Brushing therefore to one side, and indeed quite forgetting my
safe principles, I began to refashion and new-model the State.
Most existing institutions were soon abolished; and then, on
their ruins, I proceeded to build up the bright walls and
palaces of the City within me--the City I had read of in Plato.
With enthusiasm, and, I flatter myself, with eloquence, I
described it all--the Warriors, that race of golden youth bred
from the State-ordered embraces of the brave and fair; those
philosophic Guardians, who, being ever accustomed to the highest
and most extensive views, and thence contracting an habitual
greatness, possessed the truest fortitude, looking down indeed
with a kind of disregard on human life and death. And then,
declaring that the pattern of this City was laid up in Heaven, I
sat down, amid the cheers of the uncomprehending little
audience.

And afterward, in my rides about the country, when I saw on
walls and the doors of barns, among advertisements of sales, or
regulations about birds' eggs or the movements of swine, little
weather-beaten, old-looking notices on which it was stated that
I would "address the meeting," I remembered how the walls and
towers of the City I had built up in that little schoolroom had
shone with no heavenly light in the eyes of the Vicar's party.




_Stonehenge_