LETTER XLV.

Lucca, 2nd August, 1874.

The other day, in the Sacristan’s cell at Assisi, I got into a great argument with the Sacristan himself, about the prophet Isaiah. It had struck me that I should like to know what sort of a person his wife was: and I asked my good host, over our morning’s coffee, whether the Church knew anything about her. Brother Antonio, however, instantly and energetically denied that he ever had a wife. He was a ‘Castissimo profeta,’—how could I fancy anything so horrible of him! Vainly I insisted that, since he had children, he must either have been married, or been under special orders, like the prophet Hosea. But my Protestant Bible was good for nothing, said the Sacristan. Nay, I answered, I never read, usually, in anything later than a thirteenth century text; let him produce me one out of the convent library, and see if I couldn’t find Shearjashub in it. The discussion dropped [192]upon this,—because the library was inaccessible at the moment; and no printed Vulgate to be found. But I think of it again to-day, because I have just got into another puzzle about Isaiah,—to wit, what he means by calling himself a “man of unclean lips.”1 And that is a vital question, surely, to all persons venturing to rise up, as teachers;—vital, at all events, to me, here, and now, for these following reasons.

Thirty years ago, I began my true study of Italian, and all other art,—here, beside the statue of Ilaria di Caretto, recumbent on her tomb. It turned me from the study of landscape to that of life, being then myself in the fullest strength of labour, and joy of hope.

And I was thinking, last night, that the drawing which I am now trying to make of it, in the weakness and despair of declining age, might possibly be the last I should make before quitting the study of Italian, and even all other, art, for ever.

I have no intent of doing so: quite the reverse of that. But I feel the separation between me and the people round me, so bitterly, in the world of my own which they cannot enter; and I see their entrance to it now barred so absolutely by their own resolves, (they having deliberately and self-congratulatingly chosen for themselves the Manchester Cotton Mill instead of the Titian,) that it becomes every hour more urged upon [193]me that I shall have to leave,—not father and mother, for they have left me; nor children, nor lands, for I have none,—but at least this spiritual land and fair domain of human art and natural peace,—because I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, and therefore am undone, because mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.

I say it, and boldly. Who else is there of you who can stand with me, and say the same? It is an age of progress, you tell me. Is your progress chiefly in this, that you cannot see the King, the Lord of Hosts, but only Baal, instead of Him?

“The Sun is God,” said Turner, a few weeks before he died with the setting rays of it on his face.

He meant it, as Zoroaster meant it; and was a Sun-worshipper of the old breed. But the unheard-of foulness of your modern faith in Baal is its being faith without worship. The Sun is—not God,—you say. Not by any manner of means. A gigantic railroad accident, perhaps,—a coruscant δινος,—put on the throne of God like a limelight; and able to serve you, eventually, much better than ever God did.

I repeat my challenge. You,—Te Deum-singing princes, colonels, bishops, choristers, and what else,—do any of you know what Te means? or what Deum? or what Laudamus? Have any of your eyes seen the King, or His Sabaoth? Will any of you say, with your hearts, ‘Heaven and earth are full of His glory; [194]and in His name we will set up our banners, and do good work, whether we live or die’?

You, in especial, Squires of England, whose fathers were England’s bravest and best,—by how much better and braver you are than your fathers, in this Age of Progress, I challenge you: Have any of your eyes seen the King? Are any of your hands ready for His work, and for His weapons,—even though they should chance to be pruning-hooks instead of spears?

Who am I, that should challenge you—do you ask? My mother was a sailor’s daughter, so please you; one of my aunts was a baker’s wife—the other, a tanner’s; and I don’t know much more about my family, except that there used to be a greengrocer of the name in a small shop near the Crystal Palace. Something of my early and vulgar life, if it interests you, I will tell in next Fors: in this one, it is indeed my business, poor gipsy herald as I am, to bring you such challenge, though you shall hunt and hang me for it.

Squires, are you, and not Workmen, nor Labourers, do you answer next?

