The Anatomy of Melancholy

grounds for military exercises, public walks, theatres, and spacious fields set aside for physical exercise, sports, and wholesome recreation; institutions of every kind for children, orphans, old people, the sick, the mad, and soldiers; plague hospitals, and so on. These shall not be built by begging, or by gouty benefactors who have spent their lives extorting money by fraud and plunder and oppressing whole provinces and communities, then give something to charitable uses, building an almshouse, school, or bridge to make amends at the end of their lives, or perhaps a little earlier.

This is simply to steal a goose and leave a feather behind, to rob a thousand people to relieve ten. These institutions shall be built and maintained, not by collections, charitable contributions, or gifts for a fixed number of people, as ours are—so many and no more, at a specified allowance—but for everyone in need, however many or few. They shall be funded from the public treasury and continually maintained from it: we are not born for ourselves alone, and so on.

I will have conduits supplying fresh, wholesome water, suitably placed in every town; public granaries, as at Dresden in Meissen, Stettin in Pomerania, Nuremberg, and elsewhere; and colleges of mathematicians, musicians, and actors, as in ancient times at Lebedus in Ionia, as well as alchemists, physicians, practitioners of the arts, and philosophers, so that every art and science may be brought to perfection sooner and learned more thoroughly;

and public historians, as among the ancient Persians, who entered in their records whatever happened that was worth remembering. They shall be supplied with information and appointed by the state to record all notable deeds, instead of leaving this to every incompetent scribbler and biased or parasitical pedant, as we do today.

I will provide public schools of every kind, for singing, dancing, fencing, and so on, especially for grammar and languages. These shall be taught through practice, example, and conversation, as travellers learn abroad and nurses teach their children, instead of the tedious rules ordinarily used. Just as I will provide all these institutions, I will appoint public administrators and suitable officers for each: treasurers, aediles, quaestors, guardians of wards and widows’ property, and overseers of all public establishments, and so on.

Once a year they shall render exact accounts of every receipt and expense, to prevent disorder; and in this way they will not spend sums they would be ashamed to disclose, as Pliny says to Trajan. They shall answer to the higher officers and governors of each city. These shall be noblemen and gentlemen, rather than poor tradesmen and lowly craftsmen, and shall be required to reside in the towns nearest their homes at specified times and seasons;

for I see no reason, as Hippolitus also complains, why it should be less honourable for noblemen to govern a city than the countryside, or less fitting for them to live there now than in former times. I will have no bogs, fens, marshes, vast forests, wastelands, heaths, or commons: everything shall be enclosed, though the inhabitants must not be driven out—take care not to misunderstand me here. For what is common property, belonging to everyone, belongs to no one;