wear, and yet was she all that time no other thing than a sheep."







Chapter XXXVIII THE DEATH OF SIR THOMAS MORE

THERE is much that is quaint, much that is deeply wise, in More's
Utopia, still no one is likely to agree with all he says, or to
think that we could all be happy in a world such as he describes.
For one thing, to those of us who love color it would seem a dull
world indeed were we all forced to dress in coarse-spun, undyed
sheep's wool, and if jewels and gold with all their lovely lights
and gleamings were but the signs of degradation. Each one who
reads it may find something in the Utopia that he would rather
have otherwise. But each one, too, will find something to make
him think.

More was not the first to write about a happy land where every
one lived in peace and where only justice reigned. And if he got
some of his ideas of the island from the discoveries of the New
World, he got many more from the New Learning. For long before,
Plato, a Greek writer, had told of a land very like Utopia in his
book called the Republic. And the New Learning had made that
book known to the people of England.

We think of the Utopia as English Literature, yet we must