Yet, I have certainly sometimes seen engraved over your family vaults, and especially on the more modern tablets, those comfortful words, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” But I observe that you are usually content, with the help of the village stone-mason, to say only this concerning your dead; and that you but rarely venture to add the “yea” of the Spirit, [195]“that they may rest from their Labours, and their Works do follow them.” Nay, I am not even sure that many of you clearly apprehend the meaning of such followers and following; nor, in the most pathetic funeral sermons, have I heard the matter made strictly intelligible to your hope. For indeed, though you have always graciously considered your church no less essential a part of your establishment than your stable, you have only been solicitous that there should be no broken-winded steeds in the one, without collateral endeavour to find clerks for the other in whom the breath of the Spirit should be unbroken also.

As yet it is a text which, seeing how often we would fain take the comfort of it, surely invites explanation. The implied difference between those who die in the Lord, and die—otherwise; the essential distinction between the labour from which these blessed ones rest, and the work which in some mysterious way follows them; and the doubt—which must sometimes surely occur painfully to a sick or bereaved squire—whether the labours of his race are always severe enough to make rest sweet, or the works of his race always distinguished enough to make their following superb,—ought, it seems to me, to cause the verse to glow on your (lately, I observe, more artistic) tombstones, like the letters on Belshazzar’s wall; and with the more lurid and alarming light, that this “following” of the works is distinctly connected, in the parallel passage of [196]Timothy, with “judgment” upon the works; and that the kinds of them which can securely front such judgment, are there said to be, in some cases, “manifest beforehand,” and, in no case, ultimately obscure.

“It seems to me,” I say, as if such questions should occur to the squire during sickness, or funeral pomp. But the seeming is far from the fact. For I suppose the last idea which is likely ever to enter the mind of a representative squire, in any vivid or tenable manner, would be that anything he had ever done, or said, was liable to a judgment from superior powers; or that any other law than his own will, or the fashion of his society, stronger than his will, existed in relation to the management of his estate. Whereas, according to any rational interpretation of our Church’s doctrine, as by law established; if there be one person in the world rather than another to whom it makes a serious difference whether he dies in the Lord or out of Him; and if there be one rather than another who will have strict scrutiny made into his use of every instant of his time, every syllable of his speech, and every action of his hand and foot,—on peril of having hand and foot bound, and tongue scorched, in Tophet,—that responsible person is the British Squire.

Very strange, the unconsciousness of this, in his own mind, and in the minds of all belonging to him. Even the greatest painter of him—the Reynolds who has filled England with the ghosts of her noble squires and dames,[197]—though he ends his last lecture in the Academy with “the name of Michael Angelo,” never for an instant thought of following out the purposes of Michael Angelo, and painting a Last Judgment upon Squires, with the scene of it laid in Leicestershire. Appealing lords and ladies on either hand;—“Behold, Lord, here is Thy land; which I have—as far as my distressed circumstances would permit—laid up in a napkin. Perhaps there may be a cottage or so less upon it than when I came into the estate,—a tree cut down here and there imprudently;—but the grouse and foxes are undiminished. Behold, there Thou hast that is Thine.” And what capacities of dramatic effect in the cases of less prudent owners,—those who had said in their hearts, “My Lord delayeth His coming.” Michael Angelo’s St. Bartholomew, exhibiting his own skin flayed off him, awakes but a minor interest in that classic picture. How many an English squire might not we, with more pictorial advantage, see represented as adorned with the flayed skins of other people? Micah the Morasthite, throned above them on the rocks of the mountain of the Lord, while his Master now takes up His parable, “Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment, who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces as for the pot.”

And how of the appeals on the other side? “Lord, [198]Thou gavest me one land; behold, I have gained beside it ten lands more.” You think that an exceptionally economical landlord might indeed be able to say so much for himself; and that the increasing of their estates has at least been held a desirable thing by all of them, however Fortune, and the sweet thyme-scented Turf of England, might thwart their best intentions. Indeed it is well to have coveted—much more to have gained—increase of estate, in a certain manner. But neither the Morasthite nor his Master have any word of praise for you in appropriating surreptitiously, portions, say, of Hampstead Heath, or Hayes Common, or even any bit of gipsy-pot-boiling land at the roadside. Far the contrary: In that day of successful appropriation, there is one that shall take up a parable against you, and say, “We be utterly spoiled. He hath changed the portion of my people; turning away, he hath divided our fields. Therefore thou shalt have none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord.” In modern words, you shall have quite unexpected difficulties in getting your legal documents drawn up to your satisfaction; and truly, as you have divided the fields of the poor, the poor, in their time, shall divide yours.

