Think over that, ladies, and gentlemen who love them, for a pretty way of being decolletée. Even though the flesh should be a little sunburnt sometimes,—so that it be the Sun of Righteousness, and not Baal, who shines on it—though it darken from the milk-like flesh to the colour of the Madonna of Chartres,—in this world you shall be able to say, I am black, but comely; and, dying, shine as the brightness of the firmament—as the stars for ever and ever. They do not receive their glories,—however one differeth in glory from another,—either by, or on, Exchange. Lucca. (Assumption of the Virgin.) ‘As the stars, for ever.’ Perhaps we had better not say that,—modern science looking pleasantly forward to the extinction of a good many of them. But it will be well to shine like them, if but for a little while. You probably did not understand why, in a former letter, the Squire’s special duty towards the peasant was said to be “presenting a celestial appearance to him.” That is, indeed, his appointed missionary work; and still more definitely, his wife’s. The giving of loaves is indeed the lady’s first duty; the first, but the least. Next, comes the giving of brooches;—seeing that her people are dressed charmingly and neatly, as well as herself, and have pretty furniture, like herself. [57] But her chief duty of all—is to be, Herself, lovely. “That through her smocke, wrought with silk, The flesh be seen as white as milke.” [58] Flesh, ladies mine, you observe; and not any merely illuminated resemblance of it, after the fashion of the daughter of Ethbaal. It is your duty to be lovely, not by candlelight, but sunshine; not out of a window or opera-box, but on the bare ground. Which that you may be,—if through the smocke the flesh, then, much more, through the flesh, the spirit, must be seen “as white as milke.” I have just been drawing, or trying to draw, Giotto’s ‘Poverty’ (Sancta Paupertas) at Assisi. You may very likely know the chief symbolism of the picture: that Poverty is being married to St. Francis, and that Christ marries them, while her bare feet are entangled in thorns, but behind her head is a thicket of rose and lily. It is less likely you should be acquainted with the farther details of the group.