But the fortifications had long been neglected, for the whole
country was now under one king, and all men said there was no more
need for weapons or walls. No man pretended to love his neighbour,
but every one said he knew that peace and quiet behaviour was the
best thing for himself, and that, he said, was quite as useful, and
a great deal more reasonable. The city was prosperous and rich,
and if everybody was not comfortable, everybody else said he ought
to be.
When Curdie got up opposite the mighty rock, which sparkled all
over with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and
portcullis and towers with loopholes. But the gates stood wide
open, and were dropping from their great hinges; the portcullis was
eaten away with rust, and clung to the grooves evidently immovable;
while the loopholed towers had neither floor nor roof, and their
tops were fast filling up their interiors. Curdie thought it a
pity, if only for their old story, that they should be thus
neglected. But everybody in the city regarded these signs of decay
as the best proof of the prosperity of the place. Commerce and
self-interest, they said, had got the better of violence, and the
troubles of the past were whelmed in the riches that flowed in at
their open gates.
Indeed, there was one sect of philosophers in it which taught that
it would be better to forget all the past history of the city, were
it not that its former imperfections taught its present inhabitants
how superior they and their times were, and enabled them to glory
over their ancestors.
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