it was not of their nobler qualities that he partook.\nHe had the popular manners of his grandfather, Edward IV., and, like him,\nwas lustful, cruel, and unfeeling.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The blood of the Plantagenets, as your friends the\nSpaniards would say, was a strong blood.  That temper of mind which (in\nsome of his predecessors) thought so little of fratricide might perhaps\nhave involved him in the guilt of a parricidal war, if his father had not\nbeen fortunate enough to escape such an affliction by a timely death.  We\nmight otherwise be allowed to wish that the life of Henry VII. had been\nprolonged to a good old age.  For if ever there was a prince who could so\nhave directed the Reformation as to have averted the evils wherewith that\ntremendous event was accompanied, and yet to have secured its advantages,\nhe was the man.  Cool, wary, far-sighted, rapacious, politic, and\nreligious, or superstitious if you will (for his religion had its root\nrather in fear than in hope), he was peculiarly adapted for such a crisis\nboth by his good and evil qualities.  For the sake of increasing his\ntreasures and his power, he would have promoted the Reformation; but his\ncautious temper, his sagacity, and his fear of Divine justice would have\ntaught him where to stop.\n\n_Montesinos_.--A generation of politic sovereigns succeeded to the race\nof warlike ones, just in that age of society when policy became of more\nimportance in their station than military talents.  Ferdinand of Spain,\nJoam II. whom the Portuguese called the perfect prince, Louis XI. and\nHenry VII. were all of this class.  Their individual characters were\nsufficiently distinct; but the circumstances of their situation stamped\nthem with a marked resemblance, and they were of a metal to take and\nretain the strong, sharp impress of the age.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The age required such characters; and it is worthy of\nnotice how surely in the order of providence such men as are wanted are\nraised up.  One generation of these princes sufficed.  In Spain, indeed,\nthere was an exception; for Ferdinand had two successors who pursued the\nsame course of conduct.  In the other kingdoms the character ceased with\nthe necessity for it.  Crimes enough were committed by succeeding\nsovereigns, but they were no longer the acts of systematic and reflecting\npolicy.  This, too, is worthy of remark, that the sovereigns whom you\nhave named, and who scrupled at no means for securing themselves on the\nthrone, for enlarging their dominions and consolidating their power, were\neach severally made to feel the vanity of human ambition, being punished\neither in or by the children who were to reap the advantage of their\ncrimes.  \"Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth!\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--An excellent friend of mine, one of the wisest, best, and\nhappiest men whom I have ever known, delights in this manner to trace the\nmoral order of Providence through the revolutions of the world; and in\nhis historical writings keeps it in view as the pole-star of his course.\nI wish he were present, that he might have the satisfaction of hearing\nhis favourite opinion confirmed by one from the dead.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--His opinion requires no other confirmation than what\nhe finds for it in observation and Scripture, and in his own calm\njudgment.  I should differ little from that friend of yours concerning\nthe past; but his hopes for the future appear to me like early buds which\nare in danger of March winds.  He believes the world to be in a rapid\nstate of sure improvement; and in the ferment which exists everywhere he\nbeholds only a purifying process; not considering that there is an\nacetous as well as a vinous fermentation; and that in the one case the\nliquor may be spilt, in the other it must be spoilt.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Surely you would not rob us of our hopes for the human\nrace!  If I apprehended that your discourse tended to this end I should\nsuspect you, notwithstanding your appearance, and be ready to exclaim,\n\"Avaunt, tempter!\"  For there is no opinion from which I should so hardly\nbe driven, and so reluctantly part, as the belief that the world will\ncontinue to improve, even as it has hitherto continually been improving;\nand that the progress of knowledge and the diffusion of Christianity will\nbring about at last, when men become Christians in reality as well as in\nname, something like that Utopian state of which philosophers have loved\nto dream--like that millennium in which saints as well as enthusiasts\nhave trusted.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Do you hold that this consummation must of necessity\ncome to pass; or that it depends in any degree upon the course of\nevents--that is to say, upon human actions?  The former of these\npropositions you would be as unwilling to admit as your friend Wesley, or\nthe old Welshman Pelagius himself.  The latter leaves you little other\nfoundation for your opinion than a desire, which, from its very\nbenevolence, is the more likely to be delusive.  You are in a dilemma.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Not so, Sir Thomas.  Impossible as it may be for us to\nreconcile the free will of man with the foreknowledge of God, I\nnevertheless believe in both with the most full conviction.  When the\nhuman mind plunges into time and space in its speculations, it adventures\nbeyond its sphere; no wonder, therefore, that its powers fail, and it is\nlost.  But that my will is free, I know feelingly: it is proved to me by\nmy conscience.  And that God provideth all things I know by His own Word,\nand by that instinct which He hath implanted in me to assure me of His\nbeing.  My answer to your question, then, is this: I believe that the\nhappy consummation which I desire is appointed, and must come to pass;\nbut that when it is to come depends upon the obedience of man to the will\nof God, that is, upon human actions.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You hold then that the human race will one day attain\nthe utmost degree of general virtue, and thereby general happiness, of\nwhich humanity is capable.  Upon what do you found this belief?\n\n_Montesinos_.--The opinion is stated more broadly than I should choose to\nadvance it.  But this is ever the manner of argumentative discourse: the\nopponent endeavours to draw from you conclusions which you are not\nprepared to defend, and which perhaps you have never before acknowledged\neven to yourself.  I will put the proposition in a less disputable form.\nA happier condition of society is possible than that in which any nation\nis existing at this time, or has at any time existed.  The sum both of\nmoral and physical evil may be greatly diminished both by good laws, good\ninstitutions, and good governments.  Moral evil cannot indeed be removed,\nunless the nature of man were changed; and that renovation is only to be\neffected in individuals, and in them only by the special grace of God.\nPhysical evil must always, to a certain degree, be inseparable from\nmortality.  But both are so much within the reach of human institutions\nthat a state of society is conceivable almost as superior to that of\nEngland in these days, as that itself is superior to the condition of the\ntattooed Britons, or of the northern pirates from whom we are descended.\nSurely this belief rests upon a reasonable foundation, and is supported\nby that general improvement (always going on if it be regarded upon the\ngreat scale) to which all history bears witness.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--I dispute not this: but to render it a reasonable\nground of immediate hope, the predominance of good principles must be\nsupposed.  Do you believe that good or evil principles predominate at\nthis time?\n\n_Montesinos_.--If I were to judge by that expression of popular opinion\nwhich the press pretends to convey, I should reply without hesitation\nthat never in any other known age of the world have such pernicious\nprinciples been so prevalent\n\n   \"_Qua terra patet_, _fera regnat Erinnys_;\n   _In facinus jurasse putes_.\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Is there not a danger that these principles may bear\ndown everything before them? and is not that danger obvious, palpable,\nimminent?  Is there a considerate man who can look at the signs of the\ntimes without apprehension, or a scoundrel connected with what is called\nthe public press, who does not speculate upon them, and join with the\nanarchists as the strongest party?  Deceive not yourself by the\nfallacious notion that truth is mightier than falsehood, and that good\nmust prevail over evil!  Good principles enable men to suffer, rather\nthan to act.  Think how the dog, fond and faithful creature as he is,\nfrom being the most docile and obedient of all animals, is made the most\ndangerous, if he becomes mad; so men acquire a frightful and not less\nmonstrous power when they are in a state of moral insanity, and break\nloose from their social and religious obligations.  Remember too how\nrapidly the plague of diseased opinions is communicated, and that if it\nonce gain head, it is as difficult to be stopped as a conflagration or a\nflood.  The prevailing opinions of this age go to the destruction of\neverything which has hitherto been held sacred.  They tend to arm the\npoor against the rich; the many against the few: worse than this, for it\nwill also be a war of hope and enterprise against timidity, of youth\nagainst age.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Sir Ghost, you are almost as dreadful an alarmist as our\nCumberland cow, who is believed to have lately uttered this prophecy,\ndelivering it with oracular propriety in verse:\n\n   \"Two winters, a wet spring,\n   A bloody summer, and no king.\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--That prophecy speaks the wishes of the man, whoever\nhe may have been, by whom it was invented: and you who talk of the\nprogress of knowledge, and the improvement of society, and upon that\nimprovement build your hope of its progressive melioration, you know that\neven so gross and palpable an imposture as this is swallowed by many of\nthe vulgar, and contributes in its sphere to the mischief which it was\ndesigned to promote.  I admit that such an improved condition of society\nas you contemplate is possible, and hath ought always to be kept in view:\nbut the error of supposing it too near, of fancying that there is a short\nroad to it, is, of all the errors of these times, the most pernicious,\nbecause it seduces the young and generous, and betrays them imperceptibly\ninto an alliance with whatever is flagitious and detestable.  The fact is\nundeniable that the worst principles in religion, in morals, and in\npolitics, are at this time more prevalent than they ever were known to be\nin any former age.  You need not be told in what manner revolutions in\nopinion bring about the fate of empires; and upon this ground you ought\nto regard the state of the world, both at home and abroad, with fear,\nrather than with hope.\n\n_Montesinos_.--When I have followed such speculations as may allowably be\nindulged, respecting what is hidden in the darkness of time and of\neternity, I have sometimes thought that the moral and physical order of\nthe world may be so appointed as to coincide; and that the revolutions of\nthis planet may correspond with the condition of its inhabitants; so that\nthe convulsions and changes whereto it is destined should occur, when the\nexisting race of men had either become so corrupt as to be unworthy of\nthe place which they hold in the universe, or were so truly regenerate by\nthe will and word of God, as to be qualified for a higher station in it.\nOur globe may have gone through many such revolutions.  We know the\nhistory of the last; the measure of its wickedness was then filled up.\nFor the future we are taught to expect a happier consummation.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--It is important that you should distinctly understand\nthe nature and extent of your expectations on that head.  Is it upon the\nApocalypse that you rest them?\n\n_Montesinos_.--If you had not forbidden me to expect from this\nintercourse any communication which might come with the authority of\nrevealed knowledge, I should ask in reply, whether that dark book is\nindeed to be received for authentic Scripture?  My hopes are derived from\nthe prophets and the evangelists.  Believing in them with a calm and\nsettled faith, with that consent of the will and heart and understanding\nwhich constitutes religious belief, and in them the clear annunciation of\nthat kingdom of God upon earth, for the coming of which Christ himself\nhas taught and commanded us to pray.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Remember that the Evangelists, in predicting that\nkingdom, announce a dreadful advent!  And that, according to the received\nopinion of the Church, wars, persecutions, and calamities of every kind,\nthe triumph of evil, and the coming of Antichrist are to be looked for,\nbefore the promises made by the prophets shall be fulfilled.  Consider\nthis also, that the speedy fulfilment of those promises has been the\nruling fancy of the most dangerous of all madmen, from John of Leyden and\nhis frantic followers, down to the saints of Cromwell's army, Venner and\nhis Fifth-Monarchy men, the fanatics of the Cevennes, and the blockheads\nof your own days, who beheld with complacency the crimes of the French\nRevolutionists, and the progress of Bonaparte towards the subjugation of\nEurope, as events tending to bring about the prophecies; and, under the\nsame besotted persuasion, are ready at this time to co-operate with the\nmiscreants who trade in blasphemy and treason!  But you who neither seek\nto deceive others nor yourself, you who are neither insane nor insincere,\nyou surely do not expect that the millennium is to be brought about by\nthe triumph of what are called liberal opinions; nor by enabling the\nwhole of the lower classes to read the incentives to vice, impiety, and\nrebellion which are prepared for them by an unlicensed press; nor by\nSunday schools, and religious tract societies; nor by the portentous\nbibliolatry of the age!  And if you adhere to the letter of the\nScriptures, methinks the thought of that consummation for which you look,\nmight serve rather for consolation under the prospect of impending evils,\nthan for a hope upon which the mind can rest in security with a calm and\ncontented delight.\n\n_Montesinos_.--To this I must reply, that the fulfilment of those\ncalamitous events predicted in the Gospels may safely be referred, as it\nusually is, and by the best Biblical scholars, to the destruction of\nJerusalem.  Concerning the visions of the Apocalypse, sublime as they\nare, I speak with less hesitation, and dismiss them from my thoughts, as\nmore congenial to the fanatics of whom you have spoken than to me.  And\nfor the coming of Antichrist, it is no longer a received opinion in these\ndays, whatever it may have been in yours.  Your reasoning applies to the\nenthusiastic millenarians who discover the number of the beast, and\ncalculate the year when a vial is to be poured out, with as much\nprecision as the day and hour of an eclipse.  But it leaves my hope\nunshaken and untouched.  I know that the world has improved; I see that\nit is improving; and I believe that it will continue to improve in\nnatural and certain progress.  Good and evil principles are widely at\nwork: a crisis is evidently approaching; it may be dreadful, but I can\nhave no doubts concerning the result.  Black and ominous as the aspects\nmay appear, I regard them without dismay.  The common exclamation of the\npoor and helpless, when they feel themselves oppressed, conveys to my\nmind the sum of the surest and safest philosophy.  I say with them, \"God\nis above,\" and trust Him for the event.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--God is above--but the devil is below.  Evil\nprinciples are, in their nature, more active than good.  The harvest is\nprecarious, and must be prepared with labour, and cost, and care; weeds\nspring up of themselves, and flourish and seed whatever may be the\nseason.  Disease, vice, folly, and madness are contagious; while health\nand understanding are incommunicable, and wisdom and virtue hardly to be\ncommunicated!  We have come, however, to some conclusion in our\ndiscourse.  Your notion of the improvement of the world has appeared to\nbe a mere speculation, altogether inapplicable in practice; and as\ndangerous to weak heads and heated imaginations as it is congenial to\nbenevolent hearts.  Perhaps that improvement is neither so general nor so\ncertain as you suppose.  Perhaps, even in this country there may be more\nknowledge than there was in former times and less wisdom, more wealth and\nless happiness, more display and less virtue.  This must be the subject\nof future conversation.  I will only remind you now, that the French had\npersuaded themselves this was the most enlightened age of the world, and\nthey the most enlightened people in it--the politest, the most amiable,\nand the most humane of nations--and that a new era of philosophy,\nphilanthropy, and peace, was about to commence under their auspices, when\nthey were upon the eve of a revolution which, for its complicated\nmonstrosities, absurdities, and horrors, is more disgraceful to human\nnature than any other series of events in history.  Chew the cud upon\nthis, and farewell\n\n\n\n\nCOLLOQUY III.--THE DRUIDICAL STONES.--VISITATIONS OF PESTILENCE.\n\n\nInclination would lead me to hibernate during half the year in this\nuncomfortable climate of Great Britain, where few men who have tasted the\nenjoyments of a better would willingly take up their abode, if it were\nnot for the habits, and still more for the ties and duties which root us\nto our native soil.  I envy the Turks for their sedentary constitutions,\nwhich seem no more to require exercise than an oyster does or a toad in a\nstone.  In this respect, I am by disposition as true a Turk as the Grand\nSeignior himself; and approach much nearer to one in the habit of\ninaction than any person of my acquaintance.  Willing however, as I\nshould be to believe, that anything which is habitually necessary for a\nsound body, would be unerringly indicated by an habitual disposition for\nit, and that if exercise were as needful as food for the preservation of\nthe animal economy, the desire of motion would recur not less regularly\nthan hunger and thirst, it is a theory which will not bear the test; and\nthis I know by experience.\n\nOn a grey sober day, therefore, and in a tone of mind quite accordant\nwith the season, I went out unwillingly to take the air, though if taking\nphysic would have answered the same purpose, the dose would have been\npreferred as the shortest, and for that reason the least unpleasant\nremedy.  Even on such occasions as this, it is desirable to propose to\noneself some object for the satisfaction of accomplishing it, and to set\nout with the intention of reaching some fixed point, though it should be\nnothing better than a mile-stone, or a directing post.  So I walked to\nthe Circle of Stones on the Penrith road, because there is a long hill\nupon the way which would give the muscles some work to perform; and\nbecause the sight of this rude monument which has stood during so many\ncenturies, and is likely, if left to itself, to outlast any edifice that\nman could have erected, gives me always a feeling, which, however often\nit may be repeated, loses nothing of its force.\n\nThe circle is of the rudest kind, consisting of single stones, unhewn and\nchosen without any regard to shape or magnitude, being of all sizes, from\nseven or eight feet in height, to three or four.  The circle, however, is\ncomplete, and is thirty-three paces in diameter.  Concerning this, like\nall similar monuments in Great Britain, the popular superstition\nprevails, that no two persons can number the stones alike, and that no\nperson will ever find a second counting confirm the first.  My children\nhave often disappointed their natural inclination to believe this wonder,\nby putting it to the test and disproving it.  The number of the stones\nwhich compose the circle, is thirty-eight, and besides these there are\nten which form three sides of a little square within, on the eastern\nside, three stones of the circle itself forming the fourth; this being\nevidently the place where the Druids who presided had their station; or\nwhere the more sacred and important part of the rites and ceremonies\n(whatever they may have been) were performed.  All this is as perfect at\nthis day as when the Cambrian bards, according to the custom of their\nancient order, described by my old acquaintances, the living members of\nthe Chair of Glamorgan, met there for the last time,\n\n   \"On the green turf and under the blue sky,\n   Their heads in reverence bare, and bare of foot.\"\n\nThe site also precisely accords with the description which Edward\nWilliams and William Owen give of the situation required for such meeting\nplaces:\n\n      \"--a high hill top,\n   Nor bowered with trees, nor broken by the plough:\n   Remote from human dwellings and the stir\n   Of human life, and open to the breath\n   And to the eye of Heaven.\"\n\nThe high hill is now enclosed and cultivated; and a clump of larches has\nbeen planted within the circle, for the purpose of protecting an oak in\nthe centre, the owner of the field having wished to rear one there with a\ncommendable feeling, because that tree was held sacred by the Druids, and\ntherefore, he supposed, might be appropriately placed there.  The whole\nplantation, however, has been so miserably storm-stricken that the poor\nstunted trees are not even worth the trouble of cutting them down for\nfuel, and so they continue to disfigure the spot.  In all other respects\nthis impressive monument of former times is carefully preserved; the soil\nwithin the enclosure is not broken, a path from the road is left, and in\nlatter times a stepping-stile has been placed to accommodate Lakers with\nan easier access than by striding over the gate beside it.\n\nThe spot itself is the most commanding which could be chosen in this part\nof the country, without climbing a mountain.  Derwentwater and the Vale\nof Keswick are not seen from it, only the mountains which enclose them on\nthe south and west.  Lattrigg and the huge side of Skiddaw are on the\nnorth; to the east is the open country towards Penrith expanding from the\nVale of St. John's, and extending for many miles, with Mellfell in the\ndistance, where it rises alone like a huge tumulus on the right, and\nBlencathra on the left, rent into deep ravines.  On the south-east is the\nrange of Helvellyn, from its termination at Wanthwaite Crags to its\nloftiest summits, and to Dunmailraise.  The lower range of Nathdalefells\nlies nearer, in a parallel line with Helvellyn; and the dale itself, with\nits little streamlet, immediately below.  The heights above Leatheswater,\nwith the Borrowdale mountains, complete the panorama.\n\nWhile I was musing upon the days of the Bards and Druids, and thinking\nthat Llywarc Hen himself had probably stood within this very circle at a\ntime when its history was known, and the rites for which it was erected\nstill in use, I saw a person approaching, and started a little at\nperceiving that it was my new acquaintance from the world of spirits.  \"I\nam come,\" said he, \"to join company with you in your walk: you may as\nwell converse with a ghost as stand dreaming of the dead.  I dare say you\nhave been wishing that these stones could speak and tell their tale, or\nthat some record were sculptured upon them, though it were as\nunintelligible as the hieroglyphics, or as an Ogham inscription.\"\n\n\"My ghostly friend,\" I replied, \"they tell me something to the purport of\nour last discourse.  Here upon ground where the Druids have certainly\nheld their assemblies, and where not improbably, human sacrifices have\nbeen offered up, you will find it difficult to maintain that the\nimprovement of the world has not been unequivocal, and very great.\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Make the most of your vantage ground!  My position\nis, that this improvement is not general; that while some parts of the\nearth are progressive in civilisation, others have been retrograde; and\nthat even where improvement appears the greatest, it is partial.  For\nexample; with all the meliorations which have taken place in England\nsince these stones were set up (and you will not suppose that I who laid\ndown my life for a religious principle, would undervalue the most\nimportant of all advantages), do you believe that they have extended to\nall classes?  Look at the question well.  Consider your\nfellow-countrymen, both in their physical and intellectual relations, and\ntell me whether a large portion of the community are in a happier or more\nhopeful condition at this time, than their forefathers were when Caesar\nset foot upon the island?\n\n_Montesinos_.--If it be your aim to prove that the savage state is\npreferable to the social, I am perhaps the very last person upon whom any\narguments to that end could produce the slightest effect.  That notion\nnever for a moment deluded me: not even in the ignorance and\npresumptuousness of youth, when first I perused Rousseau, and was\nunwilling to feel that a writer whose passionate eloquence I felt and\nadmired so truly could be erroneous in any of his opinions.  