you can put your meat on the
Harpies',[10] or on any other, tables; but you must have your cup to
drink from. And to hold it conveniently, you must put a handle to it;
and to fill it when it is empty you must have a large pitcher of some
sort; and to carry the pitcher you may most advisably have two handles.
Modify the forms of these needful possessions according to the various
requirements of drinking largely and drinking delicately; of pouring
easily out, or of keeping for years the perfume in; of storing in
cellars, or bearing from fountains; of sacrificial libation, of
Panathenaic treasure of oil, and sepulchral treasure of ashes,--and you
have a resultant series of beautiful form and decoration, from the rude
amphora of red earth up to Cellini's vases of gems and crystal, in which
series, but especially in the more simple conditions of it, are
developed the most beautiful lines and most perfect types of severe
composition which have yet been attained by art.

[Footnote 10: Virg., _AEn._, iii. 209 _seqq._]

118. But again, that you may fill your cup with pure water, you must go
to the well or spring; you need a fence round the well; you need some
tube or trough, or other means of confining the stream at the spring.
For the conveyance of the current to any distance you must build either
enclosed or open aqueduct; and in the hot square of the city where you
set it free, you find it good for health and pleasantness to let it leap
into a fountain. On these several needs you have a school of sculpture
founded; in the decoration of the walls of wells in level countries, and
of the sources of springs in mountainous ones, and chiefly of all, where
the women of household or market meet at the city fountain.

There is, however, a farther reason for the use of art here than in any
other material service, so far as we may, by art, express our reverence
or thankfulness. Whenever a nation is in its right mind, it always has a
deep sense of divinity in the gift of rain from heaven, filling its
heart with food and gladness; and all the more when that gift becomes
gentle and perennial in the flowing of springs. It literally is not
possible that any fruitful power of the Muses should be put forth upon a
people which disdains their Helicon; still less is it possible that any
Christian nation should grow up "tanquam lignum quod plantatum est secus
decursus aquarum," which cannot recognise the lesson meant in their
being told of the