mirror, with
compasses in her right hand; the convex mirror showing her power of
looking at many things in small compass. But forethought or
anticipation, by which, independently of greater or less natural
capacities, one man becomes more _prudent_ than another, is never enough
considered or symbolized.

The idea of this virtue oscillates, in the Greek systems, between
Temperance and Heavenly Wisdom.

Sec. LXXXV. _Eighth side._ Hope. A figure full of devotional expression,
holding up its hands as in prayer, and looking to a hand which is
extended towards it out of sunbeams. In the Renaissance copy this hand
does not appear.

Of all the virtues, this is the most distinctively Christian (it could
not, of course, enter definitely into any Pagan scheme); and above all
others, it seems to me the _testing_ virtue,--that by the possession of
which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not;
for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or
even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual _hope_ of, or longing
for, heaven. The Hope of Giotto is represented as winged, rising in the
air, while an angel holds a crown before her. I do not know if Spenser
was the first to introduce our marine virtue, leaning on an anchor, a
symbol as inaccurate as it is vulgar: for, in the first place, anchors
are not for men, but for ships; and in the second, anchorage is the
characteristic not of Hope, but of Faith. Faith is dependent, but Hope
is aspirant. Spenser, however, introduces Hope twice,--the first time as
the Virtue with the anchor; but afterwards fallacious Hope, far more
beautifully, in the Masque of Cupid:

"She always smyld, and in her hand did hold
An holy-water sprinckle, dipt in deowe."

Sec. LXXXVI. Tenth Capital. _First side._ Luxury (the opposite of
chastity, as above explained). A woman with a jewelled chain across her
forehead, smiling as she looks into a mirror, exposing her breast by
drawing down her dress with one hand. Inscribed "LUXURIA SUM IMENSA."

These subordinate forms of vice are not met with so frequently in art as
those of the opposite virtues, but in Spenser we find them all. His
Luxury rides upon a goat:

"In a greene gowne he clothed was full faire,
Which underneath did hide his filthinesse,
And in his hand a burning hart he bare."

But, in fact, the proper and comprehensive expression of this vice is
the Cupid of the ancients; and there is