Morning swam on the lake in her beautiful nakedness, a wedding of white
and blue, of purest white and bluest blue. Alvan crossed the island
bridges when the sun had sprung on his shivering fair prey, to make the
young fresh Morning rosy, and was glittering along the smooth lake-
waters. Workmen only were abroad, and Alvan was glad to be out with them
to feel with them as one of them. Close beside him the vivid genius of
the preceding century, whose love of workmen was a salt of heaven in his
human corruptness, looked down on the lake in marble. Alvan cherished a
worship of him as of one that had first thrilled him with the feeling of
our common humanity, with the tenderness for the poor, with the knowledge
of our frailty. Him, as well as the great Englishman and a Frenchman,
his mind called Father, and his conscience replied to that progenitor's
questioning of him, but said 'You know the love of woman: He loved
indeed, but he was not an amatory trifler. He too was a worker, a
champion worker. He doated on the prospect of plunging into his work;
the vision of jolly giant labours told of peace obtained, and there could
be no peace without his prize.

He listened to the workmen's foot-falls. The solitary sound and steady
motion of their feet were eloquent of early morning in a city, not less
than the changes of light in heaven above the roofs. With the golden
light came numbers, workmen still. Their tread on the stones roused some
of his working thoughts, like an old tune in his head, and he watched the
scattered files passing on, disciplined by their daily necessities,
easily manageable if their necessities are but justly considered. These
numbers are the brute force of earth, which must have the earth in time,
as they had it in the dawn of our world, and then they entered into
bondage for not knowing how to use it. They will have it again: they
have it partially, at times, in the despot, who is only the reflex of