ness of dwellings;--these were
the questions which the Utopians considered most important, and these
were solved by the exercise of human reason. These were questions, too,
with which the English people found themselves confronted in the
beginning of the sixteenth century, and before that century had passed
away, the results even of a very imperfect solution regarding them were
apparent in every department and in every class of life.

The great mind, the noble character of Sir Thomas More stand out the
best production of his time. The strong religious bias of the man made
it inevitable that he should remain considerably under the influence of
the old theological teachings, but in the intelligent man of the world,
in the large-hearted philanthropist, in the honest patriot, appear the
new and beneficent tendencies which were at work. Like all men who have
been in advance of their time, More was looked upon as a dreamer. A
dreamer he might naturally seem, who, in the beginning of the sixteenth
century, looked for peace, for religious toleration, for justice to the
lower classes. But these dreams were destined to be realized long after
More's headless body had crumbled to dust, by that learning which he
himself so seduously cultivated, and by the decay, too, of some of
those ideas for which he died a martyr's death. The growth of the
universities, the establishment of grammar schools, the impetus given
to all useful occupations during the reign of Henry VIII, were
gradually aiding the advance of that new era in the history of England
which developed so brilliantly under Elizabeth. In her reign the old
warlike spirit had decayed, theology had lost its obstructive power,
and human reason began to bear its legitimate fruits--prosperity and
civilization.

[Footnote 26: Green's "Short History of the English People," p. 203.]

[Footnote 27: "Tom-a-Lincoln" has been reprinted in W.J. Thorn's
valuable collection of "Early English Prose Romances," where may also
be found a story similar in nature, called "Helyas, Knight of the
Swanne." I do not consider these productions worthy of more extended
notice here, as they possess no interest in themselves, and serve only
to illustrate the degeneracy of the fictions relating to the knighthood
during the 16th century. The compilation called "The Seven Champions of
Christendom", by Richard Johnson, the author of "Tom-a-Lincoln", said
to contain "all the lyes of Christendom in one lye," ob