Nevertheless, in their deepest sense, those triumphant words, “Behold, I have gained beside it ten lands more,” must be on the lips of every landlord who honourably enters into his rest; whereas there will soon be considerable difficulty, as I think you are beginning to perceive, [199]not only in gaining more, but even in keeping what you have got.

For the gipsy hunt is up also, as well as Harry our King’s; and the hue and cry loud against your land and you; your tenure of it is in dispute before a multiplying mob, deaf and blind as you,—frantic for the spoiling of you. The British Constitution is breaking fast. It never was, in its best days, entirely what its stout owner flattered himself. Neither British Constitution, nor British law, though it blanch every acre with an acre of parchment, sealed with as many seals as the meadow had buttercups, can keep your landlordships safe, henceforward, for an hour. You will have to fight for them as your fathers did, if you mean to keep them.

That is your only sound and divine right to them; and of late you seem doubtful of appeal to it. You think political economy and peace societies will contrive some arithmetical evangel of possession. You will not find it so. If a man is not ready to fight for his land, and for his wife, no legal forms can secure them to him. They can affirm his possession; but neither grant, sanction, nor protect it. To his own love, to his own resolution, the lordship is granted; and to those only.

That is the first ‘labour’ of landlords, then. Fierce exercise of body and mind, in so much pugnacity as shall supersede all office of legal documents. Whatever labour you mean to put on your land, your first entirely Divine labour is to keep hold of it. And are you ready for [200]that toil to-day? It will soon be called for. Sooner or later, within the next few years, you will find yourselves in Parliament in front of a majority resolved on the establishment of a Republic, and the division of lands. Vainly the landed millowners will shriek for the “operation of natural laws of political economy.” The vast natural law of carnivorous rapine which they have declared their Baal-God, in so many words, will be in equitable operation then; and not, as they fondly hoped to keep it, all on their own side. Vain, then, your arithmetical or sophistical defence. You may pathetically plead to the people’s majority, that the divided lands will not give much more than the length and breadth of his grave to each mob-proprietor. They will answer, “We will have what we can get;—at all events, you shall keep it no longer.” And what will you do? Send for the Life Guards and clear the House, and then, with all the respectable members of society as special constables, guard the streets? That answered well against the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in 1848. Yes; but in 1880 it will not be a Chartist meeting at Kennington, but a magna-and-maxima-Chartist Ecclesia at Westminster, that you must deal with. You will find a difference, and to purpose. Are you prepared to clear the streets with the Woolwich infant,—thinking that out of the mouth of that suckling, God will perfect your praise, and ordain your strength? Be it so; but every grocer’s and chandler’s shop in the thoroughfares of [201]London is a magazine of petroleum and percussion powder; and there are those who will use both, among the Republicans. And you will see your father the Devil’s will done on earth, as it is in hell.

I call him your father, for you have denied your mortal fathers, and the Heavenly One. You have declared, in act and thought, the ways and laws of your sires—obsolete, and of your God—ridiculous; above all, the habits of obedience, and the elements of justice. You were made lords over God’s heritage. You thought to make it your own heritage; to be lords of your own land, not of God’s land. And to this issue of ownership you are come.

And what a heritage it was, you had the lordship over! A land of fruitful vales and pastoral mountains; and a heaven of pleasant sunshine and kindly rain; and times of sweet prolonged summer, and cheerful transient winter; and a race of pure heart, iron sinew, splendid fame, and constant faith.

