Page:Val d'Arno (Ruskin, 1890).djvu/71

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III.—SHIELD AND APRON.
49

toga virilis; and it is sacred to her god Liber.

63. To her god Liber,—observe: not Dionusos, still less Bacchus, but her own ancient and simple deity. And if you have read with some care the statement I gave you, with Carlyle's help, of the moment and manner of her change from savageness to dexterity, and from rudeness to refinement of life, you will hear, familiar as the lines are to you, the invocation in the first Georgic with a new sense of its meaning:—

"Vos, O clarissima mundi
Lumina, labentem cœlo quæ ducitis annum,
Liber, et alma Ceres; vestro si munere tellus
Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista,
Poculaqu' inveiitis Acheloia miscuit uvis,
Munera vestra cano."

These gifts, innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in order and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbolize to you, in the series of types of the power of the Greek gods, placed in your educational series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in rising from its trine cluster of trine leaves,—itself as beautiful as a white rose, and always single on its