He is dressed in a robe of white
muslin, muslin of that kind which the Romans called _aura textilis_--
woven, as might seem, from zephyrs or from pulses of the air, such in
its transparency, such in its gossamer lightness. Does the angel touch
the pillar with his foot? Oh no! Even _that_ would be something, but
even _that_ is not allowed. In his soundless flight across it, he
suffers the hem of his impalpable robe to sweep the surface as softly
as a moon-beam. So much and no more of pollution he endures from
contact with earthly objects. The lowest extremity of his dress,
but with the delicacy of light, grazes the granite surface. And
_that_ is all the attrition which the sacred granite receives in
the course of any one century, and this is all the progress which we,
the poor children of earth, in any one century make towards the
exhaustion of our earthly imprisonment. But, argues the subtle legend,
even _that_ attrition, when weighed in metaphysical scales, cannot
be denied its value; it has detached from the pillar an atom (no matter
that it is an invisible atom) of granite dust, the ratio of which atom
to a grain avoirdupois, if expressed as a fraction of unity, would by
its denominator stretch from the Accountant-General's office in London
to the Milky Way.
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