who passed a life of devotion in carving gargoyles or shaping rose-windows,
than that of the greatest master who drew general outlines: perhaps it was
yet more heroic; for, for the master-builder, who, even if it were but
vaguely, had an image of what the work would be when the last stone was
laid and the last spire raised, it was easy to labour with devotion and
zeal, though well he might know that the placing of that last stone and the
raising of that last spire would not be his, and that the building in its
full beauty and strength he should never see; but for the journeyman
labourer who carried on his duties and month by month toiled at carving his
own little gargoyle or shaping the traceries in his own little oriel
window, without any complete vision, it was not so easy; nevertheless, it
was through the conscientious labours of such alone, through their heaps of
chipped and spoiled stones, which may have lain thick about them, that at
the last the pile was reared in its strength and beauty.

For a Moses who could climb Pisgah, and, though it were through a mist of
bitter tears, could see stretching before him the land of the inheritance,
a land which his feet should never tread and whose fruit his hand should
never touch, it was yet, perhaps, not so hard to turn round and die; for,
as in a dream, he had seen the land: but for the thousands who could climb
no Pisgah, who were to leave their bones whitening in the desert, having
even from afar never seen the true outline of the land; those who, on that
long march, had not even borne the Ark nor struck the timbrel, but carried
only their small household vessels and possessions, for these it was
perhaps not so easy to lie down and perish in the desert, knowing only that
far ahead somewhere, lay a Land of Promise. Nevertheless, it was by the
slow and sometimes wavering march of such as these, that the land was
reached by the people at last.

For her, whose insight enables her to see, through the distance, those