the most abject
part of butchery.' He quotes the words of the Republic in which the
philosopher is described 'standing out of the way under a wall until the
driving storm of sleet and rain be overpast,' which admit of a singular
application to More's own fate; although, writing twenty years before
(about the year 1514), he can hardly be supposed to have foreseen this.
There is no touch of satire which strikes deeper than his quiet remark
that the greater part of the precepts of Christ are more at variance
with the lives of ordinary Christians than the discourse of Utopia ('And
yet the most part of them is more dissident from the manners of the
world now a days, than my communication was. But preachers, sly and
wily men, following your counsel (as I suppose) because they saw men
evil-willing to frame their manners to Christ's rule, they have wrested
and wried his doctrine, and, like a rule of lead, have applied it to
men's manners, that by some means at the least way, they might agree
together.')

The 'New Atlantis' is only a fragment, and far inferior in merit to the
'Utopia.' The work is full of ingenuity, but wanting in creative fancy,
and by no means impresses the reader with a sense of credibility. In
some places Lord Bacon is characteristically different from Sir Thomas
More, as, for example, in the external state which he attributes to the
governor of Solomon's House, whose dress he minutely describes, while to
Sir Thomas More such trappings appear simple ridiculous. Yet, after this
programme of dress, Bacon adds the beautiful trait, 'that he had a look
as though he pitied men.' Several things are borrowed by him from the
Timaeus; but he has injured the unity of style by adding thoughts and
passages which are taken from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The 'City of the Sun' written by Campanella (1568-1639), a Dominican
friar, several years after the 'New Atlantis' of Bacon, has many
resemblances to the Republic of Plato. The citizens have wives and
children in common; their marriages are of the same temporary sort, and
are arranged by the magistrates from time to time. They do not, however,
adopt his system of lots, but bring together the best natures, male and
female, 'according to philosophical rules.' The infants until two years
of age are brought up by their mothers in public temples; and since
individuals for the most part educate their children badly, at the
beginning of their third year they are committed to the