All this was yours! the earth with its fair fruits and innocent creatures;—the firmament with its eternal lights and dutiful seasons;—the men, souls and bodies, your fathers’ true servants for a thousand years,—their lives, and their children’s children’s lives given into your hands, to save or to destroy; their food yours,—as the grazing of the sheep is the shepherd’s; their thoughts yours,—priest and tutor chosen for them by you; their hearts yours,—if you would but so much as know them [202]by sight and name, and give them the passing grace of your own glance, as you dwelt among them, their king. And all this monarchy and glory, all this power and love, all this land and its people, you pitifullest, foulest of Iscariots, sopped to choking with the best of the feast from Christ’s own fingers, you have deliberately sold to the highest bidder;—Christ, and His Poor, and His Paradise together; and instead of sinning only, like poor natural Adam, gathering of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, you, who don’t want to gather it, touch it with a vengeance,—cut it down, and sell the timber.

Judases with the big bag—game-bag to wit!—to think how many of your dull Sunday mornings have been spent, for propriety’s sake, looking chiefly at those carved angels blowing trumpets above your family vaults; and never one of you has had Christianity enough in him to think that he might as easily have his moors full of angels as of grouse. And now, if ever you did see a real angel before the Day of Judgment, your first thought would be,—to shoot it.

And for your ‘family’ vaults, what will be the use of them to you? Does not Mr. Darwin show you that you can’t wash the slugs out of a lettuce without disrespect to your ancestors? Nay, the ancestors of the modern political economist cannot have been so pure;—they were not—he tells you himself—vegetarian slugs, but carnivorous ones—those, to wit, that you see also carved on your tombstones, going in and out at the eyes of skulls. And [203]truly, I don’t know what else the holes in the heads of modern political economists were made for.

If there are any brighter windows in your’s—if any audience chambers—if any council chambers—if any crown of walls that the pin of Death has not yet pierced,—it is time for you to rise to your work, whether you live or die.

What are you to do, then? First,—the act which will be the foundation of all bettering and strength in your own lives, as in that of your tenants,—fix their rent; under legal assurance that it shall not be raised; and under moral assurance that, if you see they treat your land well, and are likely to leave it to you, if they die, raised in value, the said rent shall be diminished in proportion to the improvement; that is to say, providing they pay you the fixed rent during the time of lease, you are to leave to them the entire benefit of whatever increase they can give to the value of the land. Put the bargain in a simple instance. You lease them an orchard of crab-trees for so much a year; they leave you at the end of the lease, an orchard of golden pippins. Supposing they have paid you their rent regularly, you have no right to anything more than what you lent them—crab-trees, to wit. You must pay them for the better trees which by their good industry they give you back, or, which is the same thing, previously reduce their rent in proportion to the improvement in apples. “The exact contrary,” you observe, “of your present modes of proceeding.” Just so, gentlemen; and [204]it is not improbable that the exact contrary in many other cases of your present modes of proceeding will be found by you, eventually, the proper one, and more than that, the necessary one. Then the second thing you have to do is to determine the income necessary for your own noble and peaceful country life; and setting that aside out of the rents, for a constant sum, to be habitually lived well within limits of, put your heart and strength into the right employment of the rest for the bettering of your estates, in ways which the farmers for their own advantage could not or would not; for the growth of more various plants; the cherishing, not killing, of beautiful living creatures—bird, beast, and fish; and the establishment of such schools of History, Natural History, and Art, as may enable your farmers’ children, with your own, to know the meaning of the words Beauty, Courtesy, Compassion, Gladness, and Religion. Which last word, primarily, (you have not always forgotten to teach this one truth, because it chanced to suit your ends, and even the teaching of this one truth has been beneficent;)—Religion, primarily, means ‘Obedience’—binding to something, or some one. To be bound, or in bonds, as apprentice; to be bound, or in bonds, by military oath; to be bound, or in bonds, as a servant to man; to be bound, or in bonds, under the yoke of God. These are all divinely instituted, eternally necessary, conditions of Religion; beautiful, inviolable captivity and submission of soul in life and death. This essential [205]meaning of Religion it was your office mainly to teach,—each of you captain and king, leader and lawgiver, to his people;—vicegerents of your Captain, Christ. And now—you miserable jockeys and gamesters—you can’t get a seat in Parliament for those all but worn-out buckskin breeches of yours, but by taking off your hats to the potboy. Pretty classical statues you will make, Coriolanuses of the nineteenth century, humbly promising, not to your people gifts of corn, but to your potboys, stealthy sale of adulterated beer!

Obedience!—you dare not so much as utter the word, whether to potboy, or any other sort of boy, it seems, lately; and the half of you still calling themselves Lords, Marquises, Sirs, and other such ancient names, which—though omniscient Mr. Buckle says they and their heraldry are nought—some little prestige lingers about still. You yourselves, what do you yet mean by them—Lords of what?—Herrs, Signors, Dukes of what?—of whom? Do you mean merely, when you go to the root of the matter, that you sponge on the British farmer for your living, and are strong-bodied paupers compelling your dole?

To that extent, there is still, it seems, some force in you. Heaven keep it in you; for, as I have said, it will be tried, and soon; and you would even yourselves see what was coming, but that in your hearts—not from cowardice, but from shame,—you are not sure whether you will be ready to fight for your dole; and would fain [206]persuade yourselves it will still be given, you for form’s sake, or pity’s.

No, my lords and gentlemen,—you won it at the lance’s point, and must so hold it, against the clubs of Sempach, if still you may. No otherwise. You won ‘it,’ I say,—your dole,—as matters now stand. But perhaps, as matters used to stand, something else. As receivers of alms, you will find there is no fight in you. No beggar, nor herd of beggars, can fortify so very wide circumference of dish. And the real secret of those strange breakings of the lance by the clubs of Sempach, is—“that villanous saltpetre”—you think? No, Shakespearian lord; nor even the sheaf-binding of Arnold, which so stopped the shaking of the fruitless spiculæ. The utter and inmost secret is, that you have been fighting these three hundred years for what you could get, instead of what you could give. You were ravenous enough in rapine in the olden times;2 but you lived fearlessly and innocently by it, because, essentially, you wanted money and food to give,—not to consume; to maintain your followers with, not to swallow yourselves. Your chivalry was founded, invariably, by knights who were content all their lives with their horse and armour and daily bread. Your kings, of true power, never desired for themselves more,—down to the last of them, Friedrich. What they did desire was strength of manhood [207]round them, and, in their own hands, the power of largesse.

‘Largesse.’ The French word is obsolete; one Latin equivalent, Liberalitas, is fast receiving another, and not altogether similar significance, among English Liberals. The other Latin equivalent, Generosity, has become doubly meaningless, since modern political economy and politics neither require virtue, nor breeding. The Greek, or Greek-descended, equivalents—Charity, Grace, and the like, your Grace the Duke of —— can perhaps tell me what has become of them. Meantime, of all the words, ‘Largesse,’ the entirely obsolete one, is the perfectly chivalric one; and therefore, next to the French description of Franchise, we will now read the French description of Largesse,—putting first, for comparison with it, a few more sentences3 from the secretary’s speech at the meeting of Social Science in Glasgow; and remembering also the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’s’ exposition of the perfection of Lord Derby’s idea of agriculture, in the hands of the landowner—“Cultivating” (by machinery) “large farms for himself.”

“Exchange is the result, put into action, of the desire to possess that which belongs to another, controlled by reason and conscientiousness. It is difficult to conceive of any human transaction that cannot be resolved, in some form or other, into the idea of an [208]exchange. All that is essential in production are,” (sic, only italics mine,) “directly evolved from this source.”

*   *   *

“Man has therefore been defined to be an animal that exchanges. It will be seen, however, that he not only exchanges, but from the fact of his belonging, in part, to the order carnivora, that he also inherits, to a considerable degree, the desire to possess without exchanging; or, in other words, by fraud and violence, when such can be used for his own advantage, without danger to himself.”

*   *   *

“Reason would immediately suggest to one of superior strength, that, however desirable it might be to take possession, by violence, of what another had laboured to produce, he might be treated in the same way by one stronger than himself; to which he, of course, would have great objection.”

*   *   *

“In order, therefore, to prevent, or put a stop to, a practice which each would object to in his own case, and which, besides, would put a stop to production altogether, both reason and a sense of justice would suggest the act of exchange, as the only proper mode of obtaining things from one another.”

*   *   *

To anybody who had either reason or a sense of justice, it might possibly have suggested itself that, except for the novelty of the thing, mere exchange profits nobody, and presupposes a coincidence, or rather a harmonious dissent, of opinion not always attainable.

Mr. K. has a kettle, and Mr. P. has a pot. Mr. P. says to Mr. K., ‘I would rather have your kettle than my pot;’ and if, coincidently, Mr. K. is also in a discontented humour, and can say to Mr. P., ‘I would rather have your pot than my kettle,’ why—both Hanses [209]are in luck, and all is well; but is their carnivorous instinct thus to be satisfied? Carnivorous instinct says, in both cases, ‘I want both pot and kettle myself, and you to have neither,’ and is entirely unsatisfiable on the principle of exchange. The ineffable blockhead who wrote the paper forgot that the principle of division of labour underlies that of exchange, and does not arise out of it, but is the only reason for it. If Mr. P. can make two pots, and Mr. K. two kettles, and so, by exchange, both become possessed of a pot and a kettle, all is well. But the profit of the business is in the additional production, and only the convenience in the subsequent exchange. For, indeed, there are in the main two great fallacies which the rascals of the world rejoice in making its fools proclaim: the first, that by continually exchanging, and cheating each other on exchange, two exchanging persons, out of one pot, alternating with one kettle, can make their two fortunes. That is the principle of Trade. The second, that Judas’ bag has become a juggler’s, in which, if Mr. P. deposits his pot, and waits awhile, there will come out two pots, both full of broth; and if Mr. K. deposits his kettle, and waits awhile, there will come out two kettles, both full of fish! That is the principle of Interest.

However, for the present, observe simply the conclusion of our social science expositor, that “the art of exchange is the only proper mode of obtaining things from one another;” and now compare with this theory [210]that of old chivalry, namely, that gift was also a good way, both of losing and gaining.

“And after, in the dance, went

Largesse, that set all her intent

For to be honourable and free.

Of Alexander’s kin was she;

Her mostë joy was, I wis,

When that she gave, and said, ‘Have this.’4

Not Avarice, the foul caitiff,5

Was half, to gripe, so ententive,

As Largesse is to give, and spend.

And God always enough her send, (sent)

So that the more she gave away,

The more, I wis, she had alway.

*   *   *

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Largesse had on a robe fresh

Of rich purpure, sarlinish;6

Well formed was her face, and clear,

And open had she her colere, (collar)

For she right then had in present

Unto a lady made present

Of a gold brooch, full well wrought;

And certes, it mis-set her nought,

For through her smocke, wrought with silk,

The flesh was seen as white as milke.”

Think over that, ladies, and gentlemen who love them, for a pretty way of being decolletée. Even though the flesh should be a little sunburnt sometimes,—so that it be the Sun of Righteousness, and not Baal, who shines on it—though it darken from the milk-like flesh to the colour of the Madonna of Chartres,—in this world you shall be able to say, I am black, but comely; and, dying, shine as the brightness of the firmament—as the stars for ever and ever. They do not receive their glories,—however one differeth in glory from another,—either by, or on, Exchange.

Lucca. (Assumption of the Virgin.)

‘As the stars, for ever.’ Perhaps we had better not say that,—modern science looking pleasantly forward to the extinction of a good many of them. But it [212]will be well to shine like them, if but for a little while.

You probably did not understand why, in a former letter, the Squire’s special duty towards the peasant was said to be “presenting a celestial appearance to him.”

That is, indeed, his appointed missionary work; and still more definitely, his wife’s.

The giving of loaves is indeed the lady’s first duty; the first, but the least.

Next, comes the giving of brooches;—seeing that her people are dressed charmingly and neatly, as well as herself, and have pretty furniture, like herself.7

But her chief duty of all—is to be, Herself, lovely.

“That through her smocke, wrought with silk,

The flesh be seen as white as milke.”8

Flesh, ladies mine, you observe; and not any merely illuminated resemblance of it, after the fashion of the daughter of Ethbaal. It is your duty to be [213]lovely, not by candlelight, but sunshine; not out of a window or opera-box, but on the bare ground.

Which that you may be,—if through the smocke the flesh, then, much more, through the flesh, the spirit, must be seen “as white as milke.”

I have just been drawing, or trying to draw, Giotto’s ‘Poverty’ (Sancta Paupertas) at Assisi. You may very likely know the chief symbolism of the picture: that Poverty is being married to St. Francis, and that Christ marries them, while her bare feet are entangled in thorns, but behind her head is a thicket of rose and lily. It is less likely you should be acquainted with the farther details of the group.

The thorns are of the acacia, which, according to tradition, was used to weave Christ’s crown. The roses are in two clusters,—palest red,9 and deep crimson; the one on her right, the other on her left; above her head, pure white on the golden ground, rise the Annunciation Lilies. She is not crowned with them, observe; they are behind her: she is crowned only with her own hair, wreathed in a tress with which she had bound her short bridal veil. For dress, she has—her smocke only; and that torn, and torn again, and patched, diligently; except just at the shoulders, and a little below the throat, where Giotto [214]has torn it, too late for her to mend; and the fair flesh is seen through, so white that one cannot tell where the rents are, except when quite close.

For girdle, she has the Franciscan’s cord; but that also is white, as if spun of silk; her whole figure, like a statue of snow, seen against the shade of her purple wings: for she is already one of the angels. A crowd of them, on each side, attend her; two, her sisters, are her bridesmaids also. Giotto has written their names above them—Spes; Karitas;—their sister’s Christian name he has written in the lilies, for those of us who have truly learned to read. Charity is crowned with white roses, which burst, as they open, into flames; and she gives the bride a marriage gift.

“An apple,” say the interpreters.

Not so. It was some one else than Charity who gave the first bride that gift. It is a heart.

Hope only points upwards; and while Charity has the golden nimbus round her head circular (infinite), like that of Christ and the eternal angels, she has her glory set within the lines that limit the cell of the bee,—hexagonal.

And the bride has hers, also, so restricted: nor, though she and her bridesmaids are sisters, are they dressed alike; but one in red; and one in green; and one, robe, flesh and spirit, a statue of Snow.

“La terza parea neve, teste mossa.”

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Do you know now, any of you, ladies mine, what Giotto’s lilies mean between the roses? or how they may also grow among the Sesame of knightly spears?

Not one of you, maid or mother, though I have besought you these four years, (except only one or two of my personal friends,) has joined St. George’s Company. You probably think St. George may advise some different arrangements in Hanover Square? It is possible; for his own knight’s cloak is white, and he may wish you to bear such celestial appearance constantly. You talk often of bearing Christ’s cross; do you never think of putting on Christ’s robes,—those that He wore on Tabor? nor know what lamps they were which the wise virgins trimmed for the marriage feast? You think, perhaps, you can go in to that feast in gowns made half of silk, and half of cotton, spun in your Lancashire cotton-mills; and that the Americans have struck oil enough—(lately, I observe also, native gas,)—to supply any number of belated virgins?

It is not by any means so, fair ladies. It is only your newly adopted Father who tells you so. Suppose, learning what it is to be generous, you recover your descent from God, and then weave your household dresses white with your own fingers? For as no fuller on earth can white them, but the light of a living faith,—so no demon under the earth can darken them like the shadow of a dead one. And your modern English ‘faith without works’ is dead; and [216]would to God she were buried too, for the stench of her goes up to His throne from a thousand fields of blood. Weave, I say,—you have trusted far too much lately to the washing,—your household raiment white; go out in the morning to Ruth’s field, to sow as well as to glean; sing your Te Deum, at evening, thankfully, as God’s daughters,—and there shall be no night there, for your light shall so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify—not Baal the railroad accident—but

“L’Amor che muove il Sole, e l’altre stelle.”

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