d have remained alone. Over them the victory was longer than
empire, and their thousands of loud voices have never ceased to confess
the conquest of the cold floods, separated long ago, drawn one by one,
alive, to the head and front of the world.

Of such a transit is made no secret. It was the most manifest fact of
Rome. You could not look to the city from the mountains or to the
distance from the city without seeing the approach of those perpetual
waters--waters bound upon daily tasks and minute services. This, then,
was the style of a master, who does not lapse from "incidental
greatness," has no mean precision, out of sight, to prepare the finish of
his phrases, and does not think the means and the approaches are to be
plotted and concealed. Without anxiety, without haste, and without
misgiving are all great things to be done, and neither interruption in
the doing nor ruin after they are done finds anything in them to betray.
There was never any disgrace of means, and when the world sees the work
broken through there is no disgrace of discovery. The labour of
Michelangelo's chisel, little more than begun, a Roman structure long
exposed in disarray--upon these the light of day looks full, and the
Roman and the Florentine have their unrefuted praise.

THE FOOT

Time was when no good news made a journey, and no friend came near, but a
welcome was uttered, or at least thought, for the travelling feet of the
wayfarer or the herald. The feet, the feet were beautiful on the
mountains; their toil was the price of all communication, and their
reward the first service and refreshment. They were blessed and bathed;
they suffered, but they were friends with the earth; dews in grass at
morning, shallow rivers at noon, gave them coolness. They must have
grown hard upon their mountain paths, yet never so hard but they needed
and had the first pity and the readiest succour. It was never easy for
the feet of man to travel this earth, shod or unshod, and his feet are
delicate, like his colour.

If they suffered hardship once, they suffer privation now. Yet the feet
should have more of the acquaintance of earth, and know more of flowers,
freshness, cool brooks, wild thyme, and salt sand than does anything else
about us. It is their calling; and the hands might be glad to be stroked
for a day by grass and struck by buttercups, as the feet are of those who
go barefoot; and the nostrils might be flattered to be, li