Now, as I told you in my fifth letter, to what extent I may be able to carry this plan into execution, I know not; but to some visible extent, with my own single hand, I can and will, if I live. Nor do I doubt but that I shall find help enough, as soon as the full action of the system is seen, and ever so little a space of rightly cultivated ground in perfect beauty, with inhabitants in peace of heart, of whom none
Doluit miserans inopem, aut invidit habenti.
Such a life we have lately been taught by vile persons to think impossible; so far from being impossible, it has been the actual life of all glorious human states in their origin.
Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini;
Hanc Remus et frater; sic fortis Etruria crevit;
Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.
But, had it never been endeavoured until now, we might yet learn to hope for its unimagined good by considering what it has been possible for us to reach of unimagined evil. Utopia and its benediction are probable and simple things, compared to the Kakotopia and its curse, which we had seen actually fulfilled. We have seen the city of Paris (what miracle can be thought of beyond this?) with her own forts raining ruin on her palaces, and her young children casting fire into the streets in which they had been born, but we have not faith enough in heaven to imagine the reverse of this, or the building of any city whose streets shall be full of innocent boys and girls playing in the midst thereof.
My friends, you have trusted, in your time, too many idle words. Read now these following, not idle ones; and remember them; and trust them, for they are true:—
“Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.
“And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children.