keeping your embroidery
watchfully from the moth: and lastly, distributing its produce
seasonably; that is to say, being able to carry your corn at once to the
place where the people are hungry, and your embroideries to the places
where they are gay; so fulfilling in all ways the Wise Man's
description, whether of the queenly housewife or queenly nation: "She
riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a
portion to her maidens. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her
clothing is silk and purple. Strength and honour are in her clothing,
and she shall rejoice in time to come."

10. Now, you will observe that in this description of the perfect
economist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied expression of
the balanced division of her care between the two great objects of
utility and splendour: in her right hand, food and flax, for life and
clothing; in her left hand, the purple and the needlework, for honour
and for beauty. All perfect housewifery or national economy is known by
these two divisions; wherever either is wanting, the economy is
imperfect. If the motive of pomp prevails, and the care of the national
economist is directed only to the accumulation of gold, and of pictures,
and of silk and marble, you know at once that the time must soon come
when all these treasures shall be scattered and blasted in national
ruin. If, on the contrary, the element of utility prevails, and the
nation disdains to occupy itself in any wise with the arts of beauty or
delight, not only a certain quantity of its energy calculated for
exercise in those arts alone must be entirely wasted, which is bad
economy, but also the passions connected with the utilities of property
become morbidly strong, and a mean lust of accumulation merely for the
sake of accumulation, or even of labour merely for the sake of labour,
will banish at last the serenity and the morality of life, as
completely, and perhaps more ignobly, than even the lavishness of pride,
and the likeness of pleasure. And similarly, and much more visibly, in
private and household economy, you may judge always of its perfectness
by its fair balance between the use and the pleasure of its possessions.
You will see the wise cottager's garden trimly divided between its
well-set vegetables, and its fragrant flowers; you will see the good
housewife taking pride in her pretty table-cloth, and her glittering
shelves, no less than in her well-dressed