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IV. INTERPRETATIONS.
187
 

having this notion of its purpose—namely, to clothe the poor first, the rich afterwards. No nonsense talked in those days about the evil consequences of indiscriminate charity.

9, b. Avarice, with coffer and money. The modern, alike English and Amienois, notion of the Divine consummation of the wool manufacture.
10, a. Chastity, shield with the Phoenix[1]
10 b. Lust, a too violent kiss.
11 a. Wisdom: shield with, I think, an eatable root; meaning temperance, as the beginning of wisdom.
11, b. Folly, the ordinary type used in all early Psalters, of a glutton, armed with a club. Both this vice and virtue are the earthly wisdom and folly, completing the spiritual wisdom and folly opposite under St.
  1. For the sake of comparing the pollution, and reversal of its once glorious religion, in the modern French mind, it is worth the reader's while to ask at M. Goyer's (Place St. Denis) for the 'Journal de St. Nicholas ' for 1880, and look at the ' Phenix,' as drawn on p. 610. The story is meant to be moral, and the Phoenix there represents Avarice, bat the entire destruction of all sacred and poetical tradition in a child's mind by such a picture is an immorality which would neutralize a year's preaching. To make it worth M. Goyer's while to show you the number, buy the one with ' les conclusions de Jeanie ' in it, p. 337 : the church scene (with dialogue) in the text is lovely.