But now, in\nthe evening of life, when I know upon what foundation my principles rest,\nand when the direction of one peculiar course of study has made it\nnecessary for me to learn everything which books could teach concerning\nsavage life, the proposition appears to me one of the most untenable that\never was advanced by a perverse or a paradoxical intellect.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--I advanced no such paradox, and you have answered me\ntoo hastily.  The Britons were not savages when the Romans invaded and\nimproved them.  They were already far advanced in the barbarous stage of\nsociety, having the use of metals, domestic cattle, wheeled carriages,\nand money, a settled government, and a regular priesthood, who were\nconnected with their fellow-Druids on the Continent, and who were not\nignorant of letters.  Understand me!  I admit that improvements of the\nutmost value have been made, in the most important concerns: but I deny\nthat the melioration has been general; and insist, on the contrary, that\na considerable portion of the people are in a state, which, as relates to\ntheir physical condition, is greatly worsened, and, as touching their\nintellectual nature, is assuredly not improved.  Look, for example, at\nthe great mass of your populace in town and country--a tremendous\nproportion of the whole community!  Are their bodily wants better, or\nmore easily supplied?  Are they subject to fewer calamities?  Are they\nhappier in childhood, youth, and manhood, and more comfortably or\ncarefully provided for in old age, than when the land was unenclosed, and\nhalf covered with woods?  With regard to their moral and intellectual\ncapacity, you well know how little of the light of knowledge and of\nrevelation has reached them.  They are still in darkness, and in the\nshadow of death!\n\n_Montesinos_.--I perceive your drift: and perceive also that when we\nunderstand each other there is likely to be little difference between us.\nAnd I beseech you, do not suppose that I am disputing for the sake of\ndisputation; with that pernicious habit I was never infected, and I have\nseen too many mournful proofs of its perilous consequences.  Towards any\nperson it is injudicious and offensive; towards you it would be\nirreverent.  Your position is undeniable.  Were society to be stationary\nat its present point, the bulk of the people would, on the whole, have\nlost rather than gained by the alterations which have taken place during\nthe last thousand years.  Yet this must be remembered, that in common\nwith all ranks they are exempted from those dreadful visitations of war,\npestilence, and famine by which these kingdoms were so frequently\nafflicted of old.\n\nThe countenance of my companion changed upon this, to an expression of\njudicial severity which struck me with awe.  \"Exempted from these\nvisitations!\" he exclaimed; \"mortal man! creature of a day, what art\nthou, that thou shouldst presume upon any such exemption!  Is it from a\ntrust in your own deserts, or a reliance upon the forbearance and long-\nsuffering of the Almighty, that this vain confidence arises?\"\n\nI was silent.\n\n\"My friend,\" he resumed, in a milder tone, but with a melancholy manner,\n\"your own individual health and happiness are scarcely more precarious\nthan this fancied security.  By the mercy of God, twice during the short\nspace of your life, England has been spared from the horrors of invasion,\nwhich might with ease have been effected during the American war, when\nthe enemy's fleet swept the Channel, and insulted your very ports, and\nwhich was more than once seriously intended during the late long contest.\nThe invaders would indeed have found their graves in that soil which they\ncame to subdue: but before they could have been overcome, the atrocious\nthreat of Buonaparte's general might have been in great part realised,\nthat though he could not answer for effecting the conquest of England, he\nwould engage to destroy its prosperity for a century to come.  You have\nbeen spared from that chastisement.  You have escaped also from the\nimminent danger of peace with a military tyrant, which would inevitably\nhave led to invasion, when he should have been ready to undertake and\naccomplish that great object of his ambition, and you must have been\nleast prepared and least able to resist him.  But if the seeds of civil\nwar should at this time be quickening among you--if your soil is\neverywhere sown with the dragon's teeth, and the fatal crop be at this\nhour ready to spring up--the impending evil will be a hundredfold more\nterrible than those which have been averted; and you will have cause to\nperceive and acknowledge, that the wrath has been suspended only that it\nmay fall the heavier!\"\n\n\"May God avert this also!\" I exclaimed.\n\n\"As for famine,\" he pursued, \"that curse will always follow in the train\nof war: and even now the public tranquillity of England is fearfully\ndependent upon the seasons.  And touching pestilence, you fancy\nyourselves secure, because the plague has not appeared among you for the\nlast hundred and fifty years: a portion of time, which long as it may\nseem when compared with the brief term of mortal existence, is as nothing\nin the physical history of the globe.  The importation of that scourge is\nas possible now as it was in former times: and were it once imported, do\nyou suppose it would rage with less violence among the crowded population\nof your metropolis, than it did before the fire, or that it would not\nreach parts of the country which were never infected in any former\nvisitation?  On the contrary, its ravages would be more general and more\ntremendous, for it would inevitably be carried everywhere.  Your\nprovincial cities have doubled and trebled in size; and in London itself,\ngreat part of the population is as much crowded now as it was then, and\nthe space which is covered with houses is increased at least fourfold.\nWhat if the sweating-sickness, emphatically called the English disease,\nwere to show itself again?  Can any cause be assigned why it is not as\nlikely to break out in the nineteenth century as in the fifteenth?  What\nif your manufactures, according to the ominous opinion which your\ngreatest physiologist has expressed, were to generate for you new\nphysical plagues, as they have already produced a moral pestilence\nunknown to all preceding ages?  What if the small-pox, which you vainly\nbelieved to be subdued, should have assumed a new and more formidable\ncharacter; and (as there seems no trifling grounds for apprehending)\ninstead of being protected by vaccination from its danger, you should\nascertain that inoculation itself affords no certain security?\nVisitations of this kind are in the order of nature and of providence.\nPhysically considered, the likelihood of their recurrence becomes every\nyear more probable than the last; and looking to the moral government of\nthe world, was there ever a time when the sins of this kingdom called\nmore cryingly for chastisement?\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--[Greek text]!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--I denounce no judgments.  But I am reminding you that\nthere is as much cause for the prayer in your Litany against plague,\npestilence, and famine, as for that which entreats God to deliver you all\nfrom sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion; from all false doctrine,\nheresy, and schism.  In this, as in all things, it behoves the Christian\nto live in a humble and grateful sense of his continual dependence upon\nthe Almighty: not to rest in a presumptuous confidence upon the improved\nstate of human knowledge, or the altered course of natural visitations.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Oh, how wholesome it is to receive instruction with a\nwilling and a humble mind!  In attending to your discourse I feel myself\nin the healthy state of a pupil, when without one hostile or contrarient\nprepossession, he listens to a teacher in whom he has entire confidence.\nAnd I feel also how much better it is that the authority of elder and\nwiser intellects should pass even for more than it is worth, than that it\nshould be undervalued as in these days, and set at nought.  When any\nperson boasts that he is--\n\n   \"_Nullias addictus jurare in verba magistri_,\"\n\nthe reason of that boast may easily be perceived; it is because he\nthinks, like Jupiter, that it would be disparaging his own all-wiseness\nto swear by anything but himself.  But wisdom will as little enter into a\nproud or a conceited mind as into a malicious one.  In this sense also it\nmay be said, that he who humbleth himself shall be exalted.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--It is not implicit assent that I require, but\nreasonable conviction after calm and sufficient consideration.  David was\npermitted to choose between the three severest dispensations of God's\ndispleasure, and he made choice of pestilence as the least dreadful.\nOught a reflecting and religious man to be surprised, if some such\npunishment were dispensed to this country, not less in mercy than in\njudgment, as the means of averting a more terrible and abiding scourge?\nAn endemic malady, as destructive as the plague, has naturalised itself\namong your American brethren, and in Spain.  You have hitherto escaped\nit, speaking with reference to secondary causes, merely because it has\nnot yet been imported.  But any season may bring it to your own shores;\nor at any hour it may appear among you homebred.\n\n_Montesinos_.--We should have little reason, then, to boast of our\nimprovements in the science of medicine; for our practitioners at\nGibraltar found themselves as unable to stop its progress, or mitigate\nits symptoms, as the most ignorant empirics in the peninsula.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You were at one time near enough that pestilence to\nfeel as if you were within its reach?\n\n_Montesinos_.--It was in 1800, the year when it first appeared in\nAndalusia.  That summer I fell in at Cintra with a young German, on the\nway from his own country to his brothers at Cadiz, where they were\nestablished as merchants.  Many days had not elapsed after his arrival in\nthat city when a ship which was consigned to their firm brought with it\nthe infection; and the first news which reached us of our poor\nacquaintance was that the yellow fever had broken out in his brother's\nhouse, and that he, they, and the greater part of the household, were\ndead.  There was every reason to fear that the pestilence would extend\ninto Portugal, both governments being, as usual, slow in providing any\nmeasures of precaution, and those measures being nugatory when taken.  I\nwas at Faro in the ensuing spring, at the house of Mr. Lempriere, the\nBritish Consul.  Inquiring of him upon the subject, the old man lifted up\nhis hands, and replied in a passionate manner, which I shall never\nforget, \"Oh, sir, we escaped by the mercy of God; only by the mercy of\nGod!\"  The governor of Algarve, even when the danger was known and\nacknowledged, would not venture to prohibit the communication with Spain\ntill he received orders from Lisbon; and then the prohibition was so\nenforced as to be useless.  The crew of a boat from the infected province\nwere seized and marched through the country to Tavira: they were then\nsent to perform quarantine upon a little insulated ground, and the guards\nwho were set over them, lived with them, and were regularly relieved.\nWhen such were the precautionary measures, well indeed might it be said,\nthat Portugal escaped only by the mercy of God!  I have often reflected\nupon the little effect which this imminent danger appeared to produce\nupon those persons with whom I associated.  The young, with that hilarity\nwhich belongs to thoughtless youth, used to converse about the places\nwhither they should retire, and the course of life and expedients to\nwhich they should be driven in case it were necessary for them to fly\nfrom Lisbon.  A few elder and more considerate persons said little upon\nthe subject, but that little denoted a deep sense of the danger, and more\nanxiety than they thought proper to express.  The great majority seemed\nto be altogether unconcerned; neither their business nor their amusements\nwere interrupted; they feasted, they danced, they met at the card-table\nas usual; and the plague (for so it was called at that time, before its\nnature was clearly understood) was as regular a topic of conversation as\nthe news brought by the last packet.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--And what was your own state of mind?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Very much what it has long been with regard to the moral\npestilence of this unhappy age, and the condition of this country more\nespecially.  I saw the danger in its whole extent and relied on the mercy\nof God.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--In all cases that is the surest reliance: but when\nhuman means are available, it becomes a Mahommedan rather than a\nChristian to rely upon Providence or fate alone, and make no effort for\nits own preservation.  Individuals never fall into this error among you,\ndrink as deeply as they may of fatalism; that narcotic will sometimes\nparalyse the moral sense, but it leaves the faculty of worldly prudence\nunimpaired.  Far otherwise is it with your government: for such are the\nnotions of liberty in England, that evils of every kind--physical, moral,\nand political, are allowed their free range.  As relates to infectious\ndiseases, for example, this kingdom is now in a less civilised state than\nit was in my days, three centuries ago, when the leper was separated from\ngeneral society; and when, although the science of medicine was at once\nbarbarous and fantastical, the existence of pesthouses showed at least\nsome approaches towards a medical police.\n\n_Montesinos_.--They order these things better in Utopia.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--In this, as well as in some other points upon which\nwe shall touch hereafter, the difference between you and the Utopians is\nas great as between the existing generation and the race by whom yonder\ncircle was set up.  With regard to diseases and remedies in general, the\nreal state of the case may be consolatory, but it is not comfortable.\nGreat and certain progress has been made in chirurgery; and if the\nimprovements in the other branch of medical science have not been so\ncertain and so great, it is because the physician works in the dark, and\nhas to deal with what is hidden and mysterious.  But the evils for which\nthese sciences are the palliatives have increased in a proportion that\nheavily overweighs the benefit of improved therapeutics.  For as the\nintercourse between nations has become greater, the evils of one have\nbeen communicated to another.  Pigs, Spanish dollars, and Norway rats,\nare not the only commodities and incommodities which have performed the\ncircumnavigation, and are to be found wherever European ships have\ntouched.  Diseases also find their way from one part of the inhabited\nglobe to another, wherever it is possible for them to exist.  The most\nformidable endemic or contagious maladies in your nosology are not\nindigenous; and as far as regards health therefore, the ancient Britons,\nwith no other remedies than their fields and woods afforded them, and no\nother medical practitioners than their deceitful priests, were in a\nbetter condition than their descendants, with all the instruction which\nis derived from Sydenham and Heberden, and Hunter, and with all the\npowers which chemistry has put into their hands.\n\n_Montesinos_.--You have well said that there is nothing comfortable in\nthis view of the case: but what is there consolatory in it?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The consolation is upon your principle of expectant\nhope.  Whenever improved morals, wiser habits, more practical religion,\nand more efficient institutions shall have diminished the moral and\nmaterial causes of disease, a thoroughly scientific practice, the result\nof long experience and accumulated observations, will then exist, to\nremedy all that is within the power of human art, and to alleviate what\nis irremediable.  To existing individuals this consolation is something\nlike the satisfaction you might feel in learning that a fine estate was\nentailed upon your family at the expiration of a lease of ninety-nine\nyears from the present time.  But I had forgotten to whom I am talking.  A\npoet always looks onward to some such distant inheritance.  His hopes are\nusually _in nubibus_, and his expectations in the _paulo post futurum_\ntense.\n\n_Montesinos_.--His state is the more gracious then because his enjoyment\nis always to come.  It is however a real satisfaction to me that there is\nsome sunshine in your prospect.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--More in mine than in yours, because I command a wider\nhorizon: but I see also the storms which are blackening, and may close\nover the sky.  Our discourse began concerning that portion of the\ncommunity who form the base of the pyramid; we have unawares taken a more\ngeneral view, but it has not led us out of the way.  Returning to the\nmost numerous class of society, it is apparent that in the particular\npoint of which we have been conversing, their condition is greatly\nworsened: they remain liable to the same indigenous diseases as their\nforefathers, and are exposed moreover to all which have been imported.\nNor will the estimate of their condition be improved upon farther\ninquiry.  They are worse fed than when they were hunters, fishers, and\nherdsmen; their clothing and habitations are little better, and, in\ncomparison with those of the higher classes, immeasurably worse.  Except\nin the immediate vicinity of the collieries, they suffer more from cold\nthan when the woods and turbaries were open.  They are less religious\nthan in the days of the Romish faith; and if we consider them in relation\nto their immediate superiors, we shall find reason to confess that the\nindependence which has been gained since the total decay of the feudal\nsystem, has been dearly purchased by the loss of kindly feelings and\nennobling attachments.  They are less contented, and in no respect more\nhappy--that look implies hesitation of judgment, and an unwillingness to\nbe convinced.  Consider the point; go to your books and your thoughts;\nand when next we meet, you will feel little inclination to dispute the\nirrefragable statement.\n\n\n\n\nCOLLOQUY IV.--FEUDAL SLAVERY.--GROWTH OF PAUPERISM.\n\n\nThe last conversation had left a weight upon me, which was not lessened\nwhen I contemplated the question in solitude.  I called to mind the\nmelancholy view which Young has taken of the world in his unhappy poem:\n\n   \"A part how small of the terraqueous globe\n   Is tenanted by man! the rest a waste,\n   Rocks, deserts, frozen seas and burning sands,\n   Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death.\n   Such is earth's melancholy map!  But, far\n   More sad, this earth is a true map of man.\"\n\nSad as this representation is, I could not but acknowledge that the moral\nand intellectual view is not more consolatory than the poet felt it to\nbe; and it was a less sorrowful consideration to think how large a\nportion of the habitable earth is possessed by savages, or by nations\nwhom inhuman despotisms and monstrous superstitions have degraded in some\nrespects below the savage state, than to observe how small a part of what\nis called the civilised world is truly civilised; and in the most\ncivilised parts to how small a portion of the inhabitants the real\nblessings of civilisation are confined.  In this mood how heartily should\nI have accorded with Owen of Lanark if I could have agreed with that\nhappiest and most beneficent and most practical of all enthusiasts as\nwell concerning the remedy as the disease!\n\n\"Well, Montesinos,\" said the spirit, when he visited me next, \"have you\nrecollected or found any solid arguments for maintaining that the\nlabouring classes, who form the great bulk of the population, are in a\nhappier condition, physical, moral, or intellectual, in these times, than\nthey were in mine?\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--Perhaps, Sir Thomas, their condition was better precisely\nduring your age than it ever has been either before or since.  The feudal\nsystem had well-nigh lost all its inhuman parts, and the worse inhumanity\nof the commercial system had not yet shown itself.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--It was, indeed, a most important age in English\nhistory, and, till the Reformation so fearfully disturbed it, in many\nrespects a happy and an enviable one.  But the process was then beginning\nwhich is not yet completed.  As the feudal system relaxed and tended to\ndissolution the condition of the multitude was changed.  Let us trace it\nfrom earlier times!  In what state do you suppose the people of this\nisland to have been when they were invaded by the Romans?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Something worse than the Greeks of the Homeric age:\nsomething better than the Sandwich or Tonga islanders when they were\nvisited by Captain Cook.  Inferior to the former in arts, in polity, and,\nabove all, in their domestic institutions; superior to the latter as\nhaving the use of cattle and being under a superstition in which, amid\nmany abominations, some patriarchal truths were preserved.  Less\nfortunate in physical circumstances than either, because of the climate.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--A viler state of morals than their polyandrian system\nmust have produced can scarcely be imagined; and the ferocity of their\nmanners, little as is otherwise known of them, is sufficiently shown by\ntheir scythed war-chariots, and the fact that in the open country the\npath from one town to another was by a covered way.  But in what\ncondition were the labouring classes?\n\n_Montesinos_.--In slavery, I suppose.  When the Romans first attacked the\nisland it was believed at Rome that slaves were the only booty which\nBritain could afford; and slaves, no doubt, must have been the staple\ncommodity for which its ports were visited.  Different tribes had at\ndifferent times established themselves here by conquest, and wherever\nsettlements are thus made slavery is the natural consequence.  It was a\npart of the Roman economy; and when the Saxons carved out their kingdoms\nwith the sword, the slaves, and their masters too, if any survived,\nbecame the property of the new lords of the land, like the cattle who\npastured upon it.  It is not likely even that the Saxons should have\nbrought artificers of any kind with them, smiths perhaps alone excepted.\nTrades of every description must have been practised by the slaves whom\nthey found.  The same sort of transfer ensued upon the Norman conquest.\nAfter that event there could have been no fresh supply of domestic\nslaves, unless they were imported from Ireland, as well as carried\nthither for sale.  That trade did not continue long.  Emancipation was\npromoted by the clergy, and slavery was exchanged for vassalage, which in\nlike manner gradually disappeared as the condition of the people\nimproved.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You are hurrying too fast to that conclusion.\nHitherto more has been lost than gained in morals by the transition; and\nyou will not maintain that anything which is morally injurious can be\npolitically advantageous.  Vassalage I know is a word which bears no\nfavourable acceptation in this liberal age; and slavery is in worse\nrepute.  But we must remember that slavery implies a very different state\nin different ages of the world, and in different stages of society.\n\n_Montesinos_.--In many parts of the East, and of the Mohammedan world, as\nin the patriarchal times, it is scarcely an evil.  Among savages it is as\nlittle so.  In a luxurious state more vices are called into action, the\ncondition of the slave depends more upon the temper of the owner, and the\nevil then predominates.  But slavery is nowhere so bad as in commercial\ncolonies, where the desire of gain hardens the heart--the basest\nappetites have free scope there; and the worst passions are under little\nrestraint from law, less from religion, and none from public opinion.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You have omitted in this enumeration that kind of\nslavery which existed in England.\n\n_Montesinos_.--The slavery of the feudal ages may perhaps be classed\nmidway between the best description of that state and the worst.  I\nsuppose it to have been less humane than it generally is in Turkey, less\nsevere than it generally was in Rome and Greece.  In too many respects\nthe slaves were at the mercy of their lords.  They might be put in irons\nand punished with stripes; they were sometimes branded; and there is\nproof that it has been the custom to yoke them in teams like cattle.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Are you, then, Montesinos, so much the dupe of words\nas to account among their grievances a mere practice of convenience?\n\n_Montesinos_.--The reproof was merited.  But I was about to say that\nthere is no reason to think their treatment was generally rigorous.  We\ndo not hear of any such office among them as that of the Roman _Lorarii_,\nwhose office appears by the dramatists to have been no sinecure.  And it\nis certain that they possessed in the laws, in the religion, and probably\nin the manners of the country, a greater degree of protection than\nexisted to alleviate the lot of the Grecian and Roman slaves.