been with me in Utopia, and had presently seen their fashions and laws, as I did, which lived there five years, and more, and would never have come hence, but only to make that new land known here: then, doubtless, you would grant that you never saw people well ordered, but only there." "Surely" (quoth Master Peter) "it shall be hard for you to make me believe that there is better order in that new land than is here in these countries that we know. For good wits be as well here as there and I think our commonwealths be ancienter than theirs: wherein long use and experience hath found out many things commodious for man's life, besides that many things here among us have been found by chance, which no wit could ever have devised." "As touching the ancientness" (quoth he) "of commonwealths, then you might better judge, if you had read the histories and chronicles of that land, which if we may believe, cities were there, before men were here. Now what thing soever hitherto by wit hath been devised, or found by chance, that might be as well there as here. But I think verily, though it were so, that we did pass them in wit : : yet in study, in travail, and in laboursome endeavour they far pass us. For (as their chronicles testify) before our arrival there, they never heard anything of us, whom they call the ultraequinoctials: saving that once, about twelve hundred years ago, a certain ship was lost by the Isle of Utopia which was driven thither by tempest. Certain Romans and Egyptians were cast on land. Which after that never went thence. Mark now what profit they took of this one occasion through diligence and earnest travail. There was no craft nor science within the Empire of Rome whereof any profit could rise, but they either learned it of these strangers, or else of them taking occasion to search for it, found it out. So great profit was it to them that ever any went thither from hence. But if any like chance before this hath brought any man from thence hither, that is as quite out of remembrance, as this also perchance in time to come shall be forgotten, that ever I was there. And like as they quickly, almost at the first meeting, made their own, whatsoever is among us wealthily devised: so I suppose it would be long before we would receive anything that among them is better instituted than among us. And this I suppose is the chief cause why their commonwealths be wiselier governed, and do flourish in more wealth than ours, though we neither in wit nor riches be their inferiors." "Therefore, gentle Master Raphael" (quoth I), "I pray you and beseech you describe unto us the Island. And study not to be short: but declare largely in order their grounds, their rivers, their cities, their people, their manners, their ordinances, their laws, and, to be short, all things that you shall think us desirous to know. And you shall think us desirous to know whatsoever we know not yet." "There is nothing" (quoth he) " that I will do gladlier. For all these things I have fresh in mind. But the matter requireth leisure." "Let us go in, therefore (quoth I), "to dinner, afterward we will bestow the time at our pleasure." "Content" (quoth he) "be it." So we went in and dined. When dinner was done we came into the same place again, and sat us down upon the same bench, commanding our servants that no man should trouble us. Then I and Master Peter Giles desired Master Raphael to perform his promise. He, therefore, seeing us desirous and willing to hearken to him, when he had sat still and paused a little while, musing and bethinking himself, thus he began to speak. THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK |