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 sco