religion. All its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to literal studies and profitable reading, although piety was their first care. No wrangling, no angry word was heard in it, no one was idle; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerfulness."
More's chief work is his "Utopia," and it may be pronounced the first enunciation of a system of socialism since the apostolic age. It may surprise many, but More, in fact, was the forerunner of Proudhon and Fourrier. His "Utopia" describes an island in which a commonwealth is established completely on socialistic principles. No one is allowed to possess separate property; because such possession produces an unequal division of the necessaries of life, demoralising those who become inordinately rich, and, in a different direction, depraving and degrading those who are obliged to labour incessantly. What is remarkable, More in his imaginary commonwealth admits the fullest toleration of religious belief, though he fell so far in practice as to join in the persecutions of his time. His principles were too noble for his practice; yet with this one flaw he was one of the most admirable men who ever lived. His "Utopia" was written by him in Latin, but was translated into English in 1551, afterwards by Bishop Burnet, and in 1808 by Arthur Cayley. Besides this, he wrote a life of Richard III., and various other compositions in Latin and English, besides a number of letters which have been published in his collected works. As a specimen of the prose style and state of the language in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII., we may quote a short passage from a letter to his second wife, Alice Middleton, in 1528, on hearing that his house at Chelsea was burnt down:—
"Maistress Alyce, in my most harty wise I recommend me to you; and whereas I am enfourmed by my son Heron of the losse of our barnes and of our neighbours also, with all the corne that was therein, albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is grit pitie of so much good corne loste; yet sith it hath liked hym to sende us such a chaunce, we must and are bounden, not only to be content, but also to be glad of his visitacion. Ho sente us all that we have loste: and sith he hath by such a chaunce taken it away againe, his pleasure be fulfilled. Let us never grudge thereat, but take in good worth, and hartily thank him as well for adversitie as for prosperite; and peradventure we have more cause to thank him for our losse than for our winning; for his wisdome better seeth what is good for us than we do our selves. Therefore I pray you be of good chere, and take all the howshold with you to church, and there thanks God, both for what he hath given us, and for that he hath taken from us, and for that he hath left us, which if it please hym he can encrease when he will. And if it please hym to leave us yet lesse at his pleasure be it. I pray you to make some good insearche what my poore neighbours have loste, and bid them take no thought therefore; for and I shold not leave myself a spone, there shal no poore neighboure of mine bere no losse by any chaunce happened in my house. I pray you be with my children and your howshold mery in God."
Arms of Geneva.
Latimer was the son of a Leicestershire fanner, and rose to be Bishop of Worcester, and to the far higher rank of a martyr for his faith. He has been pronounced by writers of this age as a good but not a great man. To our mind he was a very great man. Not in worldly wisdom, for he was simple and unambitious as a child; but he was a genius, true, racy, original, and inspired. He was made, as his sermons show, for a preacher to the people rather than to princes, though to them he bore a bold and unblenching testimony. But to the people he was a prophet and an awakener. He had been amongst them; he knew their deepest feelings, their most secret thoughts, their language and their desires; and he addressed them from the pulpit with the loving and picturesque familiarity which be used at their firesides. There is occasionally much rudeness in his discourses, his images are often bizarre, his allusions grotesque; but there is a life
