163. Well done the 'Pall Mall'! Had it written "Prudence and parental affection," instead of "Ostentation and parental pride," "must be recognized among the springs of industry," it would have been still better; and it would then have achieved the expression of a part of the truth, which I put into clear terms in the first sentence of 'Unto this Last,' in the year 1862--which it has thus taken five years to get half way into the public's head. "Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious--certainly the least creditable--is the modern _soi-disant_ science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined, irrespectively of the influence of social affection." Look also at the definition of skill, p. 87. "Under the term 'skill' I mean to include the united force of experience, intellect, and passion, in their operation on manual labor, and under the term 'passion' to include the entire range of the moral feelings." 164. I say half way into the public's head, because you see, a few lines further on, the 'Pall Mall' hopes for a pause "half way between the rigidity of Ricardo and the sentimentality of Ruskin." With one hand on their pocket, and the other on their heart! Be it so for the present; we shall see how long this statuesque attitude can be maintained; meantime, it chances strangely--as several other things have chanced while I was writing these notes to you--that they should have put in that sneer (two lines before) at my note on the meaning of the Homeric and Platonic Sirens, at the very moment when I was doubting whether I would or would not tell you the significance of the last song of Ariel in 'The Tempest.' I had half determined not, but now I shall. And this was what brought me to think of it:-- 165. Yesterday afternoon I called on Mr. H. C. Sorby, to see some of the results of an inquiry he has been following all last year, into the nature of the coloring matter of leaves and flowers. You most probably have heard (at all events, may with little trouble hear) of the marvelous power which chemical analysis has received in recent discoveries respecting the laws of light. My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the rainbow of forest leaves being born, and the rainbow of forest leaves dying. And, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It was but the three-hundredth part of a grain, dissolved in a drop of water; and it cast its measured bars, for ever recognizable now to human sight, on the chord of the seven colors. And no drop of that red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out of the ground.