Catherine Hilliard had plenty of sympathy and admiration to spare for every good citizen and patriot, a history of whose achievements got between the boards of a book; nay, she wasted interest and regard on some patriots of rather doubtful complexion—Count Egmont and Camille Desmoulins, for example. She only saw them in their dress-coats and revived togas, as the men figured in print; she could not guess that in their dressing-gowns and slippers, or what stood for their undress, the fellows were self-indulgent and ‘rough customers’ enough, like ordinary men. But a simple tradesman was nobody in Catherine’s eyes, because his ambition reached no higher than to give back to his branch of trade that integrity and excellence which ought to be the crowning distinction of all honest trade in an honest—not to say a Christian nation—because he would magnify his peculiar field of work and make it honourable, feeding the people with material food convenient for their bodily life, as Frederick Perthes, the prince of booksellers, strove in his day to raise the book trade of Germany and sought to feed the minds and hearts of his countrymen with spiritual food. It was a trifle to her that the faintest approach should be made to elevating whole classes, with regard to which the present absurd and dishonouring creed was that no member could rise without abandoning his homely trade and his fellow-traders. In the name of Heaven, if the craft were honest, could it not be ennobled in its loyal performance? Had it not been so with many a craft, such as those of the goldsmith, the weaver, and the dyer, now treated with comparative contempt, in old burgher towns and free cities, when the craftsmen were men of genius, skill, and taste far advanced in civilisation? People might tell him—Oliver, that such an ornamental craft as that of a goldsmith, for instance, requiring notable skill and taste, was one thing, and a purely useful business like that of a baker, was another. But he was prepared to show that the fine arts were very far from being what their idle amateur worshippers, not their true and humble disciples, represented them to be, in the economy of a people. He did not cry down art or learning, perhaps it would have been easier for him, on the whole, if he had appreciated each of them less. Yet bread—not art—was the staff of life, and One who had come among them as the King of men had not thought it beneath his Divinity to work miracles in order to give common bread to hungry multitudes.