Those members which have to support the weight of the rest, deserve peculiar care, and might even claim exclusive favour, but they are more wretched than the rest. Our poor feet are doomed to a dark dungeon, from the cradle to the tomb. Never are they suffered to look upon the sun, never allowed for a moment to touch the earth; once a day, perhaps for a few moments, they get a glimpse of the subdued light of a closed chamber, or perceive round corners of a table, the artificial glare of a wax taper; that respite over, they are straight again, rammed down into their cases. After this, they are vilified; their very name is mentioned with repugnance, and their sight associated with indecency. No revolution is to set them free, no change of fashion to break their chains: hopeless drudgery, unrequited toil, supercilious scorn are their fate, and the care which is bestowed upon them is to pervert their nature, to disfigure and deform them, and make them even to themselves a shame. The man is no gainer, who treats his feet with such injustice; and the costume no slight benefit which prevents him from doing so. If the standard of taste sink, we expect from the gifted spirit an effort to raise it. Alas! it is they who weigh upon and degrade it. The workshop of the artist:--does one recall the figures which adorn a Moorish encampment. But the heaping up of drapery, and the loading of gold “for effect,” which the royal academician steps back to admire, leaves the end of costume out of view. That end must be attained in all perfection. It must be a clothing for the figure, as well as a drapery for the eye; and of this no artist--and indeed no master--has had the thought. As to colour, it is the same, with the exception of the appropriation of blue and white in the Spanish school to the vesture of the Virgin. There is no more discrimination exhibited in a gallery of master-pieces, than in a tailor’s or a milliner’s shop, and, in fact, the cant of the virtuoso has passed to the showman in the shop. How different the Greeks! Their draped statues still exist: their paintings have disappeared, but a Roman critic bewailing the same confusion, points out to his compatriots, the primitive[294] colours of the master-pieces of Apelles, Protogenes, Zeuxis, and Theron.