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The practical difference between the condition of the\nfeudal slave, and of the labouring husbandman who succeeded to the\nbusiness of his station, was mainly this, that the former had neither the\nfeeling nor the insecurity of independence.  He served one master as long\nas he lived; and being at all times sure of the same sufficient\nsubsistence, if he belonged to the estate like the cattle, and was\naccounted with them as part of the live stock, he resembled them also in\nthe exemption which he enjoyed from all cares concerning his own\nmaintenance and that of his family.  The feudal slaves, indeed, were\nsubject to none of those vicissitudes which brought so many of the\nproudest and most powerful barons to a disastrous end.  They had nothing\nto lose, and they had liberty to hope for; frequently as the reward of\ntheir own faithful services, and not seldom from the piety or kindness of\ntheir lords.  This was a steady hope depending so little upon contingency\nthat it excited no disquietude or restlessness.  They were therefore in\ngeneral satisfied with the lot to which they were born, as the\nGreenlander is with his climate, the Bedouin with his deserts, and the\nHottentot and the Calmuck with their filthy and odious customs; and going\non in their regular and unvaried course of duty generation after\ngeneration, they were content.\n\n_Montesinos_.--\"Fish, fish, are you in your duty?\" said the young lady in\nthe Arabian tales, who came out of the kitchen wall clad in flowered\nsatin, and with a rod in her hand.  The fish lifted up their heads and\nreplied, \"Yes, yes; if you reckon, we reckon; if you pay your debts we\npay ours; if you fly we overcome, and are content.\"  The fish who were\nthus content, and in their duty, had been gutted, and were in the frying-\npan.  I do not seek, however, to escape from the force of your argument\nby catching at the words.  On the other hand, I am sure it is not your\nintention to represent slavery otherwise than as an evil, under any\nmodification.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--That which is a great evil in itself become\nrelatively a good when it prevents or removes a greater evil; for\ninstance, loss of a limb when life is preserved by the sacrifice, or the\nacute pain of a remedy by which a chronic disease is cured.  Such was\nslavery in its origin: a commutation for death, gladly accepted as mercy\nunder the arm of a conqueror in battle, or as the mitigation of a\njudicial sentence.  But it led immediately to nefarious abuses; and the\nearliest records which tell us of its existence show us also that men\nwere kidnapped for sale.  With the principles of Christianity, the\nprinciples of religious philosophy--the only true policy, to which\nmankind must come at last, by which alone all the remediable ills of\nhumanity are to be remedied, and for which you are taught to pray when\nyou entreat that your Father's kingdom may come--with those principles\nslavery is inconsistent, and therefore not to be tolerated, even in\nspeculation.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Yet its fitness, as a commutation for other punishments,\nis admitted by Michaelis (though he decides against it) to be one of the\nmost difficult questions connected with the existing state of society.\nAnd in the age of the Revolution, one of the sturdiest Scotch republicans\nproposed the reestablishment of slavery, as the best or only means for\ncorrecting the vices and removing the miseries of the poor.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The proposal of such a remedy must be admitted as\nfull proof of the malignity of the disease.  And in further excuse of\nAndrew Fletcher, it should be remembered that he belonged to a country\nwhere many of the feudal virtues (as well as most of the feudal vices)\nwere at that time in full vigour.  But let us return to our historical\nview of the subject.  In feudal servitude there was no motive for\ncruelty, scarcely any for oppression.  There were no needy slave-owners,\nas there are in commercial colonies; and though slaves might sometimes\nsuffer from a wicked, or even a passionate master, there is no reason to\nbelieve that they were habitually over-tasked, or subjected to systematic\nill-treatment; for that, indeed, can only arise from avarice, and avarice\nis not the vice of feudal times.  Still, however, slavery is intolerable\nupon Christian principles; and to the influence of those principles it\nyielded here in England.  It had ceased, so as even to be forgotten in my\nyouth; and villenage was advancing fast towards its natural extinction.\nThe courts decided that a tenant having a lease could not be a villein\nduring its term, for if his labour were at the command of another how\ncould he undertake to pay rent?  Landholders had thus to choose between\nrent and villenage, and scarcely wanted the Field of the Cloth of Gold at\nArdres to show them which they stood most in need of.  And as villenage\ndisappeared, free labourers of various descriptions multiplied; of whom\nthe more industrious and fortunate rose in society, and became tradesmen\nand merchants; the unlucky and the reprobate became vagabonds.\n\n_Montesinos_.--The latter class appears to have been far more numerous in\nyour age than in mine.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Waiving for the present the question whether they\nreally were so, they appear to have been so partly in consequence of the\ndesperate wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, partly because\nof the great change in society which succeeded to that contest.  During\nthose wars both parties exerted themselves to bring into the field all\nthe force they could muster.  Villeins in great numbers were then\nemancipated, when they were embodied in arms; and great numbers\nemancipated themselves, flying to London and other cities for protection\nfrom the immediate evils of war, or taking advantage of the frequent\nchanges of property, and the precarious tenure by which it was held, to\nexchange their own servile condition for a station of freedom with all\nits hopes and chances.  This took place to a great extent, and the\nprobabilities of success were greatly in their favour; for whatever may\nhave been practised in earlier and ruder times, in that age they\ncertainly were not branded like cattle, according to the usage of your\nsugar islands.\n\n_Montesinos_.--A planter, who notwithstanding this curious specimen of\nhis taste and sensibility, was a man of humane studies and humane\nfeelings, describes the refined and elegant manner in which the operation\nis performed, by way of mitigating the indignation which such a usage\nought to excite.  He assures us that the stamp is not a branding iron,\nbut a silver instrument; and that it is heated not in the fire, but over\nthe flame of spirits of wine.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Excellent planter! worthy to have been flogged at a\ngilt whipping-post with a scourge of gold thread!  The practice of\nmarking slaves had fallen into disuse; probably it was only used at first\nwith captives, or with those who were newly-purchased from a distant\ncountry, never with those born upon the soil.  And there was no means of\nraising a hue and cry after a runaway slave so effectually as is done by\nyour colonial gazettes, the only productions of the British colonial\npress.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Include, I pray you, in the former part of your censure\nthe journals of the United States, the land of democracy and equal\nrights.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--How much more honourable was the tendency of our\nlaws, and of national feeling in those days, which you perhaps as well as\nyour trans-Atlantic brethren have been accustomed to think barbarous,\nwhen compared with this your own age of reason and liberality!  The\nmaster who killed his slave was as liable to punishment as if he had\nkilled a freeman.  Instead of impeding enfranchisement, the laws, as well\nas the public feeling, encouraged it.  If a villein who had fled from his\nlord remained a year and a day unclaimed upon the King's demesne lands,\nor in any privileged town, he became free.  All doubtful cases were\ndecided _in favorem libertatis_.  Even the established maxim in law,\n_partus sequitur ventrem_, was set aside in favour of liberty; the child\nof a neif was free if the father were a freeman, or if it were\nillegitimate, in which case it was settled that the free condition of the\nfather should always be presumed.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Such a principle must surely have tended to increase the\nillegitimate population.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--That inference is drawn from the morals of your own\nage, and the pernicious effect of your poor laws as they are now\nthoroughly understood and deliberately acted upon by a race who are\nthinking always of their imaginary rights, and never of their duties.  You\nforget the efficacy of ecclesiastical discipline; and that the old Church\nwas more vigilant, and therefore more efficient than that which rose upon\nits ruins.  And you suppose that personal liberty was more valued by\npersons in a state of servitude than was actually the case.  For if in\nearlier ages emancipation was an act of piety and benevolence,\nafterwards, when the great crisis of society came on, it proceeded more\nfrequently from avarice than from any worthier motive; and the slave who\nwas set free sometimes found himself much in the situation of a household\ndog that is turned into the streets.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Are you alluding to the progress of inclosures, which from\nthe accession of the Tudors to the age of the Stuarts were complained of\nas the great and crying evil of the times?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--That process originated as soon as rents began to be\nof more importance than personal services, and money more convenient to\nthe landlords than payments in kind.\n\n_Montesinos_.--And this I suppose began to be the case under Edward III.\nThe splendour of his court, and the foreign wars in which he was engaged,\nmust have made money more necessary to the knights and nobles than it had\never been before, except during the Crusades.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The wars of York and Lancaster retarded the process;\nbut immediately after the termination of that fierce struggle it was\naccelerated by the rapid growth of commerce, and by the great influx of\nwealth from the new found world.  Under a settled and strong and vigilant\ngovernment men became of less value as vassals and retainers, because the\nboldest barons no longer dared contemplate the possibility of trying\ntheir strength against the crown, or attempting to disturb the\nsuccession.  Four-legged animals therefore were wanted for slaughter more\nthan two-legged ones; and moreover, sheep could be shorn, whereas the art\nof fleecing the tenantry was in its infancy, and could not always be\npractised with the same certain success.  A trading spirit thus gradually\nsuperseded the rude but kindlier principle of the feudal system: profit\nand loss became the rule of conduct; in came calculation, and out went\nfeeling.\n\n_Montesinos_.--I remember your description (for indeed who can forget\nit?) how sheep, more destructive than the Dragon of Wantley in those\ndays, began to devour men and fields and houses.  The same process is at\nthis day going on in the Highlands, though under different circumstances;\nsome which palliate the evil, and some which aggravate the injustice.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The real nature of the evil was misunderstood by my\ncontemporaries, and for some generations afterward.  A decrease of\npopulation was the effect complained of, whereas the greater grievance\nwas that a different and worse population was produced.\n\n_Montesinos_.--I comprehend you.  The same effect followed which has been\ncaused in these days by the extinction of small farms.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The same in kind, but greater in degree; or at least\nif not greater, or so general in extent, it was more directly felt.  When\nthat ruinous fashion prevailed in your age there were many resources for\nthe class of people who were thus thrown out of their natural and proper\nplace in the social system.  Your fleets and armies at that time required\nas many hands as could be supplied; and women and children were consumed\nwith proportionate rapidity by your manufactures.\n\nMoreover, there was the wholesome drain of emigration open\n\n   \"_Facta est immensi copia mundi_.\"\n\nBut under the Tudors there existed no such means for disposing of the\nejected population, and except the few who could obtain places as\ndomestic servants, or employment as labourers and handicraftsmen\n(classes, it must be remembered, for all which the employ was diminished\nby the very ejectment in question), they who were turned adrift soon\nfound themselves houseless and hopeless, and were reduced to prey upon\nthat society which had so unwisely as well as inhumanly discarded them.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Thus it is that men collectively as well as individually\ncreate for themselves so large a part of the evils they endure.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Enforce upon your contemporaries that truth which is\nas important in politics as in ethics, and you will not have lived in\nvain!  Scatter that seed upon the waters, and doubt not of the harvest!\nVindicate always the system of nature, in other and sounder words, the\nways of God, while you point out with all faithfulness\n\n         \"what ills\n   Remediable and yet unremedied\n      Afflict man's wretched race,\"\n\nand the approbation of your own heart will be sufficient reward on earth.\n\n_Montesinos_.--The will has not been wanting.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--There are cases in which the will carries with it the\npower; and this is of them.  No man was ever yet deeply convinced of any\nmomentous truth without feeling in himself the power as well as the\ndesire of communicating it.\n\n_Montesinos_.--True, Sir Thomas; but the perilous abuse of that feeling\nby enthusiasts and fanatics leads to an error in the opposite extreme.\n\nWe sacrifice too much to prudence; and, in fear of incurring the danger\nor the reproach of enthusiasm, too often we stifle the holiest impulses\nof the understanding and the heart.\n\n         \"Our doubts are traitors,\n   And make us lose the good we oft might win,\n   By fearing to attempt.\"\n\n--But I pray you, resume your discourse.  The monasteries were probably\nthe chief palliatives of this great evil while they existed.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Their power of palliating it was not great, for the\nexpenditure of those establishments kept a just pace with their revenues.\nThey accumulated no treasures, and never were any incomes more\nbeneficially employed.  The great abbeys vied with each other in\narchitectural magnificence, in this more especially, but likewise in\nevery branch of liberal expenditure, giving employment to great numbers,\nwhich was better than giving unearned food.  They provided, as it became\nthem, for the old and helpless also.  That they prevented the necessity\nof raising rates for the poor by the copious alms which they distributed,\nand by indiscriminately feeding the indigent, has been inferred, because\nthose rates became necessary immediately after the suppression of the\nreligious houses.  But this is one of those hasty inferences which have\nno other foundation than a mere coincidence of time in the supposed cause\nand effect.\n\n_Montesinos_.--For which you have furnished a proverbial illustration in\nyour excellent story of Tenterden Steeple and Goodwin Sands.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--That illustration would have been buried in the dust\nif it had not been repeated by Hugh Latimer at St. Paul's Cross.  It was\nthe only thing in my writings by which he profited.  If he had learnt\nmore from them he might have died in his bed, with less satisfaction to\nhimself and less honour from posterity.  We went different ways, but we\ncame to the same end, and met where we had little expectation of meeting.\nI must do him the justice to say that when he forwarded the work of\ndestruction it was with the hope and intention of employing the materials\nin a better edifice; and that no man opposed the sacrilegious temper of\nthe age more bravely.  The monasteries, in the dissolution of which he\nrejoiced as much as he regretted the infamous disposal of their spoils,\ndelayed the growth of pauperism, by the corrodies with which they were\ncharged; the effect of these reservations on the part of the founders and\nbenefactors being, that a comfortable and respectable support was\nprovided for those who grew old in the service of their respective\nfamilies; and there existed no great family, and perhaps no wealthy one,\nwhich had not entitled itself thus to dispose of some of its aged\ndependants.  And the extent of the depopulating system was limited while\nthose houses endured: because though some of the great abbots were not\nless rapacious than the lay lords, and more criminal, the heads in\ngeneral could not be led, like the nobles, into a prodigal expenditure,\nthe burthen of which fell always upon the tenants; and rents in kind were\nto them more convenient than in money, their whole economy being founded\nupon that system, and adapted to it.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Both facts and arguments were indeed strongly on your side\nwhen you wrote against the supplication of beggars; but the form in which\nyou embodied them gave the adversary an advantage, for it was connected\nwith one of the greatest abuses and absurdities of the Romish Church.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Montesinos, I allow you to call it an abuse; but if\nyou think any of the abuses of that church were in their origin so\nunreasonable as to deserve the appellation of absurdities, you must have\nstudied its history with less consideration and a less equitable spirit\nthan I have given you credit for.  Both Master Fish and I had each our\nprejudices and errors.  We were both sincere; Master Fish would\nundoubtedly have gone to the stake in defence of his opinions as\ncheerfully as I laid down my neck upon the block; like his namesake in\nthe tale which you have quoted, he too when in Nix's frying-pan would\nhave said he was in his duty, and content.  But withal he cannot be\ncalled an honest man, unless in that sort of liberal signification by\nwhich, in these days, good words are so detorted from their original and\ngenuine meaning as to express precisely the reverse of what was formerly\nintended by them.  More gross exaggerations and more rascally\nmis-statements could hardly be made by one of your own thorough-paced\nrevolutionists than those upon which the whole argument of his\nsupplication is built.\n\n_Montesinos_.--If he had fallen into your hands you would have made a\nstock-fish of him.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Perhaps so.  I had not then I learnt that laying men\nby the heels is not the best way of curing them of an error in the head.\nBut the King protected him.  Henry had too much sagacity not to perceive\nthe consequences which such a book was likely to produce, and he said,\nafter perusing it, \"If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and\nbegin at the bottom, the upper part thereof might chance to fall upon his\nhead.\"  But he saw also that it tended to serve his immediate purpose.\n\n_Montesinos_.--I marvel that good old John Fox, upright, downright man as\nhe was, should have inserted in his \"Acts and Monuments\" a libel like\nthis, which contains no arguments except such as were adapted to\nignorance, cupidity, and malice.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Old John Fox ought to have known that, however\nadvantageous the dissolution of the monastic houses might be to the views\nof the Reformers, it was every way injurious to the labouring classes.  As\nfar as they were concerned, the transfer of property was always to worse\nhands.  The tenantry were deprived of their best landlords, artificers of\ntheir best employers, the poor and miserable of their best and surest\nfriends.  There would have been no insurrections in behalf of the old\nreligion if the zeal of the peasantry had not been inflamed by a sore\nfeeling of the injury which they suffered in the change.  A great\nincrease of the vagabond population was the direct and immediate\nconsequence.  They who were ejected from their tenements or deprived of\ntheir accustomed employment were turned loose upon society; and the\ngreater number, of course and of necessity, ran wild.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Wild, indeed!  The old chroniclers give a dreadful picture\nof their numbers and of their wickedness, which called forth and deserved\nthe utmost severity of the law.  They lived like savages in the woods and\nwastes, committing the most atrocious actions, stealing children, and\nburning, breaking, or otherwise disfiguring their limbs for the purpose\nof exciting compassion, and obtaining alms by this most flagitious of all\nimaginable crimes.  Surely we have nothing so bad as this.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The crime of stealing children for such purposes is\nrendered exceedingly difficult by the ease and rapidity with which a hue\nand cry can now be raised throughout the land, and the eagerness and\ndetestation with which the criminal would be pursued; still, however, it\nis sometimes practised.  In other respects the professional beggars of\nthe nineteenth century are not a whit better than their predecessors of\nthe sixteenth; and your gipsies and travelling potters, who, gipsy-like,\npitch their tents upon the common, or by the wayside, retain with as much\nfidelity the manners and morals of the old vagabonds as they do the\n_cant_, or pedlar's French, which this class of people are said to have\ninvented in the age whereof we are now speaking.\n\n_Montesinos_.--But the number of our vagabonds has greatly diminished.  In\nyour Henry's reign it is affirmed that no fewer than 72,000 criminals\nwere hanged; you have yourself described them as strung up by scores upon\na gibbet all over the country.  Even in the golden days of good Queen\nBess the executions were from three to four hundred annually.  A large\nallowance must be made for the increased humanity of the nation, and the\nhumaner temper with which the laws are administered: but the new crimes\nwhich increased wealth and a system of credit on one hand, and increased\ningenuity, and new means of mischief on the part of the depredators have\nproduced, must also be taken into the account.  And the result will show\na diminution in the number of those who prey upon society either by open\nwar or secret wiles.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Add your paupers to the list, and you will then have\nadded to it not less than an eighth of your whole population.  But\nlooking at the depredators alone, perhaps it will be found that the evil\nis at this time more widely extended, more intimately connected with the\nconstitution of society, like a chronic and organic disease, and\ntherefore more difficult of cure.  Like other vermin they are numerous in\nproportion as they find shelter; and for this species of noxious beast\nlarge towns and manufacturing districts afford better cover than the\nforest or the waste.  The fault lies in your institutions, which in the\ntime of the Saxons were better adapted to maintain security and order\nthan they are now.  No man in those days could prey upon society unless\nhe were at war with it as an outlaw, a proclaimed and open enemy.  Rude\nas the laws were, the purposes of law had not then been perverted: it had\nnot been made a craft; it served to deter men from committing crimes, or\nto punish them for the commission; never to shield notorious,\nacknowledged, impudent guilt from condign punishment.  And in the fabric\nof society, imperfect as it was, the outline and rudiments of what it\nought to be were distinctly marked in some main parts, where they are now\nwell-nigh utterly effaced.  Every person had his place.  There was a\nsystem of superintendence everywhere, civil as well as religious.  They\nwho were born in villenage were born to an inheritance of labour, but not\nof inevitable depravity and wretchedness.  If one class were regarded in\nsome respects as cattle they were at least taken care of; they were\ntrained, fed, sheltered and protected; and there was an eye upon them\nwhen they strayed.  None were wild, unless they ran wild wilfully, and in\ndefiance of control.  None were beneath the notice of the priest, nor\nplaced out of the possible reach of his instruction and his care.  But\nhow large a part of your population are like the dogs at Lisbon and\nConstantinople, unowned, unbroken to any useful purpose, subsisting by\nchance or by prey, living in filth, mischief, and wretchedness, a\nnuisance to the community while they live, and dying miserably at last!\nThis evil had its beginning in my days; it is now approaching fast to its\nconsummation.\n\n\n\n\nCOLLOQUY V.--DECAY OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM.--EDWARD VI.--ALFRED.\n\n\nI had retired to my library as usual after dinner, and while I was\nwishing for the appearance of my ghostly visitor he became visible.