nent
teaching in Fors was one of a child and a dog. The child is doing
nothing; neither is the dog. But the dog is absolutely and beyond
comparison the best painted dog in the world--ancient or modern--on this
side of it, or at the Antipodes, (so far as I've seen the contents of
said world). And the child is painted so that child _cannot_ be better
done. _That_ is a picture for a museum.

Not that dramatic, still less didactic, intention should disqualify a
work of art for museum purposes. But--broadly--dramatic and didactic art
should be universally national, the luster of our streets, the treasure
of our palaces, the pleasure of our homes. Much art that is weak,
transitory, and rude may thus become helpful to us. But the museum is
only for what is eternally right, and well done, according to divine law
and human skill. The least things are to be there--and the greatest--but
all _good_ with the goodness that makes a child cheerful and an old man
calm; the simple should go there to learn, and the wise to remember.

213. And now to return to what I meant to be the subject of this
letter--the arrangement of our first ideal room in such a museum. As I
think of it, I would fain expand the single room, first asked for, into
one like Prince Houssain's,--no, Prince Houssain had the flying
tapestry, and I forget which prince had the elastic palace. But, indeed,
it must be a lordly chamber which shall be large enough to exhibit the
true nature of thread and needle--omened in "Thread-needle Street!"

The structure, first of wool and cotton, of fur, and hair, and down, of
hemp, flax, and silk:--microscope permissible if any cause can be shown
_why_ wool is soft, and fur fine, and cotton downy, and down downier;
and how a flax fiber differs from a dandelion stalk, and how the
substance of a mulberry leaf can become velvet for Queen Victoria's
crown, and clothing of purple for the housewife of Solomon.

Then the phase of its dyeing. What azures, and emeralds, and Tyrians
scarlets can be got into fibers of thread.

214. Then the phase of its spinning. The mystery of that divine
spiral, from finest to firmest, which renders lace possible at
Valenciennes--anchorage possible, after Trafalgar--if Hardy had but done
as he was bid.

Then the mystery of weaving. The eternal harmony of warp and woof, of
all manner of knotting, knitting, and reticulation, the art which makes
garment possible, woven from the top throughout, draughts of f