"of which truth Clothes are but one example: and surely if we consider the
interval between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and those
Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall note
what progress he has made. He digs up certain black stones from the bosom
of the earth, and says to them, _Transport me and this luggage at the rate
of file-and-thirty miles an hour_; and they do it: he collects, apparently
by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to
them, _Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger and, sorrow and
sin for us_; and they do it."


CHAPTER VI.
APRONS.

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole Volume is that on
_Aprons_. What though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, "whose Apron,
now indeed hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved
successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what though John
Knox's Daughter, "who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her
husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop;"
what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron
worthies,--figure here? An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a tone
of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too clearly discernible.
What, for example, are we to make of such sentences as the following?

"Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to safety, to modesty,
sometimes to roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the
emblem and beatified ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife,
sitting at Nurnberg Work-boxes and Toy-boxes, has gracefully fastened on;
to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder