Ideal Commonwealths Part 8

They keep groves and woods for wild animals, and they often hunt.

The science of navigation is considered very dignified by them, and they possess rafts and triremes, which go over the waters without rowers or the force of the wind, but by a marvellous contrivance. And other vessels they have which are moved by the winds. They have a correct knowledge of the stars, and of the ebb and flow of the tide. They navigate for the sake of becoming acquainted with nations and different countries and things. They injure n.o.body, and they do not put up with injury, and they never go to battle unless when provoked. They a.s.sert that the whole earth will in time come to live in accordance with their customs, and consequently they always find out whether there be a nation whose manner of living is better and more approved than the rest.

They admire the Christian inst.i.tutions and look for a realisation of the apostolic life in vogue among themselves and in us. There are treaties between them and the Chinese, and many other nations, both insular and continental, such as Siam and Calicut, which they are only just able to explore. Furthermore, they have artificial fires, battles on sea and land, and many strategic secrets. Therefore they are nearly always victorious.

_G.M._ Now it would be very pleasant to learn with what foods and drinks they are nourished, and in what way and for how long they live.

_Capt._ Their food consists of flesh, b.u.t.ter, honey, cheese, garden herbs, and vegetables of various kinds. They were unwilling at first to slay animals, because it seemed cruel; but thinking afterwards that it was also cruel to destroy herbs which have a share of sensitive feeling, they saw that they would perish from hunger unless they did an unjustifiable action for the sake of justifiable ones, and so now they all eat meat. Nevertheless, they do not kill willingly useful animals, such as oxen and horses. They observe the difference between useful and harmful foods, and for this they employ the science of medicine. They always change their food. First they eat flesh, then fish, then afterwards they go back to flesh, and nature is never incommoded or weakened. The old people use the more digestible kind of food, and take three meals a day, eating only a little. But the general community eat twice, and the boys four times, that they might satisfy nature. The length of their lives is generally one hundred years, but often they reach two hundred.

As regards drinking, they are extremely moderate. Wine is never given to young people until they are ten years old, unless the state of their health demands it. After their tenth year they take it diluted with water, and so do the women, but the old men of fifty and upwards use little or no water. They eat the most healthy things, according to the time of the year.

They think nothing harmful which is brought forth by G.o.d, except when there has been abuse by taking too much. And therefore in the summer they feed on fruits, because they are moist and juicy and cool, and counteract the heat and dryness. In the winter they feed on dry articles, and in the autumn they eat grapes, since they are given by G.o.d to remove melancholy and sadness; and they also make use of scents to a great degree. In the morning, when they have all risen they comb their hair and wash their faces and hands with cold water. Then they chew thyme or rock parsley or fennel, or rub their hands with these plants.

The old men make incense, and with their faces to the east repeat the short prayer which Jesus Christ taught us. After this they go to wait upon the old men, some go to the dance, and others to the duties of the state. Later on they meet at the early lectures, then in the temple, then for bodily exercise. Then for a little while they sit down to rest, and at length they go to dinner.

Among them there is never gout in the hands or feet, no catarrh, nor sciatica, nor grievous colics, nor flatulency, nor hard breathing. For these diseases are caused by indigestion and flatulency, and by frugality and exercise they remove every humour and spasm. Wherefore it is unseemly in the extreme to be seen vomiting or spitting, since they say that this is a sign either of little exercise or of ign.o.ble sloth, or of drunkenness or gluttony. They suffer rather from swellings or from the dry spasm, which they relieve with plenty of good and juicy food.

They heal fevers with pleasant baths and with milk-food, and with a pleasant habitation in the country and by gradual exercise. Unclean diseases cannot be prevalent with them because they often clean their bodies by bathing in wine, and soothe them with aromatic oil, and by the sweat of exercise they diffuse the poisonous vapour which corrupts the blood and the marrow. They do suffer a little from consumption, because they cannot perspire at the breast, but they never have asthma, for the humid nature of which a heavy man is required. They cure hot fevers with cold potations of water, but slight ones with sweet smells, with cheese-bread or sleep, with music or dancing. Tertiary fevers are cured by bleeding, by rhubarb or by a similar drawing remedy, or by water soaked in the roots of plants, with purgative and sharp-tasting qualities. But it is rarely that they take purgative medicines. Fevers occurring every fourth day are cured easily by suddenly startling the unprepared patients, and by means of herbs producing effects opposite to the humours of this fever. All these secrets they told me in opposition to their own wishes. They take more diligent pains to cure the lasting fevers, which they fear more, and they strive to counteract these by the observation of stars and of plants, and by prayers to G.o.d. Fevers recurring every fifth, sixth, eighth or more days, you never find whenever heavy humours are wanting.

They use baths, and moreover they have warm ones according to the Roman custom, and they make use also of olive oil. They have found out, too, a great many secret cures for the preservation of cleanliness and health.

And in other ways they labour to cure the epilepsy, with which they are often troubled.

_G.M._ A sign this disease is of wonderful cleverness, for from it Hercules, Scotus, Socrates, Callimachus, and Mahomet have suffered.

_Capt._ They cure by means of prayers to heaven, by strengthening the head, by acids, by planned gymnastics, and with fat cheese-bread sprinkled with the flour of wheaten corn. They are very skilled in making dishes, and in them they put spice, honey, b.u.t.ter and many highly strengthening spices, and they temper their richness with acids, so that they never vomit. They do not drink ice-cold drinks nor artificial hot drinks, as the Chinese do; for they are not without aid against the humours of the body, on account of the help they get from the natural heat of the water; but they strengthen it with crushed garlic, with vinegar, with wild thyme, with mint, and with basil, in the summer or in time of special heaviness. They know also a secret for renovating life after about the seventieth year, and for ridding it of affliction, and this they do by a pleasing and indeed wonderful art.

_G.M._ Thus far you have said nothing concerning their sciences and magistrates.

_Capt._ Undoubtedly I have. But since you are so curious I will add more. Both when it is new moon and full moon they call a council after a sacrifice. To this all from twenty years upwards are admitted, and each one is asked separately to say what is wanting in the state, and which of the magistrates have discharged their duties rightly and which wrongly. Then after eight days all the magistrates a.s.semble, to wit, Hoh first, and with him Power, Wisdom and Love. Each one of the three last has three magistrates under him, making in all thirteen, and they consider the affairs of the arts pertaining to each one of them; Power, of war; Wisdom, of the sciences; Love, of food, clothing, education and breeding. The masters of all the bands, who are captains of tens, of fifties, of hundreds, also a.s.semble, the women first and then the men.

They argue about those things which are for the welfare of the state, and they choose the magistrates from among those who have already been named in the great council. In this manner they a.s.semble daily, Hoh and his three princes, and they correct, confirm and execute the matters pa.s.sing to them, as decisions in the elections; other necessary questions they provide of themselves. They do not use lots unless when they are altogether doubtful how to decide. The eight magistrates under Hoh, Power, Wisdom and Love are changed according to the wish of the people, but the first four are never changed, unless they, taking counsel with themselves, give up the dignity of one to another, whom among them they know to be wiser, more renowned, and more nearly perfect. And then they are obedient and honourable, since they yield willingly to the wiser man and are taught by him. This, however, rarely happens. The princ.i.p.als of the sciences, except Metaphysics, who is Hoh himself, and is as it were the architect of all science, having rule over all, are attached to Wisdom. Hoh is ashamed to be ignorant of any possible thing. Under Wisdom therefore is Grammar, Logic, Physics, Medicine, Astrology, Astronomy, Geometry, Cosmography, Music, Perspective, Arithmetic, Poetry, Rhetoric, Painting, Sculpture. Under the triumvir Love are Breeding, Agriculture, Education, Medicine, Clothing, Pasturage, Coining.

_G.M._ What about their judges?

_Capt._ This is the point I was just thinking of explaining. Everyone is judged by the first master of his trade, and thus all the head artificers are judges. They punish with exile, with flogging, with blame, with deprivation of the common table, with exclusion from the church and from the company of women. When there is a case in which great injury has been done, it is punished with death, and they repay an eye with an eye, a nose for a nose, a tooth for a tooth, and so on, according to the law of retaliation. If the offence is wilful the council decides. When there is strife and it takes place undesignedly, the sentence is mitigated; nevertheless, not by the judge but by the triumvirate, from whom even it may be referred to Hoh, not on account of justice but of mercy, for Hoh is able to pardon. They have no prisons, except one tower for shutting up rebellious enemies, and there is no written statement of a case, which we commonly call a lawsuit. But the accusation and witnesses are produced in the presence of the judge and Power; the accused person makes his defence, and he is immediately acquitted or condemned by the judge; and if he appeals to the triumvirate, on the following day he is acquitted of condemned. On the third day he is dismissed through the mercy and clemency of Hoh, or receives the inviolable rigour of his sentence. An accused person is reconciled to his accuser and to his witnesses, as it were, with the medicine of his complaint, that is, with embracing and kissing. No one is killed or stoned unless by the hands of the people, the accuser and the witnesses beginning first. For they have no executioners and lictors, lest the state should sink into ruin. The choice of death is given to the rest of the people, who enclose the lifeless remains in little bags and burn them by the application of fire, while exhorters are present for the purpose of advising concerning a good death.

Nevertheless, the whole nation laments and beseeches G.o.d that His anger may be appeased, being in grief that it should as it were have to cut off a rotten member of the state. Certain officers talk to and convince the accused man by means of arguments until he himself acquiesces in the sentence of death pa.s.sed upon him, or else he does not die. But if a crime has been committed against the liberty of the republic, or against G.o.d, or against the supreme magistrates, there is immediate censure without pity. These only are punished with death. He who is about to die is compelled to state in the presence of the people and with religious scrupulousness the reasons for which he does not deserve death, and also the sins of the others who ought to die instead of him, and further the mistakes of the magistrates. If, moreover, it should seem right to the person thus a.s.serting, he must say why the accused ones are deserving of less punishment than he. And if by his arguments he gains the victory he is sent into exile, and appeases the state by means of prayers and sacrifices and good life ensuing. They do not torture those named by the accused person, but they warn them. Sins of frailty and ignorance are punished only with blaming, and with compulsory continuation as learners under the law and discipline of those sciences or arts against which they have sinned. And all these things they have mutually among themselves, since they seem to be in very truth members of the same body, and one of another.

This further I would have you know, that if a transgressor, without waiting to be accused, goes of his own accord before a magistrate, accusing himself and seeking to make amends, that one is liberated from the punishment of a secret crime, and since he has not been accused of such a crime, his punishment is changed into another. They take special care that no one should invent slander, and if this should happen they meet the offence with the punishment of retaliation. Since they always walk about and work in crowds, five witnesses are required for the conviction of a transgressor. If the case is otherwise, after having threatened him, he is released after he has sworn an oath as the warrant of good conduct. Or if he is accused a second or third time, his increased punishment rests on the testimony of three or two witnesses.

They have but few laws, and these short and plain, and written upon a flat table, and hanging to the doors of the temple, that is between the columns. And on single columns can be seen the essences of things described in the very terse style of Metaphysics--viz., the essences of G.o.d, of the angels, of the world, of the stars, of man, of fate, of virtue, all done with great wisdom. The definitions of all the virtues are also delineated here, and here is the tribunal, where the judges of all the virtues have their seat. The definition of a certain virtue is written under that column where the judges for the aforesaid virtue sit, and when a judge gives judgment he sits and speaks thus: O son, thou hast sinned against this sacred definition of beneficence, or of magnanimity, or of another virtue, as the case may be. And after discussion the judge legally condemns him to the punishment for the crime of which he is accused--viz., for injury for despondency, for pride, for ingrat.i.tude, for sloth, &c. But the sentences are certain and true correctives, savouring more of clemency than of actual punishment.

_G.M._ Now you ought to tell me about their priests, their sacrifices, their religion, and their belief.

_Capt._ The chief priest is Hoh, and it is the duty of all the superior magistrates to pardon sins. Therefore the whole state by secret confession, which we also use, tell their sins to the magistrates, who at once purge their souls and teach those that are inimical to the people. Then the sacred magistrates themselves confess their own sinfulness to the three supreme chiefs, and together they confess the faults of one another, though no special one is named, and they confess especially the heavier faults and those harmful to the state. At length the triumvirs confess their sinfulness to Hoh himself, who forthwith recognizes the kinds of sins that are harmful to the state, and succours with timely remedies. Then he offers sacrifices and prayers to G.o.d. And before this he confesses the sins of the whole people, in the presence of G.o.d, and publicly in the temple, above the altar, as often as it had been necessary that the fault should be corrected. Nevertheless, no transgressor is spoken of by his name. In this manner he absolves the people by advising them that they should beware of sins of the aforesaid kind. Afterwards he offers sacrifice to G.o.d, that He should pardon the state and absolve it of its sins, and to teach and defend it. Once in every year the chief priests of each separate subordinate state confess their sins in the presence of Hoh. Thus he is not ignorant of the wrong-doings of the provinces, and forthwith he removes them with all human and heavenly remedies.

Sacrifice is conducted after the following manner: Hoh asks the people which one among them wishes to give himself as a sacrifice to G.o.d for the sake of his fellows. He is then placed upon the fourth table, with ceremonies and the offering up of prayers: the table is hung up in a wonderful manner by means of four ropes pa.s.sing through four cords attached to firm pulley-blocks in the small dome of the temple. This done they cry to the G.o.d of mercy, that He may accept the offering, not of a beast as among the heathen, but of a human being. Then Hoh orders the ropes to be drawn and the sacrifice is pulled up above to the centre of the small dome, and there it dedicates itself with the most fervent supplications. Food is given to it through a window by the priests, who live around the dome, but it is allowed a very little to eat, until it has atoned for the sins of the state. There with prayer and fasting he cries to the G.o.d of heaven that He might accept its willing offering.

And after twenty or thirty days, the anger of G.o.d being appeased, the sacrifice becomes a priest, or sometimes, though rarely, returns below by means of the outer way for the priests. Ever after this man is treated with great benevolence and much honour, for the reason that he offered himself unto death for the sake of his country. But G.o.d does not require death. The priests above twenty-four years of age offer praises from their places in the top of the temple. This they do in the middle of the night, at noon, in the morning and in the evening, to wit, four times a day they sing their chants in the presence of G.o.d. It is also their work to observe the stars and to note with the astrolabe their motions and influences upon human things, and to find out their powers.

Thus they know in what part of the earth any change has been or will be, and at what time it has taken place, and they send to find whether the matter be as they have it. They make a note of predictions, true and false, so that they may be able from experience to predict most correctly. The priests, moreover, determine the hours for breeding and the days for sowing, reaping, and gathering the vintage, and are as it were the amba.s.sadors and intercessors and connection between G.o.d and man. And it is from among them mostly that Hoh is elected. They write very learned treatises and search into the sciences. Below they never descend, unless for their dinner and supper, so that the essence of their heads do not descend to the stomachs and liver. Only very seldom, and that as a cure for the ills of solitude, do they have converse with women. On certain days Hoh goes up to them and deliberates with them concerning the matters which he has lately investigated for the benefit of the state and all the nations of the world.

In the temple beneath one priest always stands near the altar praying for the people, and at the end of every hour another succeeds him, just as we are accustomed in solemn prayer to change every fourth hour. And this method of supplication they call perpetual prayer. After a meal they return thanks to G.o.d. Then they sing the deeds of the Christian, Jewish, and Gentile heroes, and of those of all other nations, and this is very delightful to them. Forsooth, no one is envious of another. They sing a hymn to Love, one to Wisdom, and one each to all the other virtues, and this they do under the direction of the ruler of each virtue. Each one takes the woman he loves most, and they dance for exercise with propriety and stateliness under the peristyles. The women wear their long hair all twisted together and collected into one knot on the crown of the head, but in rolling it they leave one curl. The men, however, have one curl only and the rest of their hair around the head is shaven off. Further, they wear a slight covering, and above this a round hat a little larger than the size of their head. In the fields they use caps, but at home each one wears a biretto white, red, or another colour according to his trade or occupation. Moreover, the magistrates use grander and more imposing-looking coverings for the head.

They hold great festivities when the sun enters the four cardinal points of the heavens, that is, when he enters Cancer, Libra, Capricorn, and Aries. On these occasions they have very learned, splendid, and as it were comic performances. They celebrate also every full and every new moon with a festival, as also they do the anniversaries of the founding of the city, and of the days when they have won victories or done any other great achievement. The celebrations take place with the music of female voices, with the noise of trumpets and drums, and the firing of salutations. The poets sing the praises of the most renowned leaders and the victories. Nevertheless, if any of them should deceive even by disparaging a foreign hero, he is punished. No one can exercise the function of a poet who invents that which is not true, and a license like this they think to be a pest of our world, for the reason that it puts a premium upon virtue and often a.s.signs it to unworthy persons, either from fear or flattery, or ambition or avarice. For the praise of no one is a statue erected until after his death; but whilst he is alive, who has found out new arts and very useful secrets, or who has rendered great service to the state either at home or on the battle-field, his name is written in the book of heroes. They do not bury dead bodies, but burn them, so that a plague may not arise from them, and so that they may be converted into fire, a very n.o.ble and powerful thing, which has its coming from the sun and returns to it. And for the above reasons no chance is given for idolatry. The statues and pictures of the heroes, however, are there, and the splendid women set apart to become mothers often look at them. Prayers are made from the state to the four horizontal corners of the world. In the morning to the rising sun, then to the setting sun, then to the south, and lastly to the north; and in the contrary order in the evening, first to the setting sun, to the rising sun, to the north, and at length to the south. They repeat but one prayer, which asks for health of body and of mind, and happiness for themselves and all people, and they conclude it with the pet.i.tion "As it seems best to G.o.d." The public prayer for all is long, and it is poured forth to heaven. For this reason the altar is round and is divided crosswise by ways at right angles to one another.

