I give now, for such further illustrations 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 Duerer’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 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