hat even a beast's life seems enviable." No such cry of pity
for the poor, of protest against the system of agrarian and manufacturing
tyranny which found its expression in the Statute-book had been heard
since the days of Piers Ploughman. But from Christendom More turns with a
smile to "Nowhere." In "Nowhere" the aim of legislation is to secure the
welfare, social, industrial, intellectual, religious, of the community at
large, and of the labour-class as the true basis of a well-ordered
commonwealth. The end of its labour-laws was simply the welfare of the
labourer. Goods were possessed indeed in common, but work was compulsory
with all. The period of toil was shortened to the nine hours demanded by
modern artizans, and the object of this curtailment was the intellectual
improvement of the worker. "In the institution of the weal public this end
is only and chiefly pretended and minded that what time may possibly be
spared from the necessary occupations and affairs of the commonwealth, all
that the citizens should withdraw from bodily service to the free liberty
of the mind and garnishing of the same. For herein they conceive the
felicity of this life to consist." A public system of education enabled
the Utopians to avail themselves of their leisure. While in England half
of the population could read no English, every child was well taught in
"Nowhere." The physical aspects of society were cared for as attentively
as its moral. The houses of Utopia "in the beginning were very low and
like homely cottages or poor shepherd huts made at all adventures of every
rude piece of timber that came first to hand, with mud walls and ridged
roofs thatched over with straw." The picture was really that of the common
English town of More's day, the home of squalor and pestilence. In Utopia
however they had at last come to realize the connexion between public
morality and the health which springs from light, air, comfort, and
cleanliness. "The streets were twenty feet broad; the houses backed by
spacious gardens, and curiously builded after a gorgeous and gallant sort,
with their stories one after another. The outsides of the walls be made
either of hard flint, or of plaster, or else of brick; and the inner sides
be well strengthened by timber work. The roofs be plain and flat, covered
over with plaster, so tempered that no fire can hurt or perish it, and
withstanding the violence of the weather better than lead. They keep the
wind out of