By these ways Hoh enters after he has repeated the four prayers, and he prays looking up to heaven. And then a great mystery is seen by them.

The priestly vestments are of a beauty and meaning like to those of Aaron. They resemble Nature and they surpa.s.s Art.

They divide the seasons according to the revolution of the sun, and not of the stars, and they observe yearly by how much time the one precedes the other. They hold that the sun approaches nearer and nearer, and therefore by ever-lessening circles reaches the tropics and the equator every year a little sooner. They measure months by the course of the moon, years by that of the sun. They praise Ptolemy, admire Copernicus, but place Aristarchus and Philolaus before him. They take great pains in endeavouring to understand the construction of the world, and whether or not it will perish, and at what time. They believe that the true oracle of Jesus Christ is by the signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars, which signs do not thus appear to many of us foolish ones.

Therefore they wait for the renewing of the age, and perchance for its end. They say that it is very doubtful whether the world was made from nothing, or from the ruins of other worlds, or from chaos, but they certainly think that it was made, and did not exist from eternity.

Therefore they disbelieve in Aristotle, whom they consider a logician and not a philosopher. From a.n.a.logies, they can draw many arguments against the eternity of the world. The sun and the stars they, so to speak, regard as the living representatives and signs of G.o.d, as the temples and holy living altars, and they honour but do not wors.h.i.+p them.

Beyond all other things they venerate the sun, but they consider no created thing worthy the adoration of wors.h.i.+p. This they give to G.o.d alone, and thus they serve Him, that they may not come into the power of a tyrant and fall into misery by undergoing punishment by creatures of revenge. They contemplate and know G.o.d under the image of the Sun, and they call it the sign of G.o.d, His face and living image, by means of which light, heat, life, and the making of all things good and bad proceeds. Therefore they have built an altar like to the Sun in shape, and the priests praise G.o.d in the sun and in the stars, as it were His altars, and in the heavens, His temple as it were; and they pray to good angels, who are, so to speak, the intercessors living in the stars, their strong abodes. For G.o.d long since set signs of their beauty in heaven, and of His glory in the Sun. They say there is but one heaven, and that the planets move and rise of themselves when they approach the sun or are in conjunction with it.

They a.s.sert two principles of the physics of things below, namely, that the Sun is the father, and the Earth the mother; the air is an impure part of the heavens; all fire is derived from the sun. The sea is the sweat of earth, or the fluid of earth combusted, and fused within its bowels; but is the bond of union between air and earth, as the blood is of the spirit and flesh of animals. The world is a great animal, and we live within it as worms live within us. Therefore we do not belong to the system of stars, sun, and earth, but to G.o.d only; for in respect to them which seek only to amplify themselves, we are born and live by chance; but in respect to G.o.d, whose instruments we are, we are formed by prescience and design, and for a high end. Therefore we are bound to no Father but G.o.d, and receive all things from Him. They hold as beyond question the immortality of souls, and that these a.s.sociate with good angels after death, or with bad angels, according as they have likened themselves in this life to either. For all things seek their like. They differ little from us as to places of reward and punishment. They are in doubt whether there are other worlds beyond ours, and account it madness to say there is nothing. Nonent.i.ty is incompatible with the infinite ent.i.ty of G.o.d. They lay down two principles of metaphysics, ent.i.ty which is the highest G.o.d, and nothingness which is the defect of ent.i.ty. Evil and sin come of the propensity to nothingness; the sin having its cause not efficient, but in deficiency. Deficiency is, they say, of power, wisdom or will. Sin they place in the last of these three, because he who knows and has the power to do good is bound also to have the will, for will arises out of them. They wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in Trinity, saying G.o.d is the supreme Power, whence proceeds the highest Wisdom, which is the same with G.o.d, and from these comes Love, which is both Power and Wisdom; but they do not distinguish persons by name, as in our Christian law, which has not been revealed to them. This religion, when its abuses have been removed, will be the future mistress of the world, as great theologians teach and hope. Therefore Spain found the New World (though its first discoverer, Columbus, greatest of heroes, was a Genoese), that all nations should be gathered under one law. We know not what we do, but G.o.d knows, whose instruments we are.