\n\"Behold me to your wish!\" said he.  \"Thank you,\" I replied, \"for those\nprecious words.\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Wherefore precious?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Because they show that spirits who are in bliss perceive\nour thoughts;--that that communion with the departed for which the heart\nyearns in its moods of intensest feeling is in reality attained when it\nis desired.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You deduce a large inference from scanty premises.  As\nif it were not easy to know without any super-human intuition that you\nwould wish for the arrival of one whose company you like, at a time when\nyou were expecting it.\n\n_Montesinos_.--And is this all?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--All that the words necessarily imply.  For the rest,\n_crede quod habeas et habes_, according to the scurvy tale which makes my\nfriend Erasmus a horse-stealer, and fathers Latin rhymes upon him.  But\nlet us take up the thread of our discourse, or, as we used to say in old\ntimes, \"begin it again and mend it, for it is neither mass nor matins.\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--You were saying that the evil of a vagrant and brutalised\npopulation began in your days, and is approaching to its consummation at\nthis time.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The decay of the feudal system produced it.  When\narmies were no longer raised upon that system soldiers were disbanded at\nthe end of a war, as they are now: that is to say, they were turned\nadrift to fare as they could--to work if they could find employment;\notherwise to beg, starve, live upon the alms of their neighbours, or prey\nupon a wider community in a manner more congenial to the habits and\ntemper of their old vocation.  In consequence of the gains which were to\nbe obtained by inclosures and sheep-farming, families were unhoused and\ndriven loose upon the country.  These persons, and they who were\nemancipated from villenage, or who had in a more summary manner\nemancipated themselves, multiplied in poverty and wretchedness.  Lastly,\nowing to the fashion for large households of retainers, great numbers of\nmen were trained up in an idle and dissolute way of life, liable at any\ntime to be cast off when age or accident invalided them, or when the\nmaster of the family died; and then if not ashamed to beg, too lewd to\nwork, and ready for any kind of mischief.  Owing to these co-operating\ncauses, a huge population of outcasts was produced, numerous enough\nseriously to infest society, yet not so large as to threaten its\nsubversion.\n\n_Montesinos_.--A derangement of the existing system produced them then;\nthey are a constituent part of the system now.  With you they were, as\nyou have called them, outcasts: with us, to borrow an illustration from\nforeign institutions, they have become a caste.  But during two centuries\nthe evil appears to have decreased.  Why was this?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Because it was perceived to be an evil, and could\nnever at any time be mistaken for a healthful symptom.  And because\ncircumstances tended to suspend its progress.  The habits of these\nunhappy persons being at first wholly predatory, the laws proclaimed a\nsort of crusade against them, and great and inhuman riddance was made by\nthe executioner.  Foreign service opened a drain in the succeeding\nreigns: many also were drawn off by the spirit of maritime adventure,\npreferring the high seas to the high way, as a safer course of\nplundering.  Then came an age of civil war, with its large demand for\nhuman life.  Meanwhile as the old arrangements of society crumbled and\ndecayed new ones were formed.  The ancient fabric was repaired in some\nparts and modernised in others.  And from the time of the Restoration the\npeople supposed their institutions to be stable because after long and\nviolent convulsions they found themselves at rest, and the transition\nwhich was then going on was slow, silent, and unperceived.  The process\nof converting slaves and villeins into servants and free peasantry had\nended; that of raising a manufacturing populace and converting peasantry\ninto poor was but begun; and it proceeded slowly for a full hundred\nyears.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Those hundred years were the happiest which England has\never known.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Perhaps so: [Greek text].\n\n_Montesinos_.--With the exception of the efforts which were made for\nrestoring the exiled family of the Stuarts they were years of quiet\nuniform prosperity and advancement.  The morals of the country recovered\nfrom the contagion which Charles II. imported from France, and for which\nPuritanism had prepared the people.  Visitations of pestilence were\nsuspended.  Sectarians enjoyed full toleration, and were contented.  The\nChurch proved itself worthy of the victory which it had obtained.  The\nConstitution, after one great but short struggle, was well balanced and\ndefined; and if the progress of art, science, and literature was not\nbrilliant, it was steady, and the way for a brighter career was prepared.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The way was prepared meantime for evil as well as for\ngood.  You were retrograde in sound policy, sound philosophy and sound\nlearning.  Our business at present is wholly with the first.  Because\nyour policy, defective as it was at the best, had been retrograde,\ndiscoveries in physics, and advances in mechanical science which would\nhave produced nothing but good in Utopia, became as injurious to the weal\nof the nation as they were instrumental to its wealth.  But such had your\nsystem imperceptibly become, and such were your statesmen, that the\nwealth of nations was considered as the sole measure of their prosperity.\n\n_Montesinos_.--In feudal ages the object of those monarchs who had any\ndeterminate object in view was either to extend their dominions by\nconquest from their neighbours, or to increase their authority at home by\nbreaking the power of a turbulent nobility.  In commercial ages the great\nand sole object of government, when not engaged in war, was to augment\nits revenues, for the purpose of supporting the charges which former wars\nhad induced, or which the apprehension of fresh ones rendered necessary.\nAnd thus it has been, that of the two main ends of government, which are\nthe security of the subjects and the improvement of the nation, the\nlatter has never been seriously attempted, scarcely indeed taken into\nconsideration; and the former imperfectly attained.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Fail not, however, I entreat you, to bear in mind\nthat this has not been the fault of your rulers at any time.  It has been\ntheir misfortune--an original sin in the constitution of the society\nwherein they were born.  Circumstances which they did not make and could\nnot control have impelled them onward in ways which neither for\nthemselves nor the nation were ways of pleasantness and peace.\n\n_Montesinos_.--There is one beautiful exception--Edward VI.\n\n   \"That blessed Prince whose saintly name might move\n   The understanding heart to tears of reverent love.\"\n\nHe would have struck into the right course.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You have a Catholic feeling concerning saints,\nMontesinos, though you look for them in the Protestant calendar.  Edward\ndeserves to be remembered with that feeling.  But had his life been\nprolonged to the full age of man it would not have been in his power to\nremedy the evil which had been done in his father's reign and during his\nown minority.  To have effected that would have required a strength and\nobduracy of character incompatible with his meek and innocent nature.  In\nintellect and attainments he kept pace with his age, a more stirring and\nintellectual one than any which had gone before it: but in the wisdom of\nthe heart he was far beyond that age, or indeed any that has succeeded\nit.  It cannot be said of him as of Henry of Windsor, that he was fitter\nfor a cloister than a throne, but he was fitter for a heavenly crown than\na terrestrial one.  This country was not worthy of him!--scarcely this\nearth!\n\n_Montesinos_.--There is a homely verse common in village churchyards, the\ntruth of which has been felt by many a heart, as some consolation in its\nkeenest afflictions:--\n\n   \"God calls them first whom He loves best.\"\n\nBut surely no prince ever more sedulously employed himself to learn his\noffice.  His views in some respects were not in accord with the more\nenlarged principles of trade, which experience has taught us.  But on the\nother hand he judged rightly what \"the medicines were by which the sores\nof the commonwealth might be healed.\"  His prescriptions are as\napplicable now as they were then, and in most points as needful: they\nwere \"good education, good example, good laws, and the just execution of\nthose laws: punishing the vagabond and idle, encouraging the good,\nordering well the customers, and engendering friendship in all parts of\nthe commonwealth.\"  In these, and more especially in the first of these,\nhe hoped and purposed to have \"shown his device.\"  But it was not\npermitted.  Nevertheless, he has his reward.  It has been more wittily\nthan charitably said that Hell is paved with good intentions: they have\ntheir place in Heaven also.  Evil thoughts and desires are justly\naccounted to us for sin; assuredly therefore the sincere goodwill will be\naccounted for the deed, when means and opportunity have been wanting to\nbring it to effect.  There are feelings and purposes as well as\n\"thoughts,\n\n   --whose very sweetness yieldeth proof\n   That they were born for immortality.\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Those great legislative measures whereby the\ncharacter of a nation is changed and stamped are more practicable in a\nbarbarous age than in one so far advanced as that of the Tudors; under a\ndespotic government, than under a free one; and among an ignorant, rather\nthan inquiring people.  Obedience is then either yielded to a power which\nis too strong to be resisted, or willingly given to the acknowledged\nsuperiority of some commanding mind, carrying with it, as in such ages it\ndoes, an appearance of divinity.  Our incomparable Alfred was a prince in\nmany respects favourably circumstanced for accomplishing a great work\nlike this, if his victory over the Danes had been so complete as to have\nsecured the country against any further evils from that tremendous enemy.\nAnd had England remained free from the scourge of their invasion under\nhis successors, it is more than likely that his institutions would at\nthis day have been the groundwork of your polity.\n\n_Montesinos_.--If you allude to that part of the Saxon law which required\nthat all the people should be placed under _borh_, I must observe that\neven those writers who regard the name of Alfred with the greatest\nreverence always condemn this part of his system of government.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--It is a question of degree.  The just medium between\ntoo much superintendence and too little: the mystery whereby the free\nwill of the subject is preserved, while it is directed by the fore\npurpose of the State (which is the secret of true polity), is yet to be\nfound out.  But this is certain, that whatever be the origin of\ngovernment, its duties are patriarchal, that is to say, parental:\nsuperintendence is one of those duties, and is capable of being exercised\nto any extent by delegation and sub-delegation.\n\n_Montesinos_.--The Madras system, my excellent friend Dr. Bell would\nexclaim if he were here.  That which, as he says, gives in a school to\nthe master, the hundred eyes of Argus, and the hundred hands of Briareus,\nmight in a state give omnipresence to law, and omnipotence to order.  This\nis indeed the fair ideal of a commonwealth.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--And it was this at which Alfred aimed.  His means\nwere violent, because the age was barbarous.  Experience would have shown\nwherein they required amendment, and as manners improved the laws would\nhave been softened with them.  But they disappeared altogether during the\nyears of internal warfare and turbulence which ensued.  The feudal order\nwhich was established with the Norman conquest, or at least methodised\nafter it, was in this part of its scheme less complete: still it had the\nsame bearing.  When that also went to decay, municipal police did not\nsupply its place.  Church discipline then fell into disuse; clerical\ninfluence was lost; and the consequence now is, that in a country where\none part of the community enjoys the highest advantages of civilisation\nwith which any people upon this globe have ever in any age been favoured,\nthere is among the lower classes a mass of ignorance, vice, and\nwretchedness, which no generous heart can contemplate without grief, and\nwhich, when the other signs of the times are considered, may reasonably\nexcite alarm for the fabric of society that rests upon such a base.  It\nresembles the tower in your own vision, its beautiful summit elevated\nabove all other buildings, the foundations placed upon the sand, and\nmouldering.\n\n_Montesinos_.\n\n   \"Rising so high, and built so insecure,\n   Ill may such perishable work endure!\"\n\nYou will not, I hope, come to that conclusion!  You will not, I hope, say\nwith the evil prophet--\n\n   \"The fabric of her power is undermined;\n      The Earthquake underneath it will have way,\n   And all that glorious structure, as the wind\n      Scatters a summer cloud, be swept away!\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Look at the populace of London, and ask yourself what\nsecurity there is that the same blind fury which broke out in your\nchildhood against the Roman Catholics may not be excited against the\ngovernment, in one of those opportunities which accident is perpetually\noffering to the desperate villains whom your laws serve rather to protect\nthan to punish!\n\n_Montesinos_.--It is an observation of Mercier's, that despotism loves\nlarge cities.  The remark was made with reference to Paris only a little\nwhile before the French Revolution!  But even if he had looked no farther\nthan the history of his own country and of that very metropolis, he might\nhave found sufficient proof that insubordination and anarchy like them\nquite as well.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--London is the heart of your commercial system, but it\nis also the hot-bed of corruption.  It is at once the centre of wealth\nand the sink of misery; the seat of intellect and empire: and yet a\nwilderness wherein they, who live like wild beasts upon their\nfellow-creatures, find prey and cover.  Other wild beasts have long since\nbeen extirpated: even in the wilds of Scotland, and of barbarous, or\nworse than barbarous Ireland, the wolf is no longer to be found; a degree\nof civilisation this to which no other country has attained.  Man, and\nman alone, is permitted to run wild.  You plough your fields and harrow\nthem; you have your scarifiers to make the ground clean; and if after all\nthis weeds should spring up, the careful cultivator roots them out by\nhand.  But ignorance and misery and vice are allowed to grow, and\nblossom, and seed, not on the waste alone, but in the very garden and\npleasure-ground of society and civilisation.  Old Thomas Tusser's coarse\nremedy is the only one which legislators have yet thought of applying.\n\n_Montesinos_.--What remedy is that?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--'Twas the husbandman's practice in his days and mine:\n\n   \"Where plots full of nettles annoyeth the eye,\n   Sow hempseed among them, and nettles will die.\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--The use of hemp indeed has not been spared.  But with so\nlittle avail has it been used, or rather to such ill effect, that every\npublic execution, instead of deterring villains from guilt, serves only\nto afford them opportunity for it.  Perhaps the very risk of the gallows\noperates upon many a man among the inducements to commit the crime\nwhereto he is tempted; for with your true gamester the excitement seems\nto be in proportion to the value of the stake.  Yet I hold as little with\nthe humanity-mongers, who deny the necessity and lawfulness of inflicting\ncapital punishment in any case, as with the shallow moralists, who\nexclaim against vindictive justice, when punishment would cease to be\njust, if it were not vindictive.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--And yet the inefficacious punishment of guilt is less\nto be deplored and less to be condemned than the total omission of all\nmeans for preventing it.  Many thousands in your metropolis rise every\nmorning without knowing how they are to subsist during the day, or many\nof them where they are to lay their heads at night.  All men, even the\nvicious themselves, know that wickedness leads to misery; but many, even\namong the good and the wise, have yet to learn that misery is almost as\noften the cause of wickedness.\n\n_Montesinos_.--There are many who know this, but believe that it is not\nin the power of human institutions to prevent this misery.  They see the\neffect, but regard the causes as inseparable from the condition of human\nnature.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--As surely as God is good, so surely there is no such\nthing as necessary evil.  For by the religious mind sickness and pain and\ndeath are not to be accounted evils.  Moral evils are of your own making,\nand undoubtedly the greater part of them may be prevented; though it is\nonly in Paraguay (the most imperfect of Utopias) that any attempt at\nprevention has been carried into effect.  Deformities of mind, as of\nbody, will sometimes occur.  Some voluntary castaways there will always\nbe, whom no fostering kindness and no parental care can preserve from\nself-destruction; but if any are lost for want of care and culture, there\nis a sin of omission in the society to which they belong.\n\n_Montesinos_.--The practicability of forming such a system of prevention\nmay easily be allowed, where, as in Paraguay, institutions are\nfore-planned, and not, as everywhere in Europe, the slow and varying\ngrowth of circumstances.  But to introduce it into an old society, _hic\nlabor_, _hoc opus est_!  The Augean stable might have been kept clean by\nordinary labour, if from the first the filth had been removed every day;\nwhen it had accumulated for years, it became a task for Hercules to\ncleanse it.  Alas, the age of heroes and demigods is over!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--There lies your error!  As no general will ever\ndefeat an enemy whom he believes to be invincible, so no difficulty can\nbe overcome by those who fancy themselves unable to overcome it.\nStatesmen in this point are, like physicians, afraid, lest their own\nreputation should suffer, to try new remedies in cases where the old\nroutine of practice is known and proved to be ineffectual.  Ask yourself\nwhether the wretched creatures of whom we are discoursing are not\nabandoned to their fate without the highest attempt to rescue them from\nit?  The utmost which your laws profess is, that under their\nadministration no human being shall perish for want: this is all!  To\neffect this you draw from the wealthy, the industrious, and the frugal, a\nrevenue exceeding tenfold the whole expenses of government under Charles\nI., and yet even with this enormous expenditure upon the poor it is not\neffected.  I say nothing of those who perish for want of sufficient food\nand necessary comforts, the victims of slow suffering and obscure\ndisease; nor of those who, having crept to some brick-kiln at night, in\nhope of preserving life by its warmth, are found there dead in the\nmorning.  Not a winter passes in which some poor wretch does not actually\ndie of cold and hunger in the streets of London!  With all your public\nand private eleemosynary establishments, with your eight million of poor-\nrates, with your numerous benevolent associations, and with a spirit of\ncharity in individuals which keeps pace with the wealth of the richest\nnation in the world, these things happen, to the disgrace of the age and\ncountry, and to the opprobrium of humanity, for want of police and order!\nYou are silent!\n\n_Montesinos_.--Some shocking examples occurred to me.  The one of a poor\nSavoyard boy with his monkey starved to death in St. James's Park.  The\nother, which is, if that be possible, a still more disgraceful case, is\nrecorded incidentally in Rees's Cyclopaedia under the word \"monster.\"  It\nis only in a huge overgrown city that such cases could possibly occur.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The extent of a metropolis ought to produce no such\nconsequences.  Whatever be the size of a bee-hive or an ant-hill, the\nsame perfect order is observed in it.\n\n_Montesinos_.--That is because bees and ants act under the guidance of\nunerring instinct.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--As if instinct were a superior faculty to reason!  But\nthe statesman, as well as the sluggard, may be told to \"go to the ant and\nthe bee, consider their ways and be wise!\"  It is for reason to observe\nand profit by the examples which instinct affords it.\n\n_Montesinos_.--A country modelled upon Apiarian laws would be a strange\nUtopia! the bowstring would be used there as unmercifully as it is in the\nseraglio, to say nothing of the summary mode of bringing down the\npopulation to the means of subsistence.  But this is straying from the\nsubject.  The consequences of defective order are indeed frightful,\nwhether we regard the physical or the moral evils which are produced.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--And not less frightful when the political evils are\ncontemplated.  To the dangers of an oppressive and iniquitous order,\nsuch, for example, as exists where negro slavery is established, you are\nfully awake in England; but to those of defective order among yourselves,\nthough they are precisely of the same nature, you are blind.  And yet you\nhave spirits among you who are labouring day and night to stir up a\n_bellum servile_, an insurrection like that of Wat Tyler, of the\nJacquerie, and of the peasants in Germany.  There is no provocation for\nthis, as there was in all those dreadful convulsions of society: but\nthere are misery and ignorance and desperate wickedness to work upon,\nwhich the want of order has produced.  Think for a moment what London,\nnay, what the whole kingdom would be, were your Catilines to succeed in\nexciting as general an insurrection as that which was raised by one\nmadman in your own childhood!  Imagine the infatuated and infuriated\nwretches, whom not Spitalfields, St. Giles's, and Pimlico alone, but all\nthe lanes and alleys and cellars of the metropolis would pour out--a\nfrightful population, whose multitudes, when gathered together, might\nalmost exceed belief!  The streets of London would appear to teem with\nthem, like the land of Egypt with its plague of frogs: and the lava\nfloods from a volcano would be less destructive than the hordes whom your\ngreat cities and manufacturing districts would vomit forth!\n\n_Montesinos_.--Such an insane rebellion would speedily be crushed.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Perhaps so.  But three days were enough for the Fire\nof London.  And be assured this would not pass away without leaving in\nyour records a memorial as durable and more dreadful.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Is such an event to be apprehended?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Its possibility at least ought always to be borne in\nmind.  The French Revolution appeared much less possible when the\nAssembly of Notables was convoked; and the people of France were much\nless prepared for the career of horrors into which they were presently\nhurried.\n\n\n\n\nCOLLOQUY XIV.--THE LIBRARY.\n\n\nI was in my library, making room upon the shelves for some books which\nhad just arrived from New England, removing to a less conspicuous station\nothers which were of less value and in worse dress, when Sir Thomas\nentered.  You are employed, said he, to your heart's content.  Why,\nMontesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their constant\nsociety, what have you to covet or desire?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Nothing, except more books.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--\n\n   \"_Crescit_, _indulgens sibi_, _dirus hydrops_.\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at least is no diseased\ndesire.  If I covet more, it is for the want I feel and the use which I\nshould make of them.  \"Libraries,\" says my good old friend George Dyer, a\nman as learned as he is benevolent, \"libraries are the wardrobes of\nliterature, whence men, properly informed, might bring forth something\nfor ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use.\"  These books of\nmine, as you well know, are not drawn up here for display, however much\nthe pride of the eye may be gratified in beholding them, they are on\nactual service.  Whenever they may be dispersed, there is not one among\nthem that will ever be more comfortably lodged, or more highly prized by\nits possessor; and generations may pass away before some of them will\nagain find a reader.  It is well that we do not moralise too much upon\nsuch subjects.\n\n   \"For foresight is a melancholy gift,\n   Which bares the bald, and speeds the all-too-swift.