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 shoot out in an amazing manner:  the four-square walls even of celestial cities being measurable enough by that reed; and the way pointed to them, though only to be followed, or even seen, in the dim starlight shed down from worlds amidst which there is no name of Measure any more, though the reality of it always.  For, indeed, to all true modesty the necessary business is not inlook, but outlook, and especially uplook:  it is only her sister Shamefacedness, who is known by the drooping lashes—­Modesty, quite otherwise, by her large eyes full of wonder; for she never contemns herself, nor is ashamed of herself, but forgets herself—­at least until she has done something worth memory.  It is easy to peep and potter about one’s own deficiencies in a quiet immodest discontent; but Modesty is so pleased with other people’s doings, that she has no leisure to lament her own:  and thus, knowing the fresh feeling of contentment, unstained with thought of self, she does not fear being pleased, when there is cause, with her own rightness, as with another’s, as with another’s, saying calmly, “Be it mine or yours, or whose else’s it may, it is no matter; this also is well.”  But the right to say such a thing depends on continual reverence and manifold sense of failure.  If you have known yourself to have failed, you may trust, when it comes, the strange consciousness of success; if you have faithfully loved the noble work of others, you need not fear to speak with respect of things duly done, of your own.

136.  But the principal good that comes of art being followed in this reverent feeling is of it.  Men who know their place can take it and keep it, be it low or high, contentedly and firmly, neither yielding nor grasping; and the harmony of hand and thought follows, rendering all great deeds of art possible—­deeds in which the souls of men meet like the jewels in the windows of Aladdin’s palace, the little gems and the large all equally pure, needing no cement but the fitting of facets; while the associative work of immodest men is all jointless, and astir with wormy ambition; putridly dissolute, and forever on the crawl:  so that if it come together for a time, it can only be by metamorphosis through a flash of volcanic fire out of the vale of Siddim, vitrifying the clay of it, and fastening the slime, only to end in wilder scattering; according to the fate of those oldest, mightiest, immodestest of builders, of whom it is told in scorn, “They had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.”