they looked big, when they
compared their rich habits with the plain clothes of the Utopians, who
were come out in great numbers to see them make their entry: and, on the
other, to observe how much they were mistaken in the impression which
they hoped this pomp would have made on them. It appeared so ridiculous
a show to all that had never stirred out of their country, and had not
seen the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence
to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the
ambassadors, yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves, so full of
gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves, and forbore to treat
them with reverence. You might have seen the children, who were grown
big enough to despise their playthings, and who had thrown away their
jewels, call to their mothers, push them gently, and cry out, "See that
great fool that wears pearls and gems, as if he were yet a child." While
their mothers very innocently replied, "Hold your peace, this I believe
is one of the ambassador's fools." Others censured the fashion of their
chains, and observed that they were of no use; for they were too slight
to bind their slaves, who could easily break them; and besides hung so
loose about them, that they thought it easy to throw them away, and so
get from them. But after the ambassadors had stayed a day among them,
and saw so vast a quantity of gold in their houses, which was as much
despised by them as it was esteemed in other nations, and beheld more
gold and silver in the chains and fetters of one slave than all their
ornaments amounted to, their plumes fell, and they were ashamed of all
that glory for which they had formerly valued themselves, and
accordingly laid it aside; a resolution that they immediately took, when
on their engaging in some free discourse with the Utopians, they
discovered their sense of such things and their other customs. The
Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring
doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star, or to
the sun himself; or how any should value himself because his cloth is
made of a finer thread: for how fine soever that thread may be, it was
once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep
still for all its wearing it. They wonder much to hear that gold which
in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed,
that even men for whom it was made, and by wh