\"\n\n   H. T.\n\nBut the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or in\nanticipation, is always to me a melancholy thing.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--How many such dispersions must have taken place to\nhave made it possible that these books should thus be brought together\nhere among the Cumberland mountains.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Many, indeed; and in many instances most disastrous ones.\nNot a few of these volumes have been cast up from the wreck of the family\nor convent libraries during the late Revolution.  Yonder \"Acta Sanctorum\"\nbelonged to the Capuchins, at Ghent.  This book of St. Bridget's\nRevelations, in which not only all the initial letters are illuminated,\nbut every capital throughout the volume was coloured, came from the\nCarmelite Nunnery at Bruges.  That copy of Alain Chartier, from the\nJesuits' College at Louvain; that _Imago Primi Saeculi Societatis_, from\ntheir college at Ruremond.  Here are books from Colbert's library, here\nothers from the Lamoignon one.  And here are two volumes of a work, not\nmore rare than valuable for its contents, divorced, unhappily, and it is\nto be feared for ever, from the one which should stand between them; they\nwere printed in a convent at Manila, and brought from thence when that\ncity was taken by Sir William Draper; they have given me, perhaps, as\nmany pleasurable hours (passed in acquiring information which I could not\notherwise have obtained), as Sir William spent years of anxiety and\nvexation in vainly soliciting the reward of his conquest.\n\nAbout a score of the more out-of-the-way works in my possession belonged\nto some unknown person, who seems carefully to have gleaned the\nbookstalls a little before and after the year 1790.  He marked them with\ncertain ciphers, always at the end of the volume.  They are in various\nlanguages, and I never found his mark in any book that was not worth\nbuying, or that I should not have bought without that indication to\ninduce me.  All were in ragged condition, and having been dispersed, upon\nthe owner's death probably, as of no value, to the stalls they had\nreturned; and there I found this portion of them just before my old\nhaunts as a book-hunter in the metropolis were disforested, to make room\nfor the improvements between Westminster and Oxford Road.  I have\nendeavoured without success to discover the name of their former\npossessor.  He must have been a remarkable man, and the whole of his\ncollection, judging of it by that part which has come into my hands, must\nhave been singularly curious.  A book is the more valuable to me when I\nknow to whom it has belonged, and through what \"scenes and changes\" it\nhas passed.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You would have its history recorded in the fly-leaf\nas carefully as the pedigree of a racehorse is preserved.\n\n_Montesinos_.--I confess that I have much of that feeling in which the\nsuperstition concerning relics has originated, and I am sorry when I see\nthe name of a former owner obliterated in a book, or the plate of his\narms defaced.  Poor memorials though they be, yet they are something\nsaved for a while from oblivion, and I should be almost as unwilling to\ndestroy them as to efface the _Hic jacet_ of a tombstone.  There may be\nsometimes a pleasure in recognising them, sometimes a salutary sadness.\n\nYonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes, and yonder\n\"General History of Spain,\" by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their\nrespective authors.  The minds of these laborious and useful scholars are\nin their works, but you are brought into a more personal relation with\nthem when you see the page upon which you know that their eyes have\nrested, and the very characters which their hands have traced.  This copy\nof Casaubon's Epistles was sent to me from Florence by Walter Landor.  He\nhad perused it carefully, and to that perusal we are indebted for one of\nthe most pleasing of his Conversations; these letters had carried him in\nspirit to the age of their writer, and shown James I. to him in the light\nwherein James was regarded by contemporary scholars, and under the\nimpression thus produced Landor has written of him in his happiest mood,\ncalmly, philosophically, feelingly, and with no more of favourable\nleaning than justice will always manifest when justice is in good humour\nand in charity with all men.  The book came from the palace library at\nMilan, how or when abstracted I know not, but this beautiful dialogue\nwould never have been written had it remained there in its place upon the\nshelf, for the worms to finish the work which they had begun.  Isaac\nCasaubon must be in your society, Sir Thomas, for where Erasmus is you\nwill be, and there also Casaubon will have his place among the wise and\nthe good.  Tell him, I pray you, that due honour has in these days been\nrendered to his name by one who as a scholar is qualified to appreciate\nhis merits, and whose writings will be more durable than monuments of\nbrass or marble.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Is there no message to him from Walter Landor's\nfriend?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Say to him, since you encourage me to such boldness, that\nhis letters could scarcely have been perused with deeper interest by the\npersons to whom they were addressed than they have been by one, at the\nfoot of Skiddaw, who is never more contentedly employed than when\nlearning from the living minds of other ages, one who would gladly have\nthis expression of respect and gratitude conveyed to him, and who trusts\nthat when his course is finished here he shall see him face to face.\n\nHere is a book with which Lauderdale amused himself, when Cromwell kept\nhim prisoner in Windsor Castle.  He has recorded his state of mind during\nthat imprisonment by inscribing in it, with his name, and the dates of\ntime and place, the Latin word _Durate_, and the Greek [Greek text].  Here\nis a memorial of a different kind inscribed in this \"Rule of Penance of\nSt. Francis, as it in ordered for religious women.\"  \"I beseech my deare\nmother humbly to accept of this exposition of our holy rule, the better\nto conceive what your poor child ought to be, who daly beges your\nblessing.  Constantia Francisco.\"  And here in the Apophthegmata,\ncollected by Conrad Lycosthenes, and published after drastic expurgation\nby the Jesuits as a commonplace book, some Portuguese has entered a\nhearty vow that he would never part with the book, nor lend it to any\none.  Very different was the disposition of my poor old Lisbon\nacquaintance, the Abbe, who, after the old humaner form, wrote in all his\nbooks (and he had a rare collection) _Ex libris Francisci Garnier_, _et\namicorum_.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--How peaceably they stand together--Papists and\nProtestants side by side.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the cemetery.\nAncient and modern, Jew and Gentile, Mahommedan and Crusader, French and\nEnglish, Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting their\nown battles, silently now, upon the same shelf: Fernam Lopez and Pedro de\nAyala; John de Laet and Barlaeus, with the historians of Joam Fernandes\nVieira; Foxe's Martyrs and the Three Conversions of Father Parsons;\nCranmer and Stephen Gardiner; Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit and\nPhilosophe (equally misnamed); Churchmen and Sectarians; Round-heads and\nCavaliers\n\n   \"Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and here\n   Is Nature's secretary, the philosopher:\n   And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie\n   The sinews of a city's mystic body;\n   Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand\n   Giddy fantastic poets of each land.\"--DONNE.\n\nHere I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of so many\ngenerations, laid up in my garners: and when I go to the window there is\nthe lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the illimitable sky.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--\n\n   \"_Felicemque voco pariter studiique locique_!\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--\n\n   \"--_meritoque probas artesque locumque_.\"\n\nThe simile of the bees,\n\n   \"_Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes_,\"\n\nhas often been applied to men who have made literature their profession;\nand they among them to whom worldly wealth and worldly honours are\nobjects of ambition, may have reason enough to acknowledge its\napplicability.  But it will bear a happier application and with equal\nfitness: for, for whom is the purest honey hoarded that the bees of this\nworld elaborate, if it be not for the man of letters?  The exploits of\nthe kings and heroes of old, serve now to fill story-books for his\namusement and instruction.  It was to delight his leisure and call forth\nhis admiration that Homer sung and Alexander conquered.  It is to gratify\nhis curiosity that adventurers have traversed deserts and savage\ncountries, and navigators have explored the seas from pole to pole.  The\nrevolutions of the planet which he inhabits are but matters for his\nspeculation; and the deluges and conflagrations which it has undergone,\nproblems to exercise his philosophy, or fancy.  He is the inheritor of\nwhatever has been discovered by persevering labour, or created by\ninventive genius.  The wise of all ages have heaped up a treasure for\nhim, which rust doth not corrupt, and which thieves cannot break through\nand steal.  I must leave out the moth, for even in this climate care is\nrequired against its ravages.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Yet, Montesinos, how often does the worm-eaten volume\noutlast the reputation of the worm-eaten author!\n\n_Montesinos_.--Of the living one also; for many there are of whom it may\nbe said, in the words of Vida, that--\n\n            \"--_ipsi_\n   _Saepe suis superant monumentis_; _illaudatique_\n   _Extremum ante diem faetus flevere caducos_,\n   _Viventesque suae viderunt funera famae_.\"\n\nSome literary reputations die in the birth; a few are nibbled to death by\ncritics, but they are weakly ones that perish thus, such only as must\notherwise soon have come to a natural death.  Somewhat more numerous are\nthose which are overfed with praise, and die of the surfeit.  Brisk\nreputations, indeed, are like bottled twopenny, or pop \"they sparkle, are\nexhaled, and fly\"--not to heaven, but to the Limbo.  To live among books,\nis in this respect like living among the tombs; you have in them speaking\nremembrancers of mortality.  \"Behold this also is vanity!\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Has it proved to you \"vexation of spirit\" also?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Oh, no! for never can any man's life have been passed more\nin accord with his own inclinations, nor more answerably to his own\ndesires.  Excepting that peace which, through God's infinite mercy, is\nderived from a higher source, it is to literature, humanly speaking, that\nI am beholden, not only for the means of subsistence, but for every\nblessing which I enjoy; health of mind and activity of mind, contentment,\ncheerfulness, continual employment, and therewith continual pleasure.\n_Sua vissima vita indies_, _sentire se fieri meliorem_; and this as Bacon\nhas said, and Clarendon repeated, is the benefit that a studious man\nenjoys in retirement.  To the studies which I have faithfully pursued I\nam indebted for friends with whom, hereafter, it will be deemed an honour\nto have lived in friendship; and as for the enemies which they have\nprocured to me in sufficient numbers, happily I am not of the\nthin-skinned race: they might as well fire small-shot at a rhinoceros, as\ndirect their attacks upon me.  _In omnibus requiem quaesivi_, said Thomas\na Kempis, _sed non inveni nisi in angulis et libellis_.  I too have found\nrepose where he did, in books and retirement, but it was there alone I\nsought it: to these my nature, under the direction of a merciful\nProvidence, led me betimes, and the world can offer nothing which should\ntempt me from them.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--If wisdom were to be found in the multitude of books,\nwhat a progress must this nation have made in it since my head was cut\noff!  A man in my days might offer to dispute _de omni scibile_, and in\naccepting the challenge I, as a young man, was not guilty of any\nextraordinary presumption, for all which books could teach was, at that\ntime, within the compass of a diligent and ardent student.  Even then we\nhad difficulties to contend with which were unknown to the ancients.  The\ncurse of Babel fell lightly upon them.  The Greeks despised other nations\ntoo much to think of acquiring their languages for the love of knowledge,\nand the Romans contented themselves with learning only the Greek.  But\ntongues which, in my lifetime, were hardly formed, have since been\nrefined and cultivated, and are become fertile in authors; and others,\nthe very names of which were then unknown in Europe, have been discovered\nand mastered by European scholars, and have been found rich in\nliterature.  The circle of knowledge has thus widened in every\ngeneration; and you cannot now touch the circumference of what might\nformerly have been clasped.\n\n_Montesinos_.--We are fortunate, methinks, who live in an age when books\nare accessible and numerous, and yet not so multiplied, as to render a\ncompetent, not to say thorough, acquaintance with any one branch of\nliterature, impossible.  He has it yet in his power to know much, who can\nbe contented to remain in ignorance of more, and to say with Scaliger,\n_non sum ex illis gloriosulis qui nihil ignorant_.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--If one of the most learned men whom the world has\never seen felt it becoming in him to say this two centuries ago, how\ninfinitely smaller in these days must the share of learning which the\nmost indefatigable student can hope to attain, be in proportion to what\nhe must wish to learn!  The sciences are simplified as they are improved;\nold rubbish and demolished fabrics serve there to make a foundation for\nnew scaffolding, and more enduring superstructures; and every discoverer\nin physics bequeaths to those who follow him greater advantages than he\npossessed at the commencement of his labours.  The reverse of this is\nfelt in all the higher branches of literature.  You have to acquire what\nthe learned of the last age acquired, and in addition to it, what they\nthemselves have added to the stock of learning.  Thus the task is greater\nin every succeeding generation, and in a very few more it must become\nmanifestly impossible.\n\n_Montesinos_.  Pope Ganganelli is said to have expressed a whimsical\nopinion that all the books in the world might be reduced to six thousand\nvolumes in folio--by epitomising, expurgating, and destroying whatever\nthe chosen and plenipotential committee of literature should in their\nwisdom think proper to condemn.  It is some consolation to know that no\nPope, or Nero, or Bonaparte, however great their power, can ever think\nsuch a scheme sufficiently within the bounds of possibility for them to\ndream of attempting it; otherwise the will would not be wanting.  The\nevil which you anticipate is already perceptible in its effects.  Well\nwould it be if men were as moderate in their desire of wealth, as those\nwho enter the ranks of literature, and lay claim to distinction there,\nare in their desire of knowledge!  A slender capital suffices to begin\nwith, upon the strength of which they claim credit, and obtain it as\nreadily as their fellow adventurers in trade.  If they succeed in setting\nup a present reputation, their ambition extends no further.  The very\nvanity which finds its present food produces in them a practical contempt\nfor any fame beyond what they can live to enjoy; and this sense of its\ninsignificance to themselves is what better minds hardly attain, even in\ntheir saddest wisdom, till this world darkens upon them, and they feel\nthat they are on the confines of eternity.  But every age has had its\nsciolists, and will continue to have them; and in every age literature\nhas also had, and will continue to have its sincere and devoted\nfollowers, few in number, but enough to trim the everlasting lamp.  It is\nwhen sciolists meddle with State affairs that they become the pests of a\nnation; and this evil, for the reason which you have assigned, is more\nlikely to increase than to be diminished.  In your days all extant\nhistory lay within compassable bounds: it is a fearful thing to consider\nnow what length of time would be required to make studious man as\nconversant with the history of Europe since those days, as he ought to\nbe, if he would be properly qualified for holding a place in the councils\nof a kingdom.  Men who take the course of public life will not, nor can\nthey be expected to, wait for this.  Youth and ardour, and ambition and\nimpatience, are here in accord with worldly prudence; if they would reach\nthe goal for which they start, they must begin the career betimes; and\nsuch among them as may be conscious that their stock of knowledge is less\nthan it ought to be for such a profession, would not hesitate on that\naccount to take an active part in public affairs, because they have a\nmore comfortable consciousness that they are quite as well informed as\nthe contemporaries, with whom they shall have to act, or to contend.  The\n_quantulum_ at which Oxenstern admired would be a large allowance now.\nFor any such person to suspect himself of deficiency would, in this age\nof pretension, be a hopeful symptom; but should he endeavour to supply\nit, he is like a mail-coach traveller, who is to be conveyed over\nmacadamised roads at the rate of nine miles an hour, including stoppages,\nand must therefore take at his minuted meals whatever food is readiest.\nHe must get information for immediate use, and with the smallest cost of\ntime; and therefore it is sought in abstracts and epitomes, which afford\nmeagre food to the intellect, though they take away the uneasy sense of\ninanition.  _Tout abrege sur un bon livre est un sot abrege_, says\nMontaigne; and of all abridgments there are none by which a reader is\nliable, and so likely, to be deceived as by epitomised histories.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Call to mind, I pray you, my foliophagous friend,\nwhat was the extent of Michael Montaigne's library; and that if you had\npassed a winter in his chateau you must, with that appetite of yours,\nhave but yourself upon short allowance there.  Historical knowledge is\nnot the first thing needful for a statesman, nor the second.  And yet do\nnot hastily conclude that I am about to disparage its importance.  A\nsailor might as well put to sea without chart or compass as a minister\nventure to steer the ship of the State without it.  For as \"the strong\nand strange varieties\" in human nature are repeated in every age, so \"the\nthing which hath been, it is that which shall be.  Is there anything\nwhereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old\ntime which was before us.\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--\n\n   \"For things forepast are precedents to us,\n   Whereby we may things present now, discuss,\"\n\nas the old poet said who brought together a tragical collection of\nprecedents in the mirror of magistrates.  This is what Lord Brooke calls\n\n      \"the second light of government\n   Which stories yield, and no time can disseason:\"\n\n\"the common standard of man's reason,\" he holds to be the first light\nwhich the founders of a new state, or the governors of an old one, ought\nto follow.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Rightly, for though the most sagacious author that\never deduced maxims of policy from the experience of former ages has said\nthat the misgovernment of States, and the evils consequent thereon, have\narisen more from the neglect of that experience--that is, from historical\nignorance--than from any other cause, the sum and substance of historical\nknowledge for practical purposes consists in certain general principles;\nand he who understands those principles, and has a due sense of their\nimportance, has always, in the darkest circumstances, a star in sight by\nwhich he may direct his course surely.\n\n_Montesinos_.--The British ministers who began and conducted the first\nwar against revolutionary France, were once reminded, in a memorable\nspeech, that if they had known, or knowing had borne in mind, three\nmaxims of Machiavelli, they would not have committed the errors which\ncost this country so dearly.  They would not have relied upon bringing\nthe war to a successful end by aid of a party among the French: they\nwould not have confided in the reports of emigrants; and they would not\nhave supposed that because the French finances were in confusion, France\nwas therefore incapable of carrying on war with vigour and ability; men\nand not money being the sinews of war, as Machiavelli had taught, and the\nrevolutionary rulers and Buonaparte after them had learnt.  Each of these\nerrors they committed, though all were marked upon the chart!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Such maxims are like beacons on a dangerous shore,\nnot the less necessary, because the seaman may sometimes be deceived by\nfalse lights, and sometimes mistaken in his distances; but the\npossibility of being so misled will be borne in mind by the cautious.\nMachiavelli is always sagacious, but the tree of knowledge of which he\nhad gathered grew not in Paradise; it had a bitter root, and the fruit\nsavours thereof, even to deadliness.  He believed men to be so malignant\nby nature that they always act malevolently from choice, and never well\nexcept by compulsion, a devilish doctrine, to be accounted for rather\nthan excused by the circumstances of his age and country.  For he lived\nin a land where intellect was highly cultivated, and morals thoroughly\ncorrupted, the Papal Church having by its doctrines, its practices, and\nits example, made one part of the Italians heathenism and superstitious,\nthe other impious, and both wicked.\n\nThe rule of policy as well as of private morals is to be found in the\nGospel; and a religious sense of duty towards God and man is the first\nthing needful in a statesman: herein he has an unerring guide when\nknowledge fails him, and experience affords no light.  This, with a clear\nhead and a single heart, will carry him through all difficulties; and the\njust confidence which, having these, he will then have in himself, will\nobtain for him the confidence of the nation.  In every nation, indeed,\nwhich is conscious of its strength, the minister who takes the highest\ntone will invariably be the most popular; let him uphold, even haughtily,\nthe character of his country, and the heart and voice of the people will\nbe with him.  But haughtiness implies always something that is hollow:\nthe tone of a wise minister will be firm but calm.  He will neither\ntruckle to his enemies in the vain hope of conciliating them by a\nspecious candour, which they at the same time flatter and despise; nor\nwill he stand aloof from his friends, lest he should be accused of\nregarding them with partiality; and thus while he secures the attachment\nof the one he will command the respect of the other.  He will not, like\nthe Lacedemonians, think any measures honourable which accord with his\ninclinations, and just if they promote his views; but in all cases he\nwill do that which is lawful and right, holding this for a certain truth,\nthat in politics the straight path is the sure one!  Such a minister will\nhope for the best, and expect the best; by acting openly, steadily, and\nbravely, he will act always for the best: and so acting, be the issue\nwhat it may, he will never dishonour himself or his country, nor fall\nunder the \"sharp judgment\" of which they that are in \"high places\" are in\ndanger.\n\n_Montesinos_.--I am pleased to hear you include hopefulness among the\nneedful qualifications.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--It was a Jewish maxim that the spirit of prophecy\nrests only upon eminent, happy, and cheerful men.\n\n_Montesinos_.--A wise woman, by which I do not mean in vulgar parlance\none who pretends to prophecy, has a maxim to the same effect: _Toma este\naviso_, she says, _guardate de aquel que no tiene esperanza de bien_!\ntake care of him who hath no hope of good!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--\"Of whole heart cometh hope,\" says old Piers Plowman.\nAnd these maxims are warranted by philosophy, divine and human; by human\nwisdom, because he who hopes little will attempt little--fear is \"a\nbetrayal of the succours which reason offereth,\" and in difficult times,\n_pericula magna non nisi periculis depelli solent_; by religion, because\nthe ways of providence are not so changed under the dispensation of Grace\nfrom what they were under the old law but that he who means well, and\nacts well, and is not wanting to himself, may rightfully look for a\nblessing upon the course which he pursues.  The upright individual may\nrest his heal in peace upon this hope; the upright minister who conducts\nthe affairs of a nation may trust in it; for as national sins bring after\nthem in sure consequence their merited punishment, so national virtue,\nwhich is national wisdom, obtains in like manner its temporal and visible\nreward.\n\nBlessings and curses are before you, and which are to be your portion\ndepends upon the direction of public opinion.  