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 crushing
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 assuredly 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 durasse, vi puote aver vita."*

* "Purgatorio," i. 108, 109.

But when the little sister herself takes it in hand, to measure things
outside of us with, the joints