LITERARY

RECREATIONS AND MISCELLANIES.

UTOPIAN SCHEMES AND POLITICAL

THEORISTS.

THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of its people with suspicion and distrust. They admit, perhaps, the evils of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity. Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look with philosophic indifference upon the evil which

only afflicts their neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which an old poet has quaintly described: :

"The citizens like pounded pikes;

The lesser feed the great;

The rich for food seek stomachs,

And the poor for stomachs meat."

This class of our fellow-citizens have an especial dislike of theorists, reformers, uneasy spirits, speculators upon the possibilities of the world's future, constitution builders, and believers in progress. They are satisfied; the world at least goes well enough with them; they sit as comfortably in it as Lafontaine's rat in the cheese; and why should those who would turn it upside down come hither also? Why not let well enough alone? Why tinker creeds, constitutions, and laws, and disturb the good oldfashioned order of things in church and state? The idea of making the world better and happier is to them an absurdity. He who entertains it is a dreamer and a visionary, destitute of common sense and practical wisdom. His project, whatever it may be, is at once pronounced to be impracticable folly, or, as they are pleased to term it, Utopian.

The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to actualize their plans for the well being of society, have resorted to fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular mind. Plato's Timæus, the first of the series, was written after the death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis writer's ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his Cyropedia, has also depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction historical traditions. At a later period we have the New Atlantis of Lord Bacon and that dream of the City of the Sun with which Campanella solaced himself in his long imprisonment.

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The Utopia of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of a profound thinker-the suggestive speculations and theories of one who could

"Forerun his age and race, and let

His feet millenniums hence be set

In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet."

Much of what he wrote as fiction is now fact,

of the framework of European governments, and the

political truths of his imaginary state are now practically recognized in our own democratic system. As might be expected, in view of the times in which the author wrote, and the exceedingly limited amount of materials which he found ready to his hands for the construction of his social and political edifice, there is a want of proportion and symmetry in the structure. Many of his theories are no doubt impracticable and unsound. But, as a whole, the work is an admirable one striding in advance of the author's age, and prefiguring a government of religious toleration and political freedom. The following extract from it was doubtless regarded in his day as something worse than folly or the dream of a visionary enthusiast:

"He judged it wrong to lay down any thing rashly, and seemed to doubt whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the variety. He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike him as true."

Passing by the Telemachus of Fenelon, we come to the political romance of Harrington, written in the time of Cromwell. Oceana is the name by which the author represents England; and the republican plan of government which he describes with much minuteness is such as he would have recommended for adoption in case a free

commonwealth had been established. It deals somewhat severely with Cromwell's usurpation; yet the author did not hesitate to dedicate it to that remarkable man, who, after carefully reading it, gave it back to his daughter, Lady Claypole, with the remark, full of characteristic bluntness, that "the gentleman need not think to cheat him of his power and authority; for what he had won with the sword he would never suffer himself to be scribbled out of."

Notwithstanding the liberality and freedom of his speculations upon government and religion in his Utopia, it must be confessed that Sir Thomas More, in afterlife, fell into the very practices of intolerance and bigotry which he condemned. When in the possession of the great seal, under that scandal of kingship Henry VIII., he gave his countenance to the persecution of heretics. Bishop Burnet says of him, that he caused a gentleman of the Temple to be whipped and put to the rack in his presence, in order to compel him to discover those who favored heretical opinions. In his Utopia he assailed the profession of the law with merciless satire; yet the satirist himself finally sat upon the chancellor's woolsack; and, as has been well remarked by Horace Smith, "if, from this elevated seat, he ever cast his eyes back upon his past life, he

must have smiled at the fond conceit which could imagine a permanent Utopia, when he himself, certainly more