The Queen of the Air Part 6

And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact we have to know about our own several lives. Wisdom never forgives. Whatever resistance we have offered to her loaw, she avenges forever; the lost hour can never be redeemed, and the accomplished wrong never atoned for. The best that can be done afterwards, but for that, had been better; the falsest of all the cries of peace, where there is no peace, is that of the pardon of sin, as the mob expect it. Wisdom can "put away" sin, but she cannot pardon it; and she is apt, in her haste, to put away the sinner as well, when the black aegis is on her breast.

118. And this is also a fact we have to know about our national life, that it is ended as soon as it has lost the power of n.o.ble Anger. When it paints over, and apologizes for its pitiful criminalities; and endures its false weights, and its adulterated food; dares not to decide practically between good and evil, and can neither honor the one, nor smite the other, but sneers at the good, as if it were hidden evil, and consoles the evil with pious sympathy, and conserves it in the sugar of its leaden heart,--the end is come.

119. The first sign, then, of Athena's presence with any people is that they become warriors, and that the chief thought of every man of them is to stand rightly in his rank, and not fail from his brother's side in battle. Wealth, and pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athena's orders, sacrificed to this duty of standing fast in the rank of war.

But further: Athena presides over industry, as well as battle; typically, over women's industry; that brings comfort with pleasantness. Her word to us all is: "Be well exercised, and rightly clothed. Clothed, and in your right minds; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine clothes clutched from each other's shoulders. Fight and weave. Then I myself will answer for the course of the lance, and the colors of the loom."

And now I will ask the reader to look with some care through these following pa.s.sages respecting modern mult.i.tudes and their occupations, written long ago, but left in fragmentary form, in which they must now stay, and be of what use they can.

120. It is not political economy to put a number of strong men down on an acre of ground, with no lodging, and nothing to eat. Nor is it political economy to build a city on good ground, and fill it with store of corn and treasure, and put a score of lepers to live in it. Political economy creates together the means of life, and the living persons who are to use them; and of both, the best and the most that it can, but imperatively the best, not the most. A few good and healthy men, rather than a mult.i.tude of diseased rogues; and a little real milk and wine rather than much chalk and petroleum; but the gist of the whole business is that the men and their property must both be produced together--not one to the loss of the other. Property must not be created in lands desolate by exile of their people, nor multiplied and depraved humanity, in lands barren of bread.

121. Nevertheless, though the men and their possessions are to be increased at the same time, the first object of thought is always to be the multiplication of a worthy people. The strength of the nation is in its mult.i.tude, not in its territory; but only in its sound mult.i.tude. It is one thing, both in a man and a nation, to gain flesh, and another to be swollen with putrid humors. Not that mult.i.tude ever ought to be inconsistent with virtue. Two men should be wiser than one, and two thousand than two; nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the records of human stupidity as that excuse for neglect of crime by greatness of cities. As if the first purpose of congregation were not to devise laws and repress crimes! As if bees and wasps could live honestly in flocks-- men, only in separate dens! As if it were easy to help one another on the opposite sides of a mountain, and impossible on the opposite sides of a street! But when the men are true and good, and stand shoulder to shoulder, the strength of any nation is in its quant.i.ty of life, not in its land nor gold. The more good men a state has, in proportion to its territory, the stronger the state. And as it has been the madness of economists to seek for gold instead of life, so it has been the madness of kings to seek for land instead of life. They want the town on the other side of the river, and seek it at the spear point; it never enters their stupid heads that to double the honest souls in the town on this side of the river would make them stronger kings; and that this doubling might be done by the ploughshare instead of the spear, and through happiness instead of misery.

Therefore, in brief, this is the only object of all true policy and true economy: "utmost mult.i.tude of good men on every given s.p.a.ce of ground"-- imperatively always good, sound, honest men,--not a mob of white-faced thieves. So that, on the one hand all aristocracy is wrong which is inconsistent with numbers; and on the other all numbers are wrong which are inconsistent with breeding.

122. Then, touching the acc.u.mulation of wealth for the maintenance of such men, observe, that you must never use the terms "money" and "wealth"

as synonymous. Wealth consists of the good, and therefore useful, things in the possession of the nation; money is only the written or coined sign of the relative quant.i.ties of wealth in each person's possession. All money is a divisible t.i.tle-deed, of immense importance as an expression of right to property, but absolutely valueless as property itself. Thus, supposing a nation isolated from all others, the money in its possession is, at its maximum value, worth all the property of the nation, and no more, because no more can be got for it. And the money of all nations is worth, at its maximum, the property of all nations, and no more, for no more can be got for it. Thus, every article of property produced increases, by its value, the value of all the money in the world, and every article of property destroyed, diminishes the value of all the money in the world. If ten men are cast away on a rock, with a thousand pounds in their pockets, and there is on the rock, neither food nor shelter, their money is worth simply nothing, for nothing is to be had for it. If they built ten huts, and recover a cask of biscuit from the wreck, then their thousand pounds, at its maximum value, is worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. If they make their thousand pounds into two thousand by writing new notes, their two thousand pounds are still worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. And the law of relative value is the same for all the world, and all the people in it, and all their property, as for ten men on a rock. Therefore, money is truly and finally lost in the degree in which its value is taken from it (ceasing in that degree to be money at all); and it is truly gained in the degree in which value is added to it. Thus, suppose the money coined by the nation be a fixed sum, and divided very minutely (say into francs and cents), and neither to be added to nor diminished. Then every grain of food and inch of lodging added to its possessions makes every cent in its pockets worth proportionally more, and every gain of food it consumes, and inch of roof it allows to fall to ruin, makes every cent in its pockets worth less; and this with mathematical precision. The immediate value of the money at particular times and places depends, indeed, on the humors of the possessors of property; but the nation is in the one case gradually getting richer, and will feel the pressure of poverty steadily everywhere relaxing, whatever the humors of individuals may be; and, in the other case, is gradually growing poorer, and the pressure of its poverty will every day tell more and more, in ways that it cannot explain, but will most bitterly feel.

123. The actual quant.i.ty of money which it coins, in relation to its real property, is therefore only of consequence for convenience of exchange; but the proportion in which this quant.i.ty of money is divided among individuals expresses their various rights to greater or less proportions of the national property, and must not, therefore, be tampered with. The government may at any time, with perfect justice, double its issue of coinage, if it gives every man who has ten pounds in his pocket another ten pounds, and every man who had ten pence another ten pence; for it thus does not make any of them richer; it merely divides their counters for them into twice the number. But if it gives the newly-issued coins to other people, or keeps them itself, it simply robs the former holders to precisely that extent. This most important function of money, as a t.i.tle-deed, on the non-violation of which all national soundness of commerce and peace of life depend, has been never rightly distinguished by economists from the quite unimportant function of money as a means of exchange. You can exchange goods--at some inconvenience, indeed, but you can still contrive to do it--without money at all; but you cannot maintain your claim to the savings of your past life without a doc.u.ment declaring the amount of them, which the nation and its government will respect.

124. And as economists have lost sight of this great function of money in relation to individual rights, so they have equally lost sight of its function as a representative of good things. That, for every good thing produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach.

How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every well-educated girl--do even the women in high political position--know that every fine dress they wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys precisely so much of the national money as the labor and material of it are worth? If this be a truism, it is one that needs proclaiming somewhat louder.

125. That, then, is the relation of money and goods. So much goods, so much money; so little goods, so little money. But, as there is this true relation between money and "goods," or good things, so there is a false relation between money and "bads," or bad things. Many bad things will fetch a price in exchange; but they do not increase the wealth of the country. Good wine is wealth, drugged wine is not; good meat is wealth, putrid meat is not; good pictures are wealth, bad pictures are not. A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you; not what you choose to pay for it. You may pay a thousand pounds for a cracked pipkin, if you please; but you do not by that transaction make the cracked pipkin worth one that will hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin whatsoever, worth more than it was before you paid such sum for it. You may, perhaps, induce many potters to manufacture fissured pots, and many amateurs of clay to buy them; but the nation is, through the whole business so encouraged, rich by the addition to its wealth of so many potsherds,--and there an end. The thing is worth what it CAN do for you, not what you think it can; and most national luxuries, nowadays, are a form of potsherd, provided for the solace of a self-complacent Job, voluntary sedent on his ash-heap.

126. And, also, so far as good things already exist, and have become media of exchange, the variations in their prices are absolutely indifferent to the nation. Whether Mr. A. buys a t.i.tian from Mr. B. for twenty, or for two thousand, pounds, matters not sixpence to the national revenue; that is to say, it matters in nowise to the revenue whether Mr.

A. has the picture, and Mr. B. the money, or Mr. B. the picture, and Mr.

A. the money. Which of them will spend the money most wisely, and which of them will keep the picture most carefully, is, indeed, a matter of some importance; but this cannot be known by the mere fact of exchange.

127. The wealth of a nation then, first, and its peace and well-being besides, depend on the number of persons it can employ in making good and useful things. I say its well-being also, for the character of men depends more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them, or principles with which we can imbue them. The employment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the const.i.tution of the man,--the greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education--it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. And, whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character. The moment, and the first direction of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people. The pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill by the late English Parliament may have been more or less accidental; the results of the measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life.

Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will depend, not on their facilities of knowledge, nor even on the general intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and modest in their estimate of the promises, of life.

128. But especially in framing laws respecting the treatment or employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons, it is to be remembered that as men are not made heroes by the performance of an act of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they committed it; and the right of public interference with their conduct begins when they begin to corrupt themselves,--not merely at the moment when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt.

All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their timeliness: partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error corrected; but there is a point at which corruption can be no more stayed, nor wandering recalled. It has been the manner of modern philanthropy to remain pa.s.sive until that precise period, and to leave the sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, while it spends itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust.

The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital punishment is, I trust, the sign of an awakening perception that punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime. The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward; not punishment. Aid the willing, honour the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no deed for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death.

129. The beginning of all true reformation among the criminal cla.s.ses depends on the establishment of inst.i.tutions for their active employment, while their criminality is still unripe, and their feelings of self-respect, capacities of affection, and sense of justice, not altogether quenched. That those who are desirous of employment should always be able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be disputed; but that those who are undesirous of employment should of all persons be the most strictly compelled to it, the public are hardly yet convinced; and they must be convinced. If the danger of the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares in their capital city, and the multiplication of crimes more ghastly than ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, are not enough, they will not have to wait long before they receive sterner lessons. For our neglect of the lower orders has reached a point at which it begins to bear its necessary fruit, and every day makes the fields, not whiter, but more stable, to harvest.

130. The general principles by which employment should be regulated may be briefly stated as follows:

I. There being three great cla.s.ses of mechanical powers at our disposal, namely, (a) vital or muscular power; (b) natural mechanical power of wind, water, and electricity; and (c) artificially produced mechanical power; it is the first principle of economy to use all available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last have recourse to artificial power. And this because it is always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed and clothe himself, than to stand idle while a machine works for him; and if he cannot by all the labor healthily possible to him feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an inexpensive machine--as a windmill or watermill--than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have natural force enough at our disposal. Whereas at present we continually hear economists regret that the water-power of the cascades or streams of a country should be lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power of its idle inhabitants should be lost; and, again, we see vast districts, as the south of Provence, where a strong wind* blows steadily all day long for six days out of seven throughout the year, without a windmill, while men are continually employed at a hundred miles to the north, in digging fuel to obtain artificial power. But the princ.i.p.al point of all to be kept in view is, that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quant.i.ty of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, while the vital force is unused, and not only unused, but in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal, and spoil our humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, wherever there is an idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last all the longer. And precisely the same argument answers the common one about "taking employment out of the hands of the industrious laborer."

Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force? We are continually in search of means to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry. We waste our future resources to get this strength, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath, and production of its variously noisome forms of ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first.

The industrious hands must already have so much to do that they can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them. Then use the idle hands first. Instead of dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put it on a ca.n.a.l, and drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroluem cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always order that, and many other things, time enough before we want it. So, the carriage of everything which does not spoil by keeping may most wholesomely and safely be done by water-traction and sailing-vessels; and no healthier work can men be put to, nor better discipline, than such active porterage.

* In order fully to utilize this natural power, we only require machinery to turn the variable into a constant velocity--no insurmountable difficulty.

131. (2d.) In employing all the muscular power at our disposal we are to make the employments we choose as educational as possible; for a wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, row, or steer well, and a woman taught to cook properly, and make a dress neatly, are already educated in many essential moral habits. Labor considered as a discipline has. .h.i.therto been thought of only for criminals; but the real and n.o.blest function of labor is to prevent crime, and not to be Reformatory, but Formatory.

132. The third great principle of employment is, that whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed to the production of useful articles only; that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, and preserving these. It is yet little understood by economists, and not at all by the public, that the employment of persons in a useless business cannot relieve ultimate distress. The money given to employ riband-makers at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton; or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. We must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. If we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay navies for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay riband or b.u.t.ton makers for making useless ribands or b.u.t.tons; we cannot lose it (unless by actually destroying it) without giving employment of some kind; and, therefore, whatever quant.i.ty of money exists, the relative quant.i.ty of employment must some day come out of it; but the distress of the nation signifies that the employments given have produced nothing that will support its existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or b.u.t.tons, or velvet, or by going quickly from place to place; and every coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so much withdrawn from the national means of life. One of the most beautiful uses of railroads is to enable A to travel from the town of X to take away the business of B in the town of Y; while, in the mean time, B travels from the town of Y to take away A's business in the town of X.

But the national wealth is not increased by these operations. Whereas every coin spent in cultivating ground, in repairing lodging, in making necessary and good roads, in preventing danger by sea or land, and in carriage of food or fuel where they are required, is so much absolute and direct gain to the whole nation. To cultivate land round Coventry makes living easier at Honiton, and every acre of sand gained from the sea in Lincolns.h.i.+re, makes life easier all over England.

4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person some one else must be working somewhere to provide him with clothes and food, and doing, therefore, double the quant.i.ty of work that would be enough for his own needs, it is only a matter of pure justice to compel the idle person to work for his maintenance himself. The conscription has been used in many countries to take away laborers who supported their families, from their useful work, and maintain them for purposes chiefly of military display at the public expense. Since this has been long endured by the most civilized nations, let it not be thought they would not much more gladly endure a conscription which should seize only the vicious and idle, already living by criminal procedures at the public expense; and which should discipline and educate them to labor which would not only maintain themselves, but be serviceable to the commonwealth. The question is simply this: we must feed the drunkard, vagabond, and thief; but shall we do so by letting them steal their food, and do no work for it? or shall we give them their food in appointed quant.i.ty, and enforce their doing work which shall be worth it, and which, in process of time, will redeem their own characters and make them happy and serviceable members of society?

I find by me a violent little fragment of undelivered lecture, which puts this, perhaps, still more clearly. Your idle people (it says), as they are now, are not merely waste coal-beds. They are explosive coal-beds, which you pay a high annual rent for. You are keeping all these idle persons, remember, at far greater cost than if they were busy. Do you think a vicious person eats less than an honest one? or that it is cheaper to keep a bad man drunk, than a good man sober? There is, I suppose, a dim idea in the mind of the public, that they don't pay for the maintenance of people they don't employ. Those staggering rascals at the street corner, grouped around its splendid angle of public-house, we fancy that they are no servants of ours! that we pay them no wages!

that no cash out of our pockets is spent over that beer-stained counter!

Whose cash is it then they are spending? It is not got honestly by work.

You know that much. Where do they get it from? Who has paid for their dinner and their pot? Those fellows can only live in one of two ways--by pillage or beggary. Their annual income by thieving comes out of the public pocket, you will admit. They are not cheaply fed, so far as they are fed by theft. But the rest of their living--all that they don't steal--they must beg. Not with success from you, you think. Wise, as benevolent, you never gave a penny in "indiscriminate charity." Well, I congratulate you on the freedom of your conscience from that sin, mine being bitterly burdened with the memory of many a sixpence given to beggars of whom I knew nothing but that they had pale faces and thin waists. But it is not that kind of street beggary that is the worst beggars' trade. Home alms which it is their worst degradation to receive. Those scamps know well enough that you and your wisdom are worth nothing to them. They won't beg of you. They will beg of their sisters, and mothers, and wives, and children, and of any one else who is enough ashamed of being of the same blood with them to pay to keep them out of sight. Every one of those blackguards is the bane of a family.

That is the deadly "indiscriminate charity"--the charity which each household pays to maintain its own private curse.

133. And you think that is no affair of yours? and that every family ought to watch over and subdue its own living plague? Put it to yourselves this way, then: suppose you knew every one of those families kept an idol in an inner room--a big-bellied bronze figure, to which daily sacrifice and oblation was made; at whose feet so much beer and brandy was poured out every morning on the ground; and before which, every night, good meat, enough for two men's keep, was set, and left, till it was putrid, and then carried out and thrown on the dunghill; you would put an end to that form of idolatry with your best diligence, I suppose. You would understand then that the beer, and brandy, and meat, were wasted; and that the burden imposed by each household on itself lay heavily through them on the whole community? But, suppose further, that this idol were not of silent and quiet bronze only, but an ingenious mechanism, wound up every morning, to run itself down into automatic blasphemies; that it struck and tore with its hands the people who set food before it; that it was anointed with poisonous unguents, and infected the air for miles round. You would interfere with the idolatry then, straightway? Will you not interfere with it now, when the infection that they venomous idol spreads is not merely death, but sin?

134. So far the old lecture. Returning to cool English, the end of the matter is, that, sooner or later, we shall have to register our people; and to know how they live; and to make sure, if they are capable of work, that right work is given them to do.

The different cla.s.ses of work for which bodies of men could be consistently organized, might ultimately become numerous; these following divisions of occupation may all at once be suggested:

I. Road-making.--Good roads to be made, wherever needed, and kept in repair; and the annual loss on unfrequented roads, in spoiled horses, strained wheels, and time, done away with.

