d earth endued thee! Thy ever
fruitful womb not closed with ice nor dissolved by the raging star;
where Ceres and Bacchus are perpetual twins: thy woods are not the
harbor of devouring beasts, nor thy continual verdure the ambush of
serpents, but the food of innumerable herds and flocks presenting thee,
their shepherdess, with distended dugs or golden fleeces. The wings of
thy night involve thee not in the horror of darkness, but have still
some white feather; and thy day is (that for which we esteem life) the
longest." But this ecstasy of Pliny, as is observed by Bertius, seems
to allude as well to Marpesia and Panopea, now provinces of this
commonwealth, as to Oceana itself.

To speak of the people in each of these countries. This of Oceana, for
so soft a one, is the most martial in the whole world. "Let States that
aim at greatness," says Verulamius, "take heed how their nobility and
gentlemen multiply too fast, for that makes the common subject grow to
be a peasant and base swain driven out of heart, and in effect but a
gentleman's laborer; just as you may see in coppice woods, if you leave
the staddels too thick, you shall never have clean underwood, but shrubs
and bushes; so in countries, if the gentlemen be too many, the commons
will be base; and you will bring it to that at last, that not the
hundreth poll will be fit for a helmet, specially as to the infantry,
which is the nerve of an army, and so there will be great population and
little strength. This of which I speak has been nowhere better seen than
by comparing of Oceana and France, whereof Oceana, though far less in
territory and population, has been nevertheless an overmatch, in regard
the middle people of Oceana make good solders, which the peasants in
France do not." In which words Verulamius, as Machiavel has done before
him, harps much upon a string which he has not perfectly tuned, and that
is, the balance of dominion or property, as it follows more plainly, in
his praise "of the profound and admirable device of Panurgus, King of
Oceana, in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard; that is,
maintained with such a proportion of land to them as may breed a subject
to live in convenient plenty, and no servile condition, and to keep the
plough in the hands of the owners, and not mere hirelings. And thus,
indeed," says he, "you shall attain to Virgil's character which he gives
of ancient Italy." But the tillage, bringing up a good soldiery, brin