The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 7.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[201] 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.

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, a part of the frame-work 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 anything rashly, and seemed to doubt whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God, ’