They sought new regions for l.u.s.t of gold and riches, but G.o.d works to a higher end. The sun strives to burn up the earth, not to produce plants and men, but G.o.d guides the battle to great issues. His the praise, to Him the glory!

_G.M._ Oh, if you knew what our astrologers say of the coming age, and of our age, that has in it more history within a hundred years than all the world had in four thousand years before! Of the wonderful invention of printing and guns, and the use of the magnet, and how it all comes of Mercury, Mars, the Moon, and the Scorpion!

_Capt._ Ah, well! G.o.d gives all in His good time. They astrologize too much.

A FRAGMENT OF

JOSEPH HALL'S

MUNDUS ALTER ET IDEM

(_THE OTHER-AND SAME WORLD_)

TRANSLATED BY

DR. WILLIAM KING.

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.

Joseph Hall was born at Bristow Park, by Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in the year 1574, and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1597 he published three books, and in 1598 three more books, of Satires, "_Virgidemiarum_, Six Bookes." These satires, with others published about the same time by Marlowe and Marston, were burnt by order of Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had no relish for that kind of writing. Nine years later, in the year 1607, at the age of thirty-two, Hall published the satire now to be described. He was a witty and an earnest man, who rose to honour in the Church, became successively Bishop of Exeter and of Norwich; as Bishop of Norwich was in controversy with John Milton on Church Discipline; suffered patiently imprisonment and persecution from the Puritans; and closed an honourable life of more than fourscore years in 1656. He has been called by some the Christian Seneca.

His early work, the "Mundus Alter et Idem," represents an ideal world divided into regions answering to man's chief weaknesses or vices. He gave with it a map of its c.r.a.pulia, Latronia, &c., fully peopled, with a neighbouring land in which there are no signs of settlement, _Terra Sancta, ignota etiam adhuc_, the Holy Land, even yet unknown.

Joseph Hall's new world is also figured as an Austral Continent. They are good travellers, he says, who tell what they have seen in known lands, but he is a better who not only travels but is himself the maker of the lands he travels through. He chose his day, and went aboard the good s.h.i.+p Phantasy, quitted harbour, sailed away, reached in two years the Fortunate Isles, and, leaving the sh.o.r.es of Africa behind him, came in sight of the black headland of c.r.a.pulia.

Here Introduction ends and Travel begins with the part partly translated by Dr. King: c.r.a.pulia, named from c.r.a.pula, is the Land of Inebriate Excess, and its two provinces, Pamphagonia and Yvronia, mean by their names the provinces of Omnivorous Gluttony and Drunkenness. Dr. King has translated six chapters, and begun the seventh, which is upon the wars of the Pamphagonians, to which they march forth armed with spits and two-p.r.o.nged forks and heavy ribs of beef. In their free city, Ucalegon, built near the borders of Moronia, the citizens live happy as monks.

They are so well shut in by high rocks that they can laugh at enemies, and through a hollow in the rocks with softest pace creeps the river Oysivius (the Idle). There is only one way up, their rocks for the inhabitants, and that is not by zigzag steps, but by a rope and basket.

Birds wholly peculiar to the place supply food by being themselves eatable, and by the great mult.i.tude of their eggs, and by the loads of fish they bring into their nests to feed their young. The citizens make to themselves also beds of the soft feathers of these birds. This valley yields to the people of Ucalegon everything except what they don't care for. They are free, therefore, to sup, sleep, rise, dine, and lie down.

Husbandry, as among the old Egyptians, consists chiefly in feeding pigs, for the husbandmen wait on the rich. One, with a gentle touch, opens the richer man's eyes when he wakes; another fans him with a flapper while he eats; another puts bits into his mouth when it opens. There are two cities under Ucalegon, Livona and Roncara (Snort and Snore), which have like privileges, except that here the inhabitants are almost always asleep, and fatten wonderfully.

These are among the laws of c.r.a.pulia:--It is a crime to drink alone.

Whoever has defrauded Nature by fasting four hours after sleep shall be compelled to sup. When the mouth is full it is enough to answer questions by holding out a finger. What cook soever shall treat food so that it cannot be eaten, shall be tied to a stake beside which is hung meat half raw or half burnt, and shall remain so tied until somebody comes who will eat that meat.

No coin of metal is current in c.r.a.pulia, but they make payment in kind.