fusing into the minds of others a due conception of how vast and all-engrossing it should be.

But this, as I have remarked already, may be a mere prejudice, and in the case of the author of the Utopia is nothing more. Its form, to the judicious reader, though it may not help the effect of the truths brought forward, will certainly not be suffered to diminish it; especially if he consider in what circumstances of times and manners the defect, if it be one, originated. With many it may operate as a recommendation, though the narrative and dramatic portion of the work be not, as in Gulliver, sufficient of itself to keep alive curiosity, and urge the fancy headlong forward from the first page to the last. And in that circumstance consists the organic defect of the work. Had there been a more extensive and exquisite machinery of characters, incidents, plot, scenery, costume, and so on; had there been more of historical developement, more painting of external nature, more to flatter the imagination, and call the feelings into active play, the ordinary public would have read the book for amusement, and sucked in accidentally its political wisdom by the way. Boys would have travelled delighted over the Utopian land, could they have there from time to time encountered spots rendered gloomy by battles or tragedies, or bright and sunny by reminiscences of love; could they have discovered, if not in the institutions, in the pomp at least of manners and arts, something to dazzle or overawe, to kindle brilliant images in the fancy, or to rouse and bear

the passions irresistibly away by the force and vehemence of eloquence.

At a later period of our literature, Sir Thomas More might probably have aimed at all this, and with no mean success. But in that age men were far less fastidious in the matter of books, than luxurious plenty has since rendered them. They thought it much if any addition at all were made to the treasures bequeathed to us by the Greeks and Romans, seeming, like Hudibras,

-"exceeding loath

To look a gift-horse in the mouth."

And this literary penury, while it taught them tolerance, gave them at the same time a strong healthy appetite for wholesome instruction, even without the finer condiments of style, with patience to go through and digest it thoroughly. Thus we may account for the extraordinary degree of popularity enjoyed, when it first appeared, by the Utopia, both in foreign countries and at home, as well as the comparative neglect into which it has since fallen. It was produced in one of those unlucky periods, when the art of writing flourished but imperfectly. Literature, like fruit, appears to ripen only at particular seasons; such as the age of Pericles, the age of Demosthenes, the age of Virgil and Horace, the age of Leo X., the age of Shakespeare, and the age of Pope. Few, rising up in the intervals, carry the art to perfection, or are anything more than the bright trails of sunset, or the harbingers

of dawn, valued for what they recal or foretell, not for their own intrinsic beauty.

Nevertheless, though Sir Thomas More be an imitator, his imitation, like that of Giulio Romano, has the fire of nature in it, and can by no means be regarded as the mere reflection of anything previously existing. He opens his work in a highly striking manner, introducing at once an historical character, since renowned for his tyranny and his vices, but endowed in these pages with the mental and moral qualities of a Marcus Aurelius. "Henry the Eighth, the unconquered King of England, a prince adorned with all the virtues that become a great monarch, having some differences of no small moment with Charles, the most serene Prince of Castile, sent me into Flanders as his ambassador, for treating and composing matters between them."

I know of no artifice of rhetoric by which he could have bespoken a more favourable hearing. The reader, though by a side-wind, is at once carried into the secret of the author's condition, of the estimation in which he was held by his prince, and of the great experience he was likely to have had in public affairs, before so puissant and wise a monarch would have entrusted to his management the settling of differences, considered by the chief statesmen of the age as of no small consequence. From the first moment he makes it manifest that the reader is not to be entertained with the reveries of one of those chamber-lecturers, who would unpertake to instruct Hannibal in the art or war, but

has before him the fruits of a man's meditations to whom the science of politics had been a professional study. And I will answer for it, no one ever went attentively through the Utopia, without acknowledging it to be full of those profound observations and shrewd insights into human nature, peculiar to those who have tested their philosophy by living freely among mankind.

Having thus artfully announced these facts, he proceeds with his account of the embassy, and the persons who, on both sides, were engaged in it. By one of those checks, which too often bring the affairs of nations to a standstill, negociations are suspended; and, during the interval of leisure thus created, Sir Thomas More pays a visit to Antwerp, where one of the principal citizens happens to be his intimate friend. Antwerp was then the centre of a vast commerce, and the greatest emporium in Europe. Thither merchandize of all kinds was borne as to the common mart of civilization, and in its busy streets strangers from every part of the It world might, at any hour of the day, be seen. was, in short, in those days, all that London, on a grander scale, is now.

Here, by the instrumentality of his good friend, Peter Giles, the author becomes known to a Portuguese gentleman, one of that restless class whom the glorious enterprises of De Gama and Columbus had unmoored from their peaceful habits, and sent wandering in romantic ambition through the "One day," says oceans of the further east. More, as I was returning home from mass at St.

Mary's, which is the chief church, and the most frequented of any in Antwerp, I saw him by accident talking with a stranger, that seemed past the flower of his age; his face was tanned, he had a long beard, and his cloak was hanging careless about him, so that by his looks and habit I concluded he was a seaman." But in this he was wrong. The Portuguese proved not to be a seaman, but a gentleman of classical accomplishments and habits of thinking, who, like Anaxagoras, had shared among his brothers the wealth he inherited, ran fortunes with Americus Vespucius, borne a share in three of his four voyages, and acquired a more copious knowledge of distant nations and countries, than any other man then alive.

The reader, I think, is thus in some measure prepared for a recital of wonderful things, no less so than the avμaría of Theopompos; and, as this extraordinary man comes forward more prominently, and gives vent cautiously and by halves to the opinions to which his mind has given birth, after long travail and many pangs, our curiosity is strongly piqued, and we grow exceedingly eager to be initiated in those mysteries through which he has arrived at conclusions so completely out of the common order. But he is slow to gratify us. And, perhaps, looking at the work as a rhetorician, this very slowness is a defect. For, while we are longing to be on the ocean with him, to learn all his travel's history, wherein, we doubt not, his hint will be to speak