So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes that need no earthly dawn. It is very pretty of Carpaccio to make her dream out the angel's dress so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves; and to dream so little an angel--very nearly a doll angel--bringing her the branch of palm and message. But the lovely characteristic of all is the evident delight of her continual life. Royal power over herself, and happiness in her flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her prayers, her dreams, her earth, her heaven. * * * * * "How do I know the princess is industrious?" Partly by the trim state of her room--by the hour-glass on the table, by the evident use of all the books she has (well bound, every one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and with no dog's-ears), but more distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. In that one a prince of England has sent to ask her in marriage; and her father, little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her what she would do. He sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain housewifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her needle-work all the time. A workwoman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and princess most in being so. In like manner is a picture by a Florentine, whose mind I would fain have you know somewhat, as well as Carpaccio's--Sandro Botticelli. The girl who is to be the wife of Moses, when he first sees her at the desert well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff in her right. "To do good work, whether you live or die"--it is the entrance to all Princedoms; and if not done, the day will come, and that infallibly, when you must labour for evil instead of good. _FORS CLAVIGERA_ Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, 1872. * * * * * [Illustration] * * * * * End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint Ursula, by John Ruskin