sands of years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian
matron? Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave?
Might not every naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every
feeble breast fenced with sweet colors from the cold? What have we done?
Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist together some poor covering
for our bodies. We set our streams to work for us, and choke the air
with fire, to turn our spinning-wheels,--and--_are we yet clothed_? Are
not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul with the sale of cast
clouts and rotten rags? Is not the beauty of your sweet children left in
wretchedness of disgrace, while, with better honor, nature clothes the
brood of the bird in its nest, and the suckling of the wolf in her den?
And does not every winter's snow robe what you have not robed, and
shroud what you have not shrouded; and every winter's wind bear up to
heaven its wasted souls, to witness against you hereafter, by the voice
of their Christ,--"I was naked, and ye clothed me not"?

Lastly--take the Art of Building--the strongest-proudest--most
orderly--most enduring of the arts of man, that of which the produce is
in the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced;
but if once well done will stand more strongly than the unbalanced
rocks--more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art which is
associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with which men
record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make sure their
defence--define and make dear their habitation. And, in six thousand
years of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of all that
skill and strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones, that
encumber the fields and impede the streams. But from this waste of
disorder, and of time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us? Constructive
and progressive creatures, that we are, with ruling brains, and forming
hands; capable of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not
contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, or, in achievement,
with the worm of the sea? The white surf rages in vain against the
ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely nascent life; but only ridges
of formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt our noblest
multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells for each of their young, but
our little ones lie in festering heaps, in homes that consume them like
graves; and night by night, from the corners of our str