The march of intellect is\nproceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a\ncorresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds,\nwith the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.\n\nOne of the first effects of printing was to make proud men look upon\nlearning as disgraced by being thus brought within reach of the common\npeople.  Till that time learning, such as it was, had been confined to\ncourts and convents, the low birth of the clergy being overlooked because\nthey were privileged by their order.  But when laymen in humble life were\nenabled to procure books the pride of aristocracy took an absurd course,\ninsomuch that at one time it was deemed derogatory for a nobleman if he\ncould read or write.  Even scholars themselves complained that the\nreputation of learning, and the respect due to it, and its rewards were\nlowered when it was thrown open to all men; and it was seriously proposed\nto prohibit the printing of any book that could be afforded for sale\nbelow the price of three _soldi_.  This base and invidious feeling was\nperhaps never so directly avowed in other countries as in Italy, the land\nwhere literature was first restored; and yet in this more liberal island\nignorance was for some generations considered to be a mark of\ndistinction, by which a man of gentle birth chose, not unfrequently, to\nmake it apparent that he was no more obliged to live by the toil of his\nbrain, than by the sweat of his brow.  The same changes in society which\nrendered it no longer possible for this class of men to pass their lives\nin idleness have completely put an end to this barbarous pride.  It is as\nobsolete as the fashion of long finger-nails, which in some parts of the\nEast are still the distinctive mark of those who labour not with their\nhands.  All classes are now brought within the reach of your current\nliterature, that literature which, like a moral atmosphere, is as it were\nthe medium of intellectual life, and on the quality of which, according\nas it may be salubrious or noxious, the health of the public mind\ndepends.  There is, if not a general desire for knowledge, a general\nappearance of such a desire.  Authors of all kinds have increased and are\nincreasing among you.  Romancers--\n\n_Montesinos_.--Some of whom attempt things which had hitherto been\nunattempted yet in prose or rhyme, because among all the extravagant\nintellects with which the world has teemed none were ever before so\nutterly extravagant as to choose for themselves themes of such revolting\nmonstrosity.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Poets--\n\n_Montesinos_.--\n\n   \"Tanti Rome non ha preti, o dottori\n   _Bologna_.\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Critics--\n\n_Montesinos_.--More numerous yet; for this is a corps in which many who\nare destined for better things engage, till they are ashamed of the\nservice; and a much greater number who endeavour to distinguish\nthemselves in higher walks of literature, and fail, take shelter in it;\nas they cannot attain reputation themselves they endeavour to prevent\nothers from being more successful, and find in the gratification of envy\nsome recompense for disappointed vanity.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Philosophers--\n\n_Montesinos_.--True and false; the philosophers and the philosophists;\nsome of the former so full, that it would require, as the rabbis say of a\ncertain pedigree in the Book of Chronicles, four hundred camel loads of\ncommentaries to expound the difficulties in their text; others so empty,\nthat nothing can approximate so nearly to the notion of an infinitesimal\nquantity as their meaning.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--With this multiplication of books, which in its\nproportionate increase marvellously exceeds that of your growing\npopulation, are you a wiser, a more intellectual, or more imaginative\npeople than when, as in my days, the man of learning, while he sat at his\ndesk, had his whole library within arm's-length?\n\n_Montesinos_.--If we are not wiser, it must be because the means of\nknowledge, which are now both abundant and accessible, are either\nneglected or misused.\n\nThe sciences are not here to be considered: in these our progress has\nbeen so great, that seeing the moral and religious improvement of the\nnation has in no degree kept pace with it, you have reasonably questioned\nwhether we have not advanced in certain branches, farther and faster than\nis conducive to, or perhaps consistent with, the general good.  But there\ncan be no question that great advancement has been made in many\ndepartments of literature conducive to innocent recreation (which would\nbe alone no trifling good, even were it not, as it is, itself conducive\nto health both of body and of mind), to sound knowledge, and to moral and\npolitical improvement.  There are now few portions of the habitable earth\nwhich have not been explored, and with a zeal and perseverance which had\nslept from the first age of maritime discovery till it was revived under\nGeorge III. in consequence of this revival, and the awakened spirit of\ncuriosity and enterprise, every year adds to our ample store of books\nrelating to the manners of other nations, and the condition of men in\nstates and stages of society different to our own.  And of such books we\ncannot have too many; the idlest reader may find amusement in them of a\nmore satisfactory kind than he can gather from the novel of the day or\nthe criticism of the day; and there are few among them so entirely\nworthless that the most studious man may not derive from them some\ninformation for which he ought to be thankful.  Some memorable instances\nwe have had in this generation of the absurdities and errors, sometimes\naffecting seriously the public service and the national character, which\nhave arisen from the want of such knowledge as by means of such books is\nnow generally diffused.  Skates and warming-pans will not again be sent\nout as ventures to Brazil.  The Board of Admiralty will never again\nattempt to ruin an enemy's port by sinking a stone-ship, to the great\namusement of that enemy, in a tide harbour.  Nor will a cabinet minister\nthink it sufficient excuse for himself and his colleagues, to confess\nthat they were no better informed than other people, and had everything\nto learn concerning the interior of a country into which they had sent an\narmy.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--This is but a prospective benefit; and of a humble\nkind, if it extend no further than to save you from any future exposure\nof an ignorance which might deserve to be called disgraceful.  We\nprofited more by our knowledge of other countries in the age when\n\n   \"Hops and turkeys, carp and beer,\n   Came into England all in one year.\"\n\n_Montesinos_.--And yet in that age you profited slowly by the commodities\nwhich the eastern and western parts of the world afforded.  Gold, pearls,\nand spices were your first imports.  For the honour of science and of\nhumanity, medicinal plants were soon sought for.  But two centuries\nelapsed before tea and potatoes--the most valuable products of the East\nand West--which have contributed far more to the general good than all\ntheir spices and gems and precious metals--came into common use; nor have\nthey yet been generally adopted on the Continent, while tobacco found its\nway to Europe a hundred years earlier; and its filthy abuse, though here\nhappily less than in former times, prevails everywhere.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--_Pro pudor_!  There is a snuff-box on the\nmantelpiece--and thou revilest tobacco!\n\n_Montesinos_.--Distinguish, I pray you, gentle ghost!  I condemn the\nabuse of tobacco as filthy, implying in those words that it has its\nallowable and proper use.  To smoke, is, in certain circumstances, a\nwholesome practice; it may be regarded with a moral complacency as the\npoor man's luxury, and with liking by any one who follows a lighted pipe\nin the open air.  But whatever may be pleaded for its soothing and\nintellectualising effects, the odour within doors of a defunct pipe is\nsuch an abomination, that I join in anathematising it with James, the\nbest-natured of kings, and Joshua Sylvester, the most voluble of poets.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Thou hast written verses praise of snuff!\n\n_Montesinos_.--And if thy nose, sir Spirit, were anything more than the\nghost of an olfactor, I would offer it a propitiatory pinch, that you\nmight the more feelingly understand the merit of the said verses, and\nadmire them accordingly.  But I am no more to be deemed a snuff-taker\nbecause I carry a snuff-box when travelling, and keep one at hand for\noccasional use, than I am to be reckoned a casuist or a pupil of the\nJesuits because the \"Moral Philosophy\" of Escobar and the \"Spiritual\nExercises\" of St. Ignatius Loyola are on my shelves.  Thank Heaven, I\nbear about with me no habits which I cannot lay aside as easily as my\nclothes.\n\nThe age is past in which travellers could add much to the improvement,\nthe comfort, or the embellishment of this country by imparting anything\nwhich they have newly observed in foreign parts.  We have happily more to\ncommunicate now than to receive.  Yet when I tell you that since the\ncommencement of the present century there have been every year, upon an\naverage, more than a hundred and fifty plants which were previously\nunknown here introduced into the nurseries and market-gardens about\nLondon, you will acknowledge that in this branch at least, a constant\ndesire is shown of enriching ourselves with the produce of other hands.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Philosophers of old travelled to observe the manners\nof men and study their institutions.  I know not whether they found more\npleasure in the study, or derived more advantages from it, than the\nadventurers reap who, in these latter times, have crossed the seas and\nexposed themselves to dangers of every kind, for the purpose of extending\nthe catalogue of plants.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Of all travels, those of the mere botanist are the least\ninstructive--\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--To any but botanists--but for them alone they are\nwritten.  Do not depreciate any pursuit which leads men to contemplate\nthe works of their Creator!  The Linnean traveller who, when you look\nover the pages of his journal, seems to you a mere botanist, has in his\npursuit, as you have in yours, an object that occupies his time, and\nfills his mind, and satisfies his heart.  It is as innocent as yours, and\nas disinterested--perhaps more so, because it is not so ambitious.  Nor\nis the pleasure which he partakes in investigating the structure of a\nplant less pure, or less worthy, than what you derive from perusing the\nnoblest productions of human genius.  You look at me as if you thought\nthis reprehension were undeserved!\n\n_Montesinos_.--The eye, then, Sir Thomas, is proditorious, and I will not\ngainsay its honest testimony: yet would I rather endeavour to profit by\nthe reprehension than seek to show that it was uncalled for.  If I know\nmyself I am never prone to undervalue either the advantages or\nacquirements which I do not possess.  That knowledge is said to be of all\nothers the most difficult; whether it be the most useful the Greeks\nthemselves differ, for if one of their wise men left the words [Greek\ntext] as his maxim to posterity, a poet, who perhaps may have been not\nless deserving of the title, has controverted it, and told us that for\nthe uses of the world it is more advantageous for us to understand the\ncharacter of others than to know ourselves.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Here lies the truth; he who best understands himself\nis least likely to be deceived in others; you judge of others by\nyourselves, and therefore measure them by an erroneous standard whenever\nyour autometry is false.  This is one reason why the empty critic is\nusually contumelious and flippant, the competent one as generally\nequitable and humane.\n\n_Montesinos_.--This justice I would render to the Linnean school, that it\nproduced our first devoted travellers; the race to which they succeeded\nemployed themselves chiefly in visiting museums and cataloguing pictures,\nand now and then copying inscriptions; even in their books notices are\nfound for which they who follow them may be thankful; and facts are\nsometimes, as if by accident, preserved, for useful application.  They\nwent abroad to accomplish or to amuse themselves--to improve their time,\nor to get rid of it; the botanists travelled for the sake of their\nfavourite science, and many of them, in the prime of life, fell victims\nto their ardour in the unwholesome climates to which they were led.\nLatterly we have seen this ardour united with the highest genius, the\nmost comprehensive knowledge, and the rarest qualities of perseverance,\nprudence, and enduring patience.  This generation will not leave behind\nit two names more entitled to the admiration of after ages than\nBurckhardt and Humboldt.  The former purchased this pre-eminence at the\ncost of his life; the latter lives, and long may he live to enjoy it.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--This very important branch of literature can scarcely\nbe said to have existed in my time; the press was then too much occupied\nin preserving such precious remains of antiquity as could be rescued from\ndestruction, and in matters which inflamed the minds of men, as indeed\nthey concerned their dearest and most momentous interests.  Moreover\nreviving literature took the natural course of imitation, and the\nancients had left nothing in this kind to be imitated.  Nothing therefore\nappeared in it, except the first inestimable relations of the discoveries\nin the East and West, and these belong rather to the department of\nhistory.  As travels we had only the chance notices which occurred in the\nLatin correspondence of learned men when their letters found their way to\nthe public.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Precious remains these are, but all too few.  The first\ntravellers whose journals or memoirs have been preserved were\nambassadors; then came the adventurer of whom you speak; and it is\nremarkable that two centuries afterwards we should find men of the same\nstamp among the buccaneers, who recorded in like manner with faithful\ndilligence whatever they had opportunity of observing in their wild and\nnefarious course of life.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--You may deduce from thence two conclusions,\napparently contrarient, yet both warranted by the fact which you have\nnoticed.  It may be presumed that men who, while engaged in such an\noccupation, could thus meritoriously employ their leisure, were rather\ncompelled by disastrous circumstances to such a course than engaged in it\nby inclination: that it was their misfortune rather than their fault if\nthey were not the benefactors and ornaments of society, instead of being\nits outlaws; and that under a wise and parental government such persons\nnever would be lost.  This is a charitable consideration, nor will I\nattempt to impugn it; the other may seem less so, but is of more\npractical importance.  For these examples are proof, if proof were\nneeded, that intellectual attainments and habits are no security for good\nconduct unless they are supported by religious principles; without\nreligion the highest endowments of intellect can only render the\npossessor more dangerous if he be ill disposed, if well disposed only\nmore unhappy.\n\nThe conquerors, as they called themselves, were followed by missionaries.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Our knowledge of the remoter parts of the world, during\nthe first part of the seventeenth century, must chiefly be obtained from\ntheir recitals.  And there is no difficulty in separating what may be\nbelieved from their fables, because their falsehoods being systematically\ndevised and circulated in pursuance of what they regarded as part of\ntheir professional duty, they told truth when they had no motive for\ndeceiving the reader.  Let any person compare the relations of our\nProtestant missionaries with those of the Jesuits, Dominicans,\nFranciscans, or any other Romish order, and the difference which he\ncannot fail to perceive between the plain truth of the one and the\naudacious and elaborate mendacity of the other may lead him to a just\ninference concerning the two churches.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Their fables were designed, by exciting admiration,\nto call forth money for the support of missions, which, notwithstanding\nsuch false pretences, were piously undertaken and heroically pursued.\nThey scrupled therefore as little at interlarding their chronicles and\nannual letters with such miracles, as poets at the use of machinery in\ntheir verses.  Think not that I am excusing them; but thus it was that\nthey justified their system of imposition to themselves, and this part of\nit must not be condemned as if it proceeded from an evil intention.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Yet, Sir Thomas, the best of those missionaries are not\nmore to be admired for their exemplary virtue, and pitied for the\nsuperstition which debased their faith, than others of their respective\norders are to be abominated for the deliberate wickedness with which, in\npursuance of the same system, they imposed the most blasphemous and\natrocious legends upon the credulous, and persecuted with fire and sword\nthose who opposed their deceitful villainy.  One reason wherefore so few\ntravels were written in the age of which we are speaking is, that no\nEnglishman, unless he were a Papist, could venture into Italy, or any\nother country where the Romish religion was established in full power,\nwithout the danger of being seized by the Inquisition!\n\nOther dangers, by sea and by land, from corsairs and banditti, including\ntoo the chances of war and of pestilence, were so great in that age, that\nit was not unusual for men when they set out upon their travels to put\nout a sum upon their own lives, which if they died upon the journey was\nto be the underwriter's gain, but to be repaid if they returned, within\nsuch increase as might cover their intervening expenses.  The chances\nagainst them seem to have been considered as nearly three to one.  But\ndanger, within a certain degree, is more likely to provoke adventurers\nthan to deter them.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--There thou hast uttered a comprehensive truth.  No\nlegislator has yet so graduated his scale of punishment as to ascertain\nthat degree which shall neither encourage hope nor excite the audacity of\ndesperate guilt.  It is certain that there are states of mind in which\nthe consciousness that he is about to play for life or death stimulates a\ngamester to the throw.  This will apply to most of those crimes which are\ncommitted for cupidity, and not attended with violence.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Well then may these hazards have acted as incentives where\nthere was the desire of honour, the spirit of generous enterprise, or\neven the love of notoriety.  By the first of these motives Pietro della\nValle (the most romantic in his adventures of all true travellers) was\nled abroad, the latter spring set in motion my comical countryman, Tom\nCoriat, who by the engraver's help has represented himself at one time in\nfull dress, making a leg to a courtesan at Venice, and at another\ndropping from his rags the all-too lively proofs of prolific poverty.\n\nPerhaps literature has never been so directly benefited by the spirit of\ntrade as it was in the seventeenth century, when European jewellers found\ntheir most liberal customers in the courts of the East.  Some of the best\ntravels which we possess, as well as the best materials for Persian and\nIndian history, have been left us by persons engaged in that trade.  From\nthat time travelling became less dangerous and more frequent in every\ngeneration, except during the late years when Englishmen were excluded\nfrom the Continent by the military tyrant whom (with God's blessing on a\nrightful cause) we have beaten from his imperial throne.  And now it is\nmore customary for females in the middle rank of life to visit Italy than\nit was for them in your days to move twenty miles from home.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Is this a salutary or an injurious fashion?\n\n_Montesinos_.--According to the subject, and to the old school maxim\n_quicquid recipitur_, _recipitur in modum recipientis_.  The wise come\nback wiser, the well-informed with richer stores of knowledge, the empty\nand the vain return as they went, and there are some who bring home\nforeign vanities and vices in addition to their own.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--And what has been imported by such travellers for the\ngood of their country?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Coffee in the seventeenth century, inoculation in that\nwhich followed; since which we have had now and then a new dance and a\nnew game at cards, curry and mullagatawny soup from the East Indies,\nturtle from the West, and that earthly nectar to which the East\ncontributes its arrack, and the West its limes and its rum.  In the\nlanguage of men it is called Punch; I know not what may be its name in\nthe Olympian speech.  But tell not the Englishmen of George the Second's\nage, lest they should be troubled for the degeneracy of their\ngrandchildren, that the punchbowl is now become a relic of antiquity, and\ntheir beloved beverage almost as obsolete as metheglin, hippocras, chary,\nor morat!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--It is well for thee that thou art not a young beagle\ninstead of a grey-headed bookman, or that rambling vein of thine would\noften bring thee under the lash of the whipper-in!  Off thou art and away\nin pursuit of the smallest game that rises before thee.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Good Ghost, there was once a wise Lord Chancellor, who in\na dialogue upon weighty matters thought it not unbecoming to amuse\nhimself with discursive merriment concerning St. Appollonia and St.\nUncumber.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Good Flesh and Blood, that was a nipping reply!  And\nhappy man is his dole who retains in grave years, and even to grey hairs,\nenough of green youth's redundant spirits for such excursiveness!  He who\nnever relaxes into sportiveness is a wearisome companion, but beware of\nhim who jests at everything!  Such men disparage by some ludicrous\nassociation all objects which are presented to their thoughts, and\nthereby render themselves incapable of any emotion which can either\nelevate or soften them, they bring upon their moral being an influence\nmore withering than the blast of the desert.  A countenance, if it be\nwrinkled either with smiles or with frowns, is to be shunned; the furrows\nwhich the latter leave show that the soil is sour, those of the former\nare symptomatic of a hollow heart.\n\nNone of your travellers have reached Utopia, and brought from thence a\nfuller account of its institutions?\n\n_Montesinos_.--There was one, methinks, who must have had it in view when\nhe walked over the world to discover the source of moral motion.  He was\nafflicted with a tympany of mind produced by metaphysics, which was at\nthat time a common complaint, though attended in him with unusual\nsymptoms, but his heart was healthy and strong, and might in former ages\nhave enabled him to acquire a distinguished place among the saints of the\nThebais or the philosophers of Greece.\n\nBut although we have now no travellers employed in seeking undiscoverable\ncountries, and although Eldorado, the city of the Cesares, and the\nSabbatical River, are expunged even from the maps of credulity and\nimagination, Welshmen have gone in search of Madoc's descendants, and\nscarcely a year passes without adding to the melancholy list of those who\nhave perished in exploring the interior of Africa.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Whenever there shall exist a civilised and Christian\nnegro state Providence will open that country to civilisation and\nChristianity, meantime to risk strength and enterprise and science\nagainst climate is contending against the course of nature.  Have these\ntravellers yet obtained for you the secret of the Psylli?\n\n_Montesinos_.--We have learnt from savages the mode of preparing their\ndeadliest poisons.  The more useful knowledge by which they render the\nhuman body proof against the most venomous serpents has not been sought\nwith equal diligence; there are, however, scattered notices which may\nperhaps afford some clue to the discovery.  The writings of travellers\nare not more rich in materials for the poet and the historian than they\nare in useful notices, deposited there like seeds which lie deep in the\nearth till some chance brings them within reach of air, and then they\ngerminate.  These are fields in which something may always be found by\nthe gleaner, and therefore those general collections in which the works\nare curtailed would be to be reprobated, even if epitomisers did not seem\nto possess a certain instinct of generic doltishness which leads them\ncuriously to omit whatever ought especially to be preserved.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--If ever there come a time, Montesinos, when\nbeneficence shall be as intelligent, and wisdom as active, as the spirit\nof trade, you will then draw from foreign countries other things beside\nthose which now pay duties at the custom-house, or are cultivated in\nnurseries for the conservatories of the wealthy.  