II. Bringing in of waste land.--All waste lands not necessary for public health, to be made accessible and gradually reclaimed; chiefly our wide and waste seash.o.r.es. Not our mountains nor moorland. Our life depends on them, more than on the best arable we have.

III. Harbor-making.--The deficiencies of safe or convenient harborage in our smaller ports to be remedied; other harbors built at dangerous points of coast, and a disciplined body of men always kept in connection with the pilot and life-boat services. There is room for every order of intelligence in this work, and for a large body of superior officers.

IV. Porterage.--All heavy goods, not requiring speed in transit, to be carried (under preventative duty on transit, by railroad) by ca.n.a.l-boats, employing men for draught; and the merchant-s.h.i.+pping service extended by sea; so that no s.h.i.+ps may be wrecked for want of hands, while there are idle ones in mischief on sh.o.r.e.

V. Repair of buildings.--A body of men in various trades to be kept at the disposal of the authorities in every large town, for repair of buildings, especially the houses of the poorer orders, who, if no such provision were made, could not employ workmen on their own houses, but would simply live with rent walls and roofs.

VI. Dressmaking.--Substantial dress, of standard material and kind, strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be manufactured for the poor, so as to render it unnecessary for them, unless by extremity of improvidence, to wear cast clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing.

VII. Works of Art.--Schools to be established on thoroughly sound principles of manufacture, and use of materials, and with sample and, for given periods, unalterable modes of work; first, in pottery, and embracing gradually metal work, sculpture, and decorative painting; the two points insisted upon, in distinction from ordinary commercial establishments, being perfectness of material to the utmost attainable degree; and the production of everything by hand-work, for the special purpose of developing personal power and skill in the workman.

The last two departments, and some subordinate branches of others, would include the service of women and children.

I give now, for such further ill.u.s.trations as they contain of the points I desire most to insist upon with respect both to education and employment, a portion of the series of notes published some time ago in the "Art Journal," on the opposition of Modesty and Liberty, and the unescapable law of wise restraint. I am sorry that they are written obscurely--and it may be thought affectedly; but the fact is, I have always had three different ways of writing: one, with the single view of making myself understood, in which I necessarily omit a great deal of what comes into my head; another, in which I say what I think ought to be said, in what I suppose to be the best words I can find for it (which is in reality an affected style--be it good or bad); and my third way of writing is to say all that comes into my head for my own pleasure, in the first words that come, retouching them afterward into (approximate) grammar. These notes for the "Art Journal" were so written; and I like them myself, of course; but ask the reader's pardon for their confusedness.

135. "Sir, it cannot be better done."

We will insist, with the reader's permission, on this comfortful saying of Albert Durer's in order to find out, if we may, what Modesty is; which it will be well for painters, readers, and especially critics, to know, before going farther. What it is; or, rather, who she is, her fingers being among the deftest in laying the ground-threads of Aglaia's cestus.

For this same opinion of Albert's is entertained by many other people respecting their own doings--a very prevalent opinion, indeed, I find it; and the answer itself, though rarely made with the Nuremberger's crus.h.i.+ng decision, is nevertheless often enough intimated, with delicacy, by artists of all countries, in their various dialects. Neither can it always be held an entirely modest one, as it a.s.suredly was in the man who would sometimes estimate a piece of his unconquerable work at only the worth of a plate of fruit, or a flask of wine--would have taken even one "fig for it," kindly offered; or given it royally for nothing, to show his hand to a fellow-king of his own, or any other craft--as Gainsborough gave the "Boy at the Stile" for a solo on the violin. An entirely modest saying, I repeat, in him--not always in us. For Modesty is "the measuring virtue," the virtue of modes or limits. She is, indeed, said to be only the third or youngest of the children of the cardinal virtue, Temperance; and apt to be despised, being more given to arithmetic, and other vulgar studies (Cinderella-like), than her elder sisters; but she is useful in the household, and arrives at great results with her yard-measure and slate-pencil--a pretty little Marchande des Modes, cutting her dress always according to the silk (if this be the proper feminine reading of "coat according to the cloth"), so that, consulting with her carefully of a morning, men get to know not only their income, but their in being--to know themselves, that is, in a gauger's manner, round, and up and down--surface and contents; what is in them and what may be got out of them; and in fine, their entire canon of weight and capacity. That yard-measure of Modesty's, lent to those who will use it, is a curious musical reed, and will go round and round waists that are slender enough, with latent melody in every joint of it, the dark root only being soundless, moist from the wave wherein

"Null' altra pianta che facesse fronda O che 'n dura.s.se, vi puote aver vita."*

* "Purgatorio," i. 108, 109.