Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/126

 were to use when they were established. The difficulty which he never really contemplated was the rather serious one, how the society was to be kept in order. His tenants are to adopt the laws of 'Florence in the fourteenth century'—with some modifications. Above all things, they are to renounce altogether the modern heresies about liberty. Implicit obedience to the 'Master' is to be a first principle. They are to make a curious profession of faith embodying this promise, and they are to keep their vows. They will prosper, he says, because they will all be strictly honest, and their word, therefore, implicitly accepted in all transactions. If the founder of a new society could be sure that all his followers would be perfectly good and absolutely obedient, he would, no doubt, have surmounted the great initial difficulty. He is more likely, it is to be feared, to collect a mixed crowd of fanatics and humbugs, ready to dispute his authority or sponge upon his benevolence. But that is the criticism of cold common-sense, which would be inappropriate. The Utopia served to set forth Ruskin's view of the existing social evils and contrast them with an ideal of a purer and sweeter life. He contrasts a sketch of peasant life from Marmontel with the