Not that I regard with\ndissatisfaction these latter importations of luxury, however far they may\nbe brought, or at whatever cost; for of all mere pleasures those of a\ngarden are the most salutary, and approach nearest to a moral enjoyment.\nBut you will then (should that time come) seek and find in the laws,\nusages and experience of other nations palliatives for some of those\nevils and diseases which have hitherto been inseparable from society and\nhuman nature, and remedies, perhaps, for others.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Happy the travellers who shall be found instrumental to\nsuch good!  One advantage belongs to authors of this description; because\nthey contribute to the instruction of the learned, their reputation\nsuffers no diminution by the course of time: age rather enhances their\nvalue.  In this respect they resemble historians, to whom, indeed, their\nlabours are in a great degree subsidiary.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--They have an advantage over them, my friend, in this,\nthat rarely can they leave evil works behind them, which either from a\nmischievous persuasion, or a malignant purpose, may heap condemnation\nupon their own souls as long as such works survive them.  Even if they\nshould manifest pernicious opinions and a wicked will, the venom is in a\ngreat degree sheathed by the vehicle in which it is administered.  And\nthis is something; for let me tell thee, thou consumer of goose quills,\nthat of all the Devil's laboratories there is none in which more poison\nis concocted for mankind than in the inkstand!\n\n_Montesinos_.--\"My withers are unwrung!\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Be thankful, therefore, in life, as thou wilt in\ndeath.\n\nA principle of compensation may be observed in literary pursuits as in\nother things.  Reputations that never flame continue to glimmer for\ncenturies after those which blaze highest have gone out.  And what is of\nmore moment, the humblest occupations are morally the safest.\nRhadamanthus never puts on his black cap to pronounce sentence upon a\ndictionary-maker or the compiler of a county history.\n\n_Montesinos_.  I am to understand, then, that in the archangel's balance\na little book may sink the scale toward the pit; while all the tomes of\nThomas Hearne and good old John Nichols will be weighed among their good\nworks!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Sport as thou wilt in allusions to allegory and\nfable; but bear always in thy most serious mind this truth, that men hold\nunder an awful responsibility the talents with which they are entrusted.\nKings have not so serious an account to render as they who exercise an\nintellectual influence over the minds of men!\n\n_Montesinos_.--If evil works, so long as they continue to produce evil,\nheap up condemnation upon the authors, it is well for some of the\nwickedest writers that their works do not survive them.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Such men, my friend, even by the most perishable of\ntheir wicked works, lay up sufficient condemnation for themselves.  The\nmaxim that _malitia supplet aetatem_ is rightfully admitted in human\nlaws: should there not then, by parity of justice, be cases where, when\nthe secrets of the heart are seen, the intention shall be regarded rather\nthan the act?\n\nThe greatest portion of your literature, at any given time, is ephemeral;\nindeed, it has ever been so since the discovery of printing; and this\nportion it is which is most influential, consequently that by which most\ngood or mischief is done.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Ephemeral it truly may be called; it is now looked for by\nthe public as regularly as their food; and, like food, it affects the\nrecipient surely and permanently, even when its effect is slow, according\nas it is wholesome or noxious.  But how great is the difference between\nthe current literature of this and of any former time!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--From that complacent tone it may be presumed that you\nsee in it proof both of moral and intellectual improvement.  Montesinos,\nI must disturb that comfortable opinion, and call upon you to examine how\nmuch of this refinement which passes for improvement is superficial.  True\nit is that controversy is carried on with more decency than it was by\nMartin Lutherand a certain Lord Chancellor, to whom you just now alluded;\nbut if more courtesy is to be found in polemical writers, who are less\nsincere than either the one or the other, there is as much acerbity of\nfeeling and as much bitterness of heart.  You have a class of miscreants\nwhich had no existence in those days--the panders of the press, who live\nby administering to the vilest passions of the people, and encouraging\ntheir most dangerous errors, practising upon their ignorance, and\ninculcating whatever is most pernicious in principle and most dangerous\nto society.  This is their golden age; for though such men would in any\nage have taken to some villainy or other, never could they have found a\ncourse at once so gainful and so safe.  Long impunity has taught them to\ndespise the laws which they defy, and the institutions which they are\nlabouring to subvert; any further responsibility enters not into their\ncreed, if that may be called a creed, in which all the articles are\nnegative.  I? we turn from politics to what should be humaner literature,\nand look at the self-constituted censors of whatever has passed the\npress, there also we shall find that they who are the most incompetent\nassume the most authority, and that the public favour such pretensions;\nfor in quackery of every kind, whether medical, political, critical, or\nhypocritical, _quo quis impudentior eo doctior habetur_.\n\n_Montesinos_.--The pleasure which men take in acting maliciously is\nproperly called by Barrow a _rascally_ delight.  But this is no new form\nof malice.  \"_Avant nous_,\" says the sagacious but iron-hearted\nMontluc--\"_avant nous ces envies ont regne_, _et regneront encore apres\nnous_, _si Dieu ne nous voulait tous refondre_.\"  Its worst effect is\nthat which Ben Jonson remarked: \"The gentle reader,\" says he, \"rests\nhappy to hear the worthiest works misrepresented, the clearest actions\nobscured, the innocentest life traduced; and in such a licence of lying,\na field so fruitful of slanders, how can there be matter wanting to his\nlaughter?  Hence comes the epidemical infection: for how can they escape\nthe contagion of the writings whom the virulency of the calumnies hath\nnot staved off from reading?\"\n\nThere is another mischief, arising out of ephemeral literature, which was\nnoticed by the same great author.  \"Wheresoever manners and fashions are\ncorrupted,\" says he, \"language is.  It imitates the public riot.  The\nexcess of feasts and apparel are the notes of a sick state; and the\nwantonness of language of a sick mind.\"  This was the observation of a\nman well versed in the history of the ancients and in their literature.\nThe evil prevailed in his time to a considerable degree; but it was not\npermanent, because it proceeded rather from the affectation of a few\nindividuals than from any general cause: the great poets were free from\nit; and our prose writers then, and till the end of that century, were\npreserved, by their sound studies and logical habits of mind, from any of\nthose faults into which men fall who write loosely because they think\nloosely.  The pedantry of one class and the colloquial vulgarity of\nanother had their day; the faults of each were strongly contrasted, and\nbetter writers kept the mean between them.  More lasting effect was\nproduced by translators, who in later times have corrupted our idiom as\nmuch as, in early ones, they enriched our vocabulary; and to this injury\nthe Scotch have greatly contributed; for composing in a language which is\nnot their mother tongue, they necessarily acquired an artificial and\nformal style, which, not so much through the merit of a few as owing to\nthe perseverance of others, who for half a century seated themselves on\nthe bench of criticism, has almost superseded the vernacular English of\nAddison and Swift.  Our journals, indeed, have been the great corrupters\nof our style, and continue to be so, and not for this reason only.  Men\nwho write in newspapers, and magazines, and reviews, write for present\neffect; in most cases this is as much their natural and proper aim as it\nwould be in public speaking; but when it is so they consider, like public\nspeakers, not so much what is accurate or just, either in matter or\nmanner, as what will be acceptable to those whom they address.  Writing\nalso under the excitement of emulation and rivalry, they seek, by all the\nartifices and efforts of an ambitious style, to dazzle their readers; and\nthey are wise in their generation, experience having shown that common\nminds are taken by glittering faults, both in prose and verse, as larks\nare with looking-glasses.\n\nIn this school it is that most writers are now trained; and after such\ntraining anything like an easy and natural movement is as little to be\nlooked for in their compositions as in the step of a dancing master.  To\nthe vices of style which are thus generated there must be added the\ninaccuracies inevitably arising from haste, when a certain quantity of\nmatter is to be supplied for a daily or weekly publication which allows\nof no delay--the slovenliness that confidence, as well as fatigue and\ninattention, will produce--and the barbarisms, which are the effect of\nignorance, or that smattering of knowledge which serves only to render\nignorance presumptuous.  These are the causes of corruption in our\ncurrent style; and when these are considered there would be ground for\napprehending that the best writings of the last century might become as\nobsolete as yours in the like process of time, if we had not in our\nLiturgy and our Bible a standard from which it will not be possible\nwholly to depart.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Will the Liturgy and the Bible keep the language at\nthat standard in the colonies, where little or no use is made of the one,\nand not much, it may be feared, of the other?\n\n_Montesinos_.--A sort of hybrid speech, a _Lingua Anglica_, more debased,\nperhaps, than the _Lingua Franca_ of the Levant, or the Portuguese of\nMalabar, is likely enough to grow up among the South Sea Islands; like\nthe mixture of Spanish with some of the native languages in South\nAmerica, or the mingle-mangle which the negroes have made with French and\nEnglish, and probably with other European tongues in the colonies of\ntheir respective states.  The spirit of mercantile adventure may produce\nin this part of the new world a process analogous to what took place\nthroughout Europe on the breaking up of the Western Empire; and in the\nnext millennium these derivatives may become so many cultivated tongues,\nhaving each its literature.  These will be like varieties in a flower-\ngarden, which the florist raises from seed; but in the colonies, as in\nour orchards, the graft takes with it, and will preserve, the true\ncharacteristics of the stock.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--But the same causes of deterioration will be at work\nthere also.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Not nearly in the same degree, nor to an equal extent.  Now\nand then a word with the American impress comes over to us which has not\nbeen struck in the mint of analogy.  But the Americans are more likely to\nbe infected by the corruption of our written language than we are to have\nit debased by any importations of this kind from them.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--There is a more important consideration belonging to\nthis subject.  The cause which you have noticed as the principal one of\nthis corruption must have a farther and more mischievous effect.  For it\nis not in the vices of an ambitious style that these ephemeral writers,\nwho live upon the breath of popular applause, will rest.  Great and\nlasting reputations, both in ancient and modern times, have been raised\nnotwithstanding that defect, when the ambition from which it proceeded\nwas of a worthy kind, and was sustained by great powers and adequate\nacquirements.  But this ambition, which looks beyond the morrow, has no\nplace in the writers of a day.  Present effect is their end and aim; and\ntoo many of them, especially the ablest, who have wanted only moral worth\nto make them capable of better things, are persons who can \"desire no\nother mercy from after ages than silence and oblivion.\"  Even with the\nbetter part of the public that author will always obtain the most\nfavourable reception, who keeps most upon a level with them in\nintellectuals, and puts them to the least trouble of thinking.  He who\naddresses himself with the whole endeavours of a powerful mind to the\nunderstanding faculty may find fit readers; but they will be few.  He who\nlabours for posterity in the fields of research, must look to posterity\nfor his reward.  Nay, even they whose business is with the feelings and\nthe fancy, catch most fish when they angle in shallow waters.  Is it not\nso, Piscator?\n\n_Montesinos_.--In such honest anglers, Sir Thomas, I should look for as\nmany virtues, as good old happy Izaak Walton found in his brethren of the\nrod and line.  Nor will you, I think, disparage them; for you were of the\nRhymers' Company, and at a time when things appear to us in their true\ncolours and proportion (if ever while we are yet in the body), you\nremembered your verses with more satisfaction than your controversial\nwritings, even though you had no misgivings concerning the part which you\nhad chosen.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--My verses, friend, had none of the _athanasia_ in\ntheir composition.  Though they have not yet perished, they cannot be\nsaid to have a living existence; even you, I suspect, have sought for\nthem rather because of our personal acquaintance than for any other\nmotive.  Had I been only a poet, those poems, such as they were, would\nhave preserved my name; but being remembered for other grounds, better\nand worse, the name which I have left has been one cause why they have\npassed into oblivion, sooner than their perishable nature would have\ncarried them thither.  If in the latter part of my mortal existence I had\nmisgivings concerning any of my writings, they were of the single one,\nwhich is still a living work, and which will continue so to be.  I feared\nthat speculative opinions, which had been intended for the possible but\nremote benefit of mankind, might, by unhappy circumstances, be rendered\ninstrumental to great and immediate evil; an apprehension, however, which\nwas altogether free from self-reproach.\n\nBut my verses will continue to exist in their mummy state, long after the\nworms shall have consumed many of those poetical reputations which are at\nthis time in the cherry-cheeked bloom of health and youth.  Old poets\nwill always retain their value for antiquaries and philologists, modern\nones are far too numerous ever to acquire an accidental usefulness of\nthis kind, even if the language were to undergo greater changes than any\ncircumstances are likely to produce.  There will now be more poets in\nevery generation than in that which preceded it; they will increase\nfaster than your population; and as their number increases, so must the\nproportion of those who will be remembered necessarily diminish.  Tell\nthe Fitz-Muses this!  It is a consideration, Sir Poet, which may serve as\na refrigerant for their ardour.  Those of the tribe who may flourish\nhereafter (as the flourishing phrase is) in any particular age, will be\nlittle more remembered in the next than the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs who\nwere their contemporaries.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Father in verse, if you had not put off flesh and blood so\nlong, you would not imagine that this consideration will diminish their\nnumber.  I am sure it would not have affected me forty years ago, had I\nseen this truth then as clearly as I perceive and feel it now.  Though it\nwere manifest to all men that not one poet in an age, in a century, a\nmillennium, could establish his claim to be for ever known, every\naspirant would persuade himself that he is the happy person for whom the\ninheritance of fame is reserved.  And when the dream of immortality is\ndispersed, motives enough remain for reasonable ambition.\n\nIt is related of some good man (I forget who), that upon his death-bed he\nrecommended his son to employ himself in cultivating a garden, and in\ncomposing verses, thinking these to be at once the happiest and the most\nharmless of all pursuits.  Poetry may be, and too often has been,\nwickedly perverted to evil purposes; what indeed is there that may not,\nwhen religion itself is not safe from such abuses! but the good which it\ndoes inestimably exceeds the evil.  It is no trifling good to provide\nmeans of innocent and intellectual enjoyment for so many thousands in a\nstate like ours; an enjoyment, heightened, as in every instance it is\nwithin some little circle, by personal considerations, raising it to a\ndegree which may deserve to be called happiness.  It is no trifling good\nto win the ear of children with verses which foster in them the seeds of\nhumanity and tenderness and piety, awaken their fancy, and exercise\npleasurably and wholesomely their imaginative and meditative powers.  It\nis no trifling benefit to provide a ready mirror for the young, in which\nthey may see their own best feelings reflected, and wherein \"whatsoever\nthings are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are\npure, whatsoever things are lovely,\" are presented to them in the most\nattractive form.  It is no trifling benefit to send abroad strains which\nmay assist in preparing the heart for its trials, and in supporting it\nunder them.  But there is a greater good than this, a farther benefit.\nAlthough it is in verse that the most consummate skill in composition is\nto be looked for, and all the artifice of language displayed, yet it is\nin verse only that we throw off the yoke of the world, and are as it were\nprivileged to utter our deepest and holiest feelings.  Poetry in this\nrespect may be called the salt of the earth; we express in it, and\nreceive in it, sentiments for which, were it not for this permitted\nmedium, the usages of the world would neither allow utterance nor\nacceptance.  And who can tell in our heart-chilling and heart-hardening\nsociety, how much more selfish, how much more debased, how much worse we\nshould have been, in all moral and intellectual respects, had it not been\nfor the unnoticed and unsuspected influence of this preservative?  Even\nmuch of that poetry, which is in its composition worthless, or absolutely\nbad, contributes to this good.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Such poetry, then, according to your view, is to be\nregarded with indulgence.\n\n_Montesinos_.--Thank Heaven, Sir Thomas, I am no farther critical than\nevery author must necessarily be who makes a careful study of his own\nart.  To understand the principles of criticism is one thing; to be what\nis called critical, is another; the first is like being versed in\njurisprudence, the other like being litigious.  Even those poets who\ncontribute to the mere amusement of their readers, while that amusement\nis harmless, are to be regarded with complacency, if not respect.  They\nare the butterflies of literature, who during the short season of their\nsummer, enliven the garden and the field.  It were pity to touch them\neven with a tender hand, lest we should brush the down from their wings.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--These are they of whom I spake as angling in shallow\nwaters.  You will not regard with the same complacency those who trouble\nthe stream; still less those who poison it.\n\n_Montesinos_.--\n\n   \"_Vesanum tetigisse timent_, _fugiuntque poetam_\n   _Qui sapiunt_; _agitant pueri_, _incautique sequuntur_.\"\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--This brings us again to the point at which you\nbolted.  The desire of producing present effect, the craving for\nimmediate reputation, have led to another vice, analogous to and\nconnected with that of the vicious style, which the same causes are\nproducing, but of worse consequences.  The corruption extends from the\nmanner to the matter; and they who brew for the press, like some of those\nwho brew for the publicans, care not, if the potion has but its desired\nstrength, how deleterious may be the ingredients which they use.  Horrors\nat which the innocent heart quails, and the healthy stomachs heaves in\nloathing, are among the least hurtful of their stimulants.\n\n_Montesinos_.--This too, Sir Thomas, is no new evil.  An appetite for\nhorrors is one of the diseased cravings of the human mind; and in old\ntimes the tragedies which most abounded in them, were for that reason the\nmost popular.  The dramatists of our best age, great Ben and greater\nShakespeare excepted, were guilty of a farther sin, with which the\nwriters whom you censure are also to be reproached; they excited their\nauditors by the representation of monstrous crimes--crimes out of the\ncourse of nature.  Such fables might lawfully be brought upon the Grecian\nstage, because the belief of the people divested them of their odious and\ndangerous character; there they were well known stories, regarded with a\nreligious persuasion of their truth; and the personages, being\nrepresented as under the overruling influence of dreadful destiny, were\nregarded therefore with solemn commiseration, not as voluntary and guilty\nagents.  There is nothing of this to palliate or excuse the production of\nsuch stories in later times; the choice, and, in a still greater degree,\nthe invention of any such, implies in the author, not merely a want of\njudgment, but a defect in moral feeling.  Here, however, the dramatists\nof that age stopped.  They desired to excite in their audience the\npleasure of horror, and this was an abuse of the poet's art: but they\nnever aimed at disturbing their moral perceptions, at presenting\nwickedness in an attractive form, exciting sympathy with guilt, and\nadmiration for villainy, thereby confounding the distinctions between\nright and wrong.  This has been done in our days; and it has accorded so\nwell with the tendency of other things, that the moral drift of a book is\nno longer regarded, and the severest censure which can be passed upon it\nis to say that it is in bad taste; such is the phrase--and the phrase is\nnot confined to books alone.  Anything may be written, said, or done, in\nbad feeling and with a wicked intent; and the public are so tolerant of\nthese, that he who should express a displeasure on that score would be\ncensured for bad taste himself!\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--And yet you talked of the improvement of the age, and\nof the current literature as exceeding in worth that of any former time\n\n_Montesinos_.--The portion of it which shall reach to future times will\njustify me; for we have living minds who have done their duty to their\nown age and to posterity.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Has the age in return done its duty to them?\n\n_Montesinos_.--They complain not of the age, but they complain of an\nanomalous injustice in the laws.  They complain that authors are deprived\nof a perpetual property in the produce of their own labours, when all\nother persons enjoy it as an indefeasible and acknowledged right.  And\nthey ask upon what principle, with what equity, or under what pretence of\npublic good they are subjected to this injurious enactment?  Is it\nbecause their labour is so light, the endowments which are required for\nit so common, the attainments so cheaply and easily acquired, and the\npresent remuneration in all cases so adequate, so ample, and so certain?\n\nThe act whereby authors are deprived of that property in their own works\nwhich, upon every principle of reason, natural justice, and common law,\nthey ought to enjoy, is so curiously injurious in its operation, that it\nbears with most hardship upon the best works.  For books of great\nimmediate popularity have their run and come to a dead stop: the hardship\nis upon those which win their way slowly and difficultly, but keep the\nfield at last.  And it will not appear surprising that this should\ngenerally have been the case with books of the highest merit, if we\nconsider what obstacles to the success of a work may be opposed by the\ncircumstances and obscurity of the author, when he presents himself as a\ncandidate for fame, by the humour or the fashion of the times; the taste\nof the public, more likely to be erroneous than right at any time; and\nthe incompetence, or personal malevolence of some unprincipled critic,\nwho may take upon himself to guide the public opinion, and who if he\nfeels in his own heart that the fame of the man whom he hates is\ninvulnerable, lays in wait for that reason the more vigilantly to wound\nhim in his fortunes.  In such cases, when the copyright as by the\nexisting law departs from the author's family at his death, or at the end\nof twenty-eight years from the first publication of every work, (if he\ndies before the expiration of that term,) his representatives are\ndeprived of their property just as it would begin to prove a valuable\ninheritance.