of many stately arches; it lies at that part of the town which is farthest from the sea, so that the ships, without any hindrance, lie all along the side of the town.
There is likewise another river that runs by it, which, tho it is not great, yet it runs pleasantly, for it rises out of the same hill on which the town stands, and so runs down through it and falls into the Anider. The inhabitants have fortified the fountain-head of this river, which springs a little without the towns; that so, if they should happen to be besieged, the enemy might not be able to stop or divert the course of the water, nor poison it; from thence it is carried in earthen pipes to the lower streets. And for those places of the town to which the water of that small river can not be conveyed, they have great cisterns for receiving the rain-water, which supplies the want of the other.
The town is compassed with a high and thick wall, in which there are many towers and forts; there is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set thick with thorns, cast round three sides of the town, and the river is instead of a ditch on the fourth side. The streets are very convenient for all carriage, and are well sheltered from the winds. Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad. There lie gardens behind all their houses; these are large, but inclosed with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden. Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. At every ten years' end they shift their houses by lots. They cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have both vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well ordered and so finely kept that I never saw gardens anywhere that were both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs. And this humor of ordering their gardens so well is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other. And there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the town seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens; for they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection.
Their records, that contain the history of their town and state, are preserved with an exact care, and run backward seventeen hundred and sixty years. From these it appears that their houses were at first low and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched with straw. But now their houses are three stories high; the fronts of them are faced either with stone, plastering, or brick, and between the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat; and on them they lay a sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet is so tempered that it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the weather more than lead. They have great quantities of glass among them, with which they glaze their windows; they use also in their windows a thin linen cloth, that is so oiled or gummed that it both keeps out the wind and gives free admission to the light.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] The "Utopia" was written originally in Latin. It derived its name from an imaginary island, the seat of an ideal state. Ralph Robinson made a translation into English in 1551. Another translation was made by Bishop Burnet in 1633.
JOHN KNOX
Born in 1505, died in 1572; early influenced by George Wishart, a Lutheran refugee who had found an asylum in Scotland; a royal chaplain in 1550; assisted in the revision of the Prayer-book; fled to the Continent after the accession of Mary Tudor and visited Calvin; preached for a time at Frankfort and afterward traveled and preached in Scotland; occupied himself with the organization of the Presbyterian Church, having frequent dramatic encounters with Mary, Queen of Scots, whose sympathies were Catholic.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS[22]
The queen, in a vehement fume, began to cry out that never prince was handled as she was. "I have," said she, "borne with you in all your rigorous manner of speaking, both against myself and against my uncles; yea, I have sought your favors by all possible means. I offered unto you presence and audience, whensoever it pleased you to admonish me, and yet I cannot be quit of you. I avow to God I shall be anes [once] revenged." And with these words scarcely could Marnock, her secret chamber-boy, get napkins to hold her eyes dry for the tears; and the owling, besides womanly weeping, stayed her speech.
The said John did patiently abide all the first fume, and at opportunity answered: "True it is, Madam, your Grace and I have been at diverse controversies, into the which I never perceived your Grace to be offended at me. But when it shall please God to deliver you from that bondage of darkness and error, in the which ye have been nourished, for the lack of true doctrine, your majesty will find the liberty of my tongue nothing offensive. Without the preaching-place, Madam, I think few have occasion to be offended at me, and there, Madam, I am not master of myself, but man [must] obey Him who commands me to speak plain, and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth."
"But what have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage?"
"If it please your majesty," said he, "patiently to hear me, I shall shew the truth in plain words. I grant your Grace offered me more than ever I required; but my answer was then, as it is now, that God hath not sent me to await upon the courts of princesses, nor upon the chambers of ladies; but I am sent to preach the evangel of Jesus Christ to such as please to hear it; and it hath two parts—repentance and faith. And now, Madam, in preaching repentance, of necessity it is, that the sins of men be so noted, that they may know wherein they offend; but so it is, that the most part of your nobility are so addicted to your affections, that neither God, His word, nor yet their commonwealth, are rightly regarded. And therefore, it becomes me so to speak that they may know their duty."
"What have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage? Or what are ye within this commonwealth?"
"A subject born within the same," said he, "Madam. And, albeit I neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me—how abject that ever I be in your eyes—a profitable member within the same. Yea, Madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it does to any of the nobility; for both my vocation and conscience craves plainness of me. And therefore, Madam, to yourself I say that which I speak in public place: whensoever that the nobility of this realm shall consent that ye be subject to an unfaithful husband, they do as much as in them lieth to renounce Christ, to banish His truth from them, to betray the freedom of this realm, and perchance shall in the end do small comfort to yourself."
At these words, owling was heard, and tears might have been seen in greater abundance than the matter required. John Erskine of Dun—a man of meek and gentle spirit—stood beside, and entreated what he could to mitigate her anger, and gave unto her many pleasing words of her beauty, of her excellence, and how that all the princes of Europe would be glad to seek her favors. But all that was to cast oil in the flaming fire. The said John stood still, without any alteration of countenance, for a long season, while that the queen gave place to her
