rn, "They had brick for stone, and
slime had they for mortar."

137. The first function of Modesty, then, being this recognition of
place, her second is the recognition of law, and delight in it, for the
sake of law itself, whether her part be to assert it, or obey. For as it
belongs to all immodesty to defy or deny law, and assert privilege and
license, according to its own pleasure (it being therefore rightly called
"insolent," that is, "custom-breaking," violating some usual and
appointed order to attain for itself greater forwardness or power), so it
is the habit of all modesty to love the constancy and "solemnity," or,
literally, "accustomedness," of law, seeking first what are the solemn,
appointed, inviolable customs and general orders of nature, and of the
Master of nature, touching the matter in hand; and striving to put
itself, as habitually and inviolably, in compliance with them. Out of
which habit, once established, arises what is rightly called
"conscience," nor "science" merely, but "with-science," a science "with
us," such as only modest creatures can have--with or within them--and
within all creation besides, every member of it, strong or weak,
witnessing together, and joining in the happy consciousness that each
one's work is good; the bee also being profoundly of that opinion; and
the lark; and the swallow, in that noisy, but modestly upside-down, Babel
of hers, under the eaves, with its unvolcanic slime for mortar; and the
two ants who are asking of each other at the turn of that little
ant's-foot-worn bath through the moss "lor via e lor fortuna;" and the
builders also, who built yonder pile of cloud-marble in the west, and the
gilder who gilded it, and is gone down behind it.

138. But I think we shall better understand what we ought of the nature
of Modesty, and of her opposite, by taking a simple instance of both, in
the practice of that art of music which the wisest have agreed in
thinking the first element of education; only I must ask the reader's
patience with me through a parenthesis.

Among the foremost men whose power has had to assert itself, though with
conquest, yet with countless loss, through peculiarly English
disadvantages of circumstance, are assuredly to be ranked together, both
for honor, and for mourning, Thomas Bewick and George Cruikshank. There
is, however, less cause for regret in the instance of Bewick. We may
understand that it was well for us once to see what an e