You will not buy a pig in a poke: if you cheapen a horse, you will see him stripped of his housing-cloths, you will see him naked and open to your eye; or if he be clothed, as they anciently were wont to present them to princes to sell, 'tis only on the less important parts, that you may not so much consider the beauty of his colour or the breadth of his crupper, as principally to examine his legs, eyes, and feet, which are the members of greatest use: "Regibus hic mos est: ubi equos mercantur, opertos Inspiciunt; ne, si facies, ut saepe, decora Molli fulta pede est, emptorem inducat hiantem" ["This is the custom of kings: when they buy horses, they have open inspection, lest, if a fair head, as often chances, is supported by a weak foot, it should tempt the gaping purchaser." -- Horace, Sat., i.

2, 86.] why, in giving your estimate of a man, do you prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes?
He then discovers nothing to you but such parts as are not in the least his own, and conceals those by which alone one may rightly judge of his value.

'Tis the price of the blade that you inquire into, not of the scabbard: you would not peradventure bid a farthing for him, if you saw him stripped.

You are to judge him by himself and not by what he wears; and, as one of the ancients very pleasantly said: "Do you know why you repute him tall?
You reckon withal the height of his pattens."-- [Seneca, Ep.

76.]--The pedestal is no part of the statue.