Utopias fall into two classes, the local and the chronological. That is, some are removed from present fact by geographical transition to a country apart from us in space, a magic island, a realm undiscovered until the romancer found it and assumed it to be extant in the romancer's year of grace; others are sundered from present fact by being thrown forward into the future or backward into a time that precedes recorded history. The desirable land within the limits of present time and the known surficial limits of the globe is obviously not convincing. One fears that it may be rediscovered and invaded by an imperial fleet or an inquisitive scientific expedition. Crusoe's island is no longer remote. The geographers have plotted the planet and have snared every conceivable no-man's-land in the meshes of realistic lines of latitude and longitude. The ideal civilization which plays ducks and drakes, not with space, but with time, is safer. Nothing can dislodge it or disprove it or in any wise proceed against it--except by force of superior imagination. For nobody knows what may happen in the future. That is why all the theological heavens are sublimely ramparted against attack. Bellamy placed his ideal civilization within the impregnable security of a time as yet unborn. His conception was original and in its way was more realistic than the timeless abstraction of Plato and More, and the Nowhere from which Morris sent news. The fundamental scheme of portraying a future upon this earth was so fascinating that Bellamy's book enjoyed a success out of all proportion to its literary skill or its sociological insight. He had a first-rate plan, but with what unfanciful and rigidly precise lines he filled it in! His style is stiff and his future is ossified.