\n\nThe last descendants of Milton died in poverty.  The descendants of\nShakespeare are living in poverty, and in the lowest condition of life.\nIs this just to these individuals?  Is it grateful to the memory of those\nwho are the pride and boast of their country?  Is it honourable, or\nbecoming to us as a nation, holding--the better part of us assuredly, and\nthe majority affecting to hold--the names of Shakespeare and Milton in\nveneration?\n\nTo have placed the descendants of Shakespeare and Milton in\nrespectability and comfort--in that sphere of life where, with a full\nprovision for our natural wants and social enjoyments, free scope is\ngiven to the growth of our intellectual and immortal part, simple justice\nwas all that was required, only that they should have possessed the\nperpetual copyright of their ancestors' works, only that they should not\nhave been deprived of their proper inheritance.\n\nThe decision which time pronounces upon the reputation of authors, and\nupon the permanent rank which they are to hold in the estimation of\nposterity, is unerring and final.  Restore to them that perpetuity in the\nproperty of their works, of which the law has deprived them, and the\nreward of literary labour will ultimately be in just proportion to its\ndeserts.\n\nHowever slight may be the hope of obtaining any speedy redress, there is\nsome satisfaction in earnestly protesting against this injustice.  And\nbelieving as I do, that if society continues to improve, no injustice\nwill long be permitted to continue after it has been fairly exposed, and\nis clearly apprehended, I cannot but believe that a time must come when\nthe rights of literature will be acknowledged and its wrongs redressed;\nand that those authors hereafter who shall deserve well of posterity,\nwill have no cause to reproach themselves for having sacrificed the\ninterests of their children when they disregarded the pursuit of fortune\nfor themselves.\n\n\n\n\nCOLLOQUY XV.--THE CONCLUSION.\n\n\n_Montesinos_.--Here Sir Thomas is the opinion which I have attempted to\nmaintain concerning the progress and tendency of society, placed in a\nproper position, and inexpugnably entrenched here according to the rules\nof art, by the ablest of all moral engineers.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Who may this political Achilles be whom you have\ncalled in to your assistance?\n\n_Montesinos_.--Whom Fortune rather has sent to my aid, for my reading has\nnever been in such authors.  I have endeavoured always to drink from the\nspring-head, but never ventured out to fish in deep waters.  Thor,\nhimself, when he had hooked the Great Serpent, was unable to draw him up\nfrom the abyss.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The waters in which you have now been angling have\nbeen shallow enough, if the pamphlet in your hand is, as it appears to\nbe, a magazine.\n\n_Montesinos_.--\"_Ego sum is_,\" said Scaliger, \"_qui ab omnibus discere\nvolo_; _neque tam malum librum esse puto_, _ex quo non aliquem fructum\ncolligere possum_.\"  I think myself repaid, in a monkish legend, for\nexamining a mass of inane fiction, if I discover a single passage which\nelucidates the real history or manners of its age.  In old poets of the\nthird and fourth order we are contented with a little ore, and a great\ndeal of dross.  And so in publications of this kind, prejudicial as they\nare to taste and public feeling, and the public before deeply injurious\nto the real interests of literature, something may sometimes be found to\ncompensate for the trash and tinsel and insolent flippancy, which are now\nbecome the staple commodities of such journals.  This number contains\nKant's idea of a Universal History on a Cosmo-Political plan; and that\nKant is as profound a philosopher as his disciples have proclaimed him to\nbe, this little treatise would fully convince me, if I had not already\nbelieved it, in reliance upon one of the very few men who are capable of\nforming a judgment upon such a writer.\n\nThe sum of his argument is this: that as deaths, births, and marriages,\nand the oscillations of the weather, irregular as they seem to be in\nthemselves, are nevertheless reduceable upon the great scale to certain\nrules; so there may be discovered in the course of human history a steady\nand continuous, though slow development of certain great predispositions\nin human nature, and that although men neither act under the law of\ninstinct, like brute animals, nor under the law of a preconcerted plan,\nlike rational cosmopolites, the great current of human actions flows in a\nregular stream of tendency toward this development; individuals and\nnations, while pursuing their own peculiar and often contradictory\npurposes, following the guidance of a great natural purpose, and thus\npromoting a process which, even if they perceived it, they would little\nregard.  What that process is he states in the following series of\npropositions:--\n\n1st.  All tendencies of any creature, to which it is predisposed by\nnature, are destined in the end to develop themselves perfectly and\nagreeably to their final purpose.\n\n2nd.  In man, as the sole rational creature upon earth, those tendencies\nwhich have the use of his reason for their object are destined to obtain\ntheir perfect development in the species only, and not in the individual.\n\n3rd.  It is the will of nature that man should owe to himself alone\neverything which transcends the mere mechanic constitution of his animal\nexistence, and that he should be susceptible of no other happiness or\nperfection than what he has created for himself, instinct apart, through\nhis own reason.\n\n4th.  The means which nature employs to bring about the development of\nall the tendencies she has laid in man, is the antagonism of those\ntendencies in the social state, no farther, however, than to that point\nat which this antagonism becomes the cause of social arrangements founded\nin law.\n\n5th.  The highest problem for the human species, to the solution of which\nit is irresistibly urged by natural impulses, is the establishment of a\nuniversal civil society, founded on the empire of political justice.\n\n6th.  This problem is, at the same time, the most difficult of all, and\nthe one which is latest solved by man.\n\n7th.  The problem of the establishment of a perfect constitution of\nsociety depends upon the problem of a system of international relations,\nadjusted to law, and apart from this latter problem cannot be solved.\n\n8th.  The history of the human race, as a whole, may be regarded as the\nunravelling of a hidden plan of nature for accomplishing a perfect state\nof civil constitution for society in its internal relations (and as the\ncondition of that, by the last proposition, in its external relations\nalso), as the sole state of society in which the tendencies of human\nnature can be all and fully developed.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--This is indeed a master of the sentences, upon whose\ntext it may be profitable to dwell.  Let us look to his propositions.\nFrom the first this conclusion must follow, that as nature has given men\nall his faculties for use, any system of society in which the moral and\nintellectual powers of any portion of the people are left undeveloped for\nwant of cultivation, or receive a perverse direction, is plainly opposed\nto the system of nature, in other words, to the will of God.  Is there\nany government upon earth that will bear this test?\n\n_Montesinos_.--I should rather ask of you, will there ever be one?\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Not till there be a system of government conducted in\nstrict conformity to the precepts of the Gospel.\n\n_Montesinos_.\n\n   \"Offer these truths to Power, will she obey?\n   It prunes her pomp, perchance ploughs up the root.\"\n\n   LORD BROOKE.\n\nYet, in conformity to those principles alone, it is that subjects can\nfind their perfect welfare, and States their full security.  Christianity\nmay be long in obtaining the victory over the powers of this world, but\nwhen that consummation shall have taken place the converse of his second\nproposition will hold good, for the species having obtained its perfect\ndevelopment, the condition of society must then be such that individuals\nwill obtain it also as a necessary consequence.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Here you and your philosopher part company.  For he\nasserts that man is left to deduce from his own unassisted reason\neverything which relates not to his mere material nature.\n\n_Montesinos_.--There, indeed, I must diverge from him, and what in his\nlanguage is called the hidden plan of nature, in mine will be the\nrevealed will of God.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--The will is revealed; but the plan is hidden.  Let\nman dutifully obey that will, and the perfection of society and of human\nnature will be the result of such obedience; but upon obedience they\ndepend.  Blessings and curses are set before you--for nations as for\nindividuals--yea, for the human race.\n\nFlatter not yourself with delusive expectations!  The end may be\naccording to your hope--whether it will be so (which God grant!) is as\ninscrutable for angels as for men.  But to descry that great struggles\nare yet to come is within reach of human foresight--that great\ntribulations must needs accompany them--and that these may be--you know\nnot how near at hand!\n\nThroughout what is called the Christian world there will be a contest\nbetween Impiety and Religion; the former everywhere is gathering\nstrength, and wherever it breaks loose the foundations of human society\nwill be shaken.  Do not suppose that you are safe from this danger\nbecause you are blest with a pure creed, a reformed ritual, and a\ntolerant Church!  Even here the standard of impiety has been set up; and\nthe drummers who beat the march of intellect through your streets, lanes,\nand market-places, are enlisted under it.\n\nThe struggle between Popery and Protestanism is renewed.  And let no man\ndeceive himself by a vain reliance upon the increased knowledge, or\nimproved humanity of the times!  Wickedness is ever the same; and you\nnever were in so much danger from moral weakness.\n\nCo-existent with these struggles is that between the feudal system of\nsociety as variously modified throughout Europe, and the levelling\nprinciple of democracy.  That principle is actively and indefatigably at\nwork in these kingdoms, allying itself as occasion may serve with Popery\nor with Dissent, with atheism or with fanaticism, with profligacy or with\nhypocrisy, ready confederates, each having its own sinister views, but\nall acting to one straightforward end.  Your rulers meantime seem to be\ntrying that experiment with the British Constitution which Mithridates is\nsaid to have tried upon his own; they suffer poison to be administered in\ndaily doses, as if they expected that by such a course the public mind\nwould at length be rendered poison-proof!\n\nThe first of these struggles will affect all Christendom; the third may\nonce again shake the monarchies of Europe.  The second will be felt\nwidely; but nowhere with more violence than in Ireland, that unhappy\ncountry, wherein your government, after the most impolitic measures into\nwhich weakness was ever deluded, or pusillanimity intimidated, seems to\nhave abdicated its functions, contenting itself with the semblance of an\nauthority which it has wanted either wisdom or courage to exert.\n\nThere is a fourth danger, the growth of your manufacturing system; and\nthis is peculiarly your own.  You have a great and increasing population,\nexposed at all times by the fluctuations of trade to suffer the severest\nprivations in the midst of a rich and luxurious society, under little or\nno restraint from religious principle, and if not absolutely disaffected\nto the institutions of the country, certainly not attached to them: a\nclass of men aware of their numbers and of their strength; experienced in\nall the details of combination; improvident when they are in the receipt\nof good wages, yet feeling themselves injured when those wages, during\nsome failure of demand, are so lowered as no longer to afford the means\nof comfortable subsistence; and directing against the government and the\nlaws of the country their resentment and indignation for the evils which\nhave been brought upon them by competition and the spirit of rivalry in\ntrade.  They have among them intelligent heads and daring minds; and you\nhave already seen how perilously they may be wrought upon by seditious\njournalists and seditious orators in a time of distress.\n\nOn what do you rely for security against these dangers?  On public\nopinion?  You might as well calculate upon the constancy of wind and\nweather in this uncertain climate.  On the progress of knowledge? it is\nsuch knowledge as serves only to facilitate the course of delusion.  On\nthe laws? the law which should be like a sword in a strong hand, is weak\nas a bulrush if it be feebly administered in time of danger.  On the\npeople? they are divided.  On the Parliament? every faction will be fully\nand formidably represented there.  On the government? it suffers itself\nto be insulted and defied at home, and abroad it has shown itself\nincapable of maintaining the relations of peace and amity with its\nallies, so far has it been divested of power by the usurpation of the\npress.  It is at peace with Spain, and it is at peace with Turkey; and\nalthough no government was ever more desirous of acting with good faith,\nits subjects are openly assisting the Greeks with men and money against\nthe one, and the Spanish Americans against the other.  Athens, in the\nmost turbulent times of its democracy, was not more effectually\ndomineered over by its demagogues than you are by the press--a press\nwhich is not only without restraint, but without responsibility; and in\nthe management of which those men will always have most power who have\nleast probity, and have most completely divested themselves of all sense\nof honour and all regard for truth.\n\nThe root of all your evils is in the sinfulness of the nation.  The\nprinciple of duty is weakened among you; that of moral obligation is\nloosened; that of religious obedience is destroyed.  Look at the\nworldliness of all classes--the greediness of the rich, the misery of the\npoor, and the appalling depravity which is spreading among the lower\nclasses through town and country; a depravity which proceeds unchecked\nbecause of the total want of discipline, and for which there is no other\ncorrective than what may be supplied by fanaticism, which is itself an\nevil.\n\nIf there be nothing exaggerated in this representation, you must\nacknowledge that though the human race, considered upon the great scale,\nshould be proceeding toward the perfectibility for which it may be\ndesigned, the present aspects in these kingdoms are nevertheless rather\nfor evil than for good.  Sum you up now upon the hopeful side.\n\n_Montesinos_.--First, then.  I rest in a humble but firm reliance upon\nthat Providence which sometimes in its mercy educes from the errors of\nmen a happier issue than could ever have been attained by their\nwisdom;--that Providence which has delivered this nation from so many and\nsuch imminent dangers heretofore.\n\nLooking, then, to human causes, there is hope to be derived from the\nhumanising effects of Literature, which has now first begun to act upon\nall ranks.  Good principles are indeed used as the stalking-horse under\ncover of which pernicious designs may be advanced; but the better seeds\nare thus disseminated and fructify after the ill design has failed.\n\nThe cruelties of the old criminal law have been abrogated.  Debtors are\nno longer indiscriminately punished by indefinite imprisonment.  The\niniquity of the slave trade has been acknowledged, and put an end to, so\nfar as the power of this country extends; and although slavery is still\ntolerated, and must be so for awhile, measures have been taken for\nalleviating it while it continues, and preparing the way for its gradual\nand safe removal.  These are good works of the government.  And when I\nlook upon the conduct of that government in all its foreign relations,\nthough there may be some things to disapprove, and some sins of omission\nto regret, it has been, on the whole, so disinterested, so magnanimous,\nso just, that this reflection gives me a reasonable and a religious\nground of hope.  And the reliance is strengthened when I call to mind\nthat missionaries from Great Britain are at this hour employed in\nspreading the glad tidings of the Gospel far and wide among heathen\nnations.\n\nDescending from these wider views to the details of society, there, too,\nI perceive ground, if not for confidence, at least for hope.  There is a\ngeneral desire throughout the higher ranks for bettering the condition of\nthe poor, a subject to which the government also has directed its patient\nattention: minute inquiries have been made into their existing state, and\nthe increase of pauperism and of crimes.  In no other country have the\nwounds of the commonwealth been so carefully probed.  By means of\ncolonisation, of an improved parochial order and of a more efficient\npolice, the further increase of these evils may be prevented; while, by\neducation, by providing means of religious instruction for all by savings\nbanks, and perhaps by the establishment of Owenite communities among\nthemselves, the labouring classes will have their comforts enlarged, and\ntheir well-being secured, if they are not wanting to themselves in\nprudence and good conduct.  A beginning has been made--an impulse given:\nit may be hoped--almost, I will say, it may be expected--that in a few\ngenerations this whole class will be placed within the reach of moral and\nintellectual gratifications, whereby they may be rendered healthier,\nhappier, better in all respects, an improvement which will be not more\nbeneficial to them as individuals, than to the whole body of the\ncommonweal.\n\nThe diffusion of literature, though it has rendered the acquirement of\ngeneral knowledge impossible, and tends inevitably to diminish the number\nof sound scholars, while it increases the multitude of sciolists, carries\nwith it a beneficial influence to the lower classes.  Our booksellers\nalready perceive that it is their interest to provide cheap publications\nfor a wide public, instead of looking to the rich alone as their\ncustomers.  There is reason to expect that, in proportion as this is\ndone--in proportion as the common people are supplied with wholesome\nentertainment (and wholesome it is, if it be only harmless) they will be\nless liable to be acted upon by fanaticism and sedition.\n\nYou have not exaggerated the influence of the newspaper press, nor the\nprofligacy of some of those persons, by whom this unrestrained and\nirresponsible power is exercised.  Nevertheless it has done, and is\ndoing, great and essential good.  The greatest evils in society proceed\nfrom the abuse of power; and this, though abundantly manifested in the\nnewspapers themselves, they prevent in other quarters.  No man engaged in\npublic life could venture now upon such transactions as no one, in their\nstation half a century ago, would have been ashamed of.  There is an end\nof that scandalous jobbing which at that time existed in every department\nof the State, and in every branch of the public service; and a check is\nimposed upon any scandalous and unfit promotion, civil or ecclesiastical.\nBy whatever persons the government may be administered, they are now well\naware that they must do nothing which will not bear daylight and strict\ninvestigation.  The magistrates also are closely observed by this self-\nconstituted censorship; and the inferior officers cannot escape exposure\nfor any perversion of justice, or undue exercise of authority.  Public\nnuisances are abated by the same means, and public grievances which the\nLegislature might else overlook, are forced upon its attention.  Thus, in\nordinary times, the utility of this branch of the press is so great that\none of the worst evils to be apprehended from the abuse of its power at\nall times, and the wicked purposes to which it is directed in dangerous\nones, is the ultimate loss of a liberty, which is essential to the public\ngood, but which when it passes into licentiousness, and effects the\noverthrow of a State, perishes in the ruin it has brought on.\n\nIn the fine arts, as well as in literature, a levelling principle is\ngoing on, fatal, perhaps, to excellence, but favourable to mediocrity.\nSuch facilities are afforded to imitative talent, that whatever is\nimitable will be imitated.  Genius will often be suppressed by this, and\nwhen it exerts itself, will find it far more difficult to obtain notice\nthan in former times.  There is the evil here that ingenious persons are\nseduced into a profession which is already crowded with unfortunate\nadventurers; but, on the other hand, there is a great increase of\nindividual and domestic enjoyment.  Accomplishments which were almost\nexclusively professional in the last age, are now to be found in every\nfamily within a certain rank of life.  Wherever there is a disposition\nfor the art of design, it is cultivated, and in consequence of the\ngeneral proficiency in this most useful of the fine arts, travellers\nrepresent to our view the manners and scenery of the countries which they\nvisit, as well by the pencil as the pen.  By means of two fortunate\ndiscoveries in the art of engraving, these graphic representations are\nbrought within the reach of whole classes who were formerly precluded by\nthe expense of such things from these sources of gratification and\ninstruction.  Artists and engravers of great name are now, like authors\nand booksellers, induced to employ themselves for this lower and wider\nsphere of purchasers.  In all this I see the cause as well as the effect\nof a progressive refinement, which must be beneficial in many ways.  This\nvery diffusion of cheap books and cheap prints may, in its natural\nconsequences, operate rather to diminish than to increase the number of\nadventurers in literature and in the arts.  For though at first it will\ncreate employment for greater numbers, yet in another generation\nimitative talent will become so common, that neither parents nor\npossessors will mistake it for an indication of extraordinary genius, and\nmany will thus be saved from a ruinous delusion.  More pictures will be\npainted but fewer exhibited, more poetry written but less published, and\nin both arts talents which might else have been carried to an overstocked\nand unprofitable market, will be cultivated for their own sakes, and for\nthe gratification of private circles, becoming thus a source of sure\nenjoyment and indirectly of moral good.  Scientific pursuits will, in\nlike manner, be extended, and pursuits which partake of science, and\nafford pleasures within the reach of humble life.\n\nHere, then, is good in progress which will hold on its course, and the\ngrowth of which will only be suspended, not destroyed, during any of\nthose political convulsions which may too probably be apprehended--too\nprobably, I say, because when you call upon me to consider the sinfulness\nof this nation, my heart fails.  There can be no health, no soundness in\nthe state, till government shall regard the moral improvement of the\npeople as its first great duty.  The same remedy is required for the rich\nand for the poor.  Religion ought to be so blended with the whole course\nof instruction, that its doctrines and precepts should indeed \"drop as\nthe rain, and distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb,\nand as the showers upon the grass\"--the young plants would then imbibe\nit, and the heart and intellect assimilate it with their growth.  We are,\nin a great degree, what our institutions make us.  Gracious God were\nthose institutions adapted to Thy will and word--were we but broken in\nfrom childhood to Thy easy yoke--were we but carefully instructed to\nbelieve and obey--in that obedience and belief we should surely find our\ntemporal welfare and our eternal happiness!\n\nHere, indeed, I tremble at the prospect!  Could I look beyond the clouds\nand the darkness which close upon it, I should then think that there may\ncome a time when that scheme for a perpetual peace among the states of\nChristendom which Henri IV. formed, and which has been so ably digested\nby the Abbe St. Pierre, will no longer be regarded as the speculation of\na visionary.  The Holy Alliance, imperfect and unstable as it is, is in\nitself a recognition of the principle.  At this day it would be\npracticable, if one part of Europe were as well prepared for it as the\nother; but this cannot be, till good shall have triumphed over evil in\nthe struggles which are brooding, or shall have obtained such a\npredominance as to allay the conflict of opinions before it breaks into\nopen war.\n\nGod in his mercy grant that it be so!  If I looked to secondary causes\nalone, my fears would preponderate.  But I conclude as I began, in firm\nreliance upon Him who is the beginning and the end.  Our sins are\nmanifold, our danger is great, but His mercy is infinite.\n\n_Sir Thomas More_.--Rest there in full faith.  I leave you to your\ndreams; draw from them what comfort you can.  And now, my friend,\nfarewell!\n\nThe look which he fixed on me, as he disappeared, was compassionate and\nthoughtful; it impressed me with a sad feeling, as if I were not to see\nhim again till we should meet in the world of spirits.","title":"Sir Thomas More, or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":38743}