Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/614

 592 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL a 'storage place for manure' 'being handy for that on the edge of the water;' a conceit that would have moved the merriment, as the consummation would have rejoiced the heart, of the Sage of Chelsea. There is no religion in Utopia but the Religion of Humanity, which is impossible now when men in general are so poor a lot, but which becomes possible for the first time where all are good and amiable as well as goodly to look upon. For they are so in Utopia: the men all handsome and manly; the women all beautiful: the latter moreover are cheerful and healthy, and not at all of the dolorous Burne-Jones type proper to an unhappy era like ours. How the human form .by no means divine at present may become beautiful, the reader may learn in a special chapter, in other respects also very interesting (chapter ix. 'Concerning Love').. Besides being beautiful the people in Utopia live a good deal in the open air; and they don't read too many books: nor for the matter of that do they produce them in excess. Life is easy: every one relishes it: even labour has become a pleasure by its being made artistic. Every one is happy: the black pessimistic cloud of the nineteenth century has wholly dissipated itself. Every one is cheerful, and, as we would now think, almost aggressively cheerful; no one is 'sick, sore, or sorry.' One 'nan indeed in Utopia is sad for a certain reason and for a while, and one laltdator temporis acti is discovered in order merely to land: corn and wine, fruits abound and can be had by all point a moral. There is plenty in the and flesh abound: even choice wines on the greater occasions. Needless to say that all are dressed beautifully, men as well as women: the ladies in a way in which their beauty is rather ' veiled' than (as now) muffled.' Sometimes the Utopians dine in public halls with friends or guests: and on such occasions they amuse each other by music and by telling stories.' Such are the ways of life and the manners in Utopia. The picture is on the whole pretty and idyllic, and the last chapters of the book, where we are taken up the Thames in summer at the 'haymaking-season,' is very pleasant reading, though at times we confess that a dark suspicion has flashed across us that the life might prove a trifle insipid and monotonous: that without olitics to discuss, or religion to dispute about; with foreign war abolished; few books produced; and no new inventions made; with love-making reduced from the complex and highly-evolved art it now is to its few and simple first principles as described in the book .the 'uses of this world,' being so greatly simplified as they are in Utopia- .life would become somewhat stale and flat, notwithstanding widened artistic sensibilities. However, as Mr. Morris describes it as an 'Epoch of Rest,' after the fitful fever of the nineteenth century, it is possible our artistic Arcadians might find it satisfying without being dull. The difficulty would still remain, if we accept the doctrine of heredity, as to how such a race could be derived frown the present one within the space of two generations or less. As to the manner in which the political and social change came