He has given us to see the northwest pa.s.sage forced, and winter bearded on his everlasting throne, by another. (Is it the hero"s fault if self and snowdrop-singing poetasters cannot see this feat with the eyes of Camoens?)
He has given us to see t.i.tans enslaved by man; Steam harnessed to our carriages and ships; Galvanism tamed into an alphabet--a Gamut, and its metal harp-strings stretched across the earth _malgre"_ mountains and the sea, and so men"s minds defying the twin monsters Time and s.p.a.ce; and now, gold revealed in the East and West at once, and so mankind now first in earnest peopling the enormous globe. Yet old women and children of the pen say, this is a bad, a small, a lifeless, an unpoetic age--and they are not mistaken. For they lie.
As only tooth-stoppers, retailers of conventional phrases, links in the great cuckoo-chain, universal pill-venders, Satan, and ancient booksellers" ancient nameless hacks can lie, they lie.
It is they who are _small-eyed._ Now, as heretofore, weaklings cannot rise high enough to take a bird"s-eye view of their own age, and calculate its dimensions.
The age, smaller than epochs to come, is a giant compared with the past, and full of mighty materials for any great pen in prose or verse.
My little friends aged nineteen and downward--fourscore and upward--who have been lending your ears to the stale little cant of every age, as chanted in this one by Buffo-Bombastes and other foaming-at-the-pen old women of both s.e.xes--take by way of antidote to all that poisonous, soul-withering drivel, ten honest words.
I say before heaven and earth that the man who could grasp the facts of this day and do an immortal writer"s duty by them, i.e., so paint them as a later age will be content to engrave them, would be the greatest writer ever lived. Such is the force, weight and number of the grand topics that lie this day on the world"s face. I say that he who has eyes to see may now see greater and far more poetic things than human eyes have seen since our Lord and his Apostles and his miracles left the earth.
It is very hard to write a good book or a good play, or to invent a good picture, and having invented paint it. But it always was hard, except to those--to whom it was impossible. Bunglers will not mend matters by blackening the great canvases they can"t paint on, nor the impotent become males by detraction.
"Justice!"
When we write a story or sing a poem of the great nineteenth century, there is but one fear--not that our theme will be beneath us, but we miles below it; that we shall lack the comprehensive vision a man must have from heaven to catch the historical, the poetic, the lasting features of the t.i.tan events that stride so swiftly past IN THIS GIGANTIC AGE.
CHAPTER LVII.
THE life of George Fielding and Thomas Robinson for months could be composed in a few words: tremendous work from sunrise to sundown, and on Sunday welcome rest, a quiet pipe, and a book.
At night they slept in a good tent, with Carlo at their feet and a little bag between them; this bag never left their sight; it went out to their work and in to sleep.
It is dinner-time; George and Tom are s.n.a.t.c.hing a mouthful, and a few words over it.
"How much do you think we are, Tom?"
"Hush! don"t speak so loud, for Heaven"s sake;" he added in a whisper, "not a penny under seven hundred pounds" worth."
George sighed.
"It is slower work than I thought; but it is my fault, I am so unlucky."
"Unlucky! and we have not been eight months at it."
"But one party near us cleared four thousand pounds at a haul; one thousand pounds apiece--ah!"
"And hundreds have only just been able to keep themselves. Come, you must not grumble, we are high above the average."
George persisted.
"The reason we don"t get on is we try for nothing better than dust. You know what you told me, that the gold was never created in dust, but in ma.s.ses, like all metals; the dust is only a trifle that has been washed off the bulk. Then you said we ought to track the gold-dust coa.r.s.er and coa.r.s.er till we traced the metal to its home in the great rocks."
"Ay! ay! I believe I used to talk so; but I am wiser now. Look here, George, no doubt the gold was all in block when the world started, but how many million years ago was that? This is my notion, George; at the beginning of the world the gold was all solid, at the end it is all to be dust; now which are we nearer, the end or the beginning?"
"Not knowing, can"t say, Tom."
"Then I can, for his reverence told me. We are fifty times nearer the end than the beginning, follows there is fifty times as much gold-dust in nature as solid gold."
"What a head you ha" got, Tom! but I can"t take it up so. Seems to me this dust is like the grain that is shed from a ripe crop before it comes to the sickle. Now if we could trace--"
"How can you trace syrup to the lump when the lump is all turned to syrup?"
George held his peace--shut up, but not convinced.
"Hallo! you two lucky ones," cried a voice distant about thirty yards.
"Will you buy our hole, it is breaking our heart here."
Robinson went up and found a large hole excavated to a great depth; it was yielding literally nothing, and this determined that paradoxical personage to buy it if it was cheap. "What there is must be somewhere all in a lump."
He offered ten pounds for it, which was eagerly snapped at.
"Well done, Gardiner," said one of the band. "We would have taken ten shillings for it," explained he to Robinson.
Robinson paid the money, and let himself down into the hole with his spade. He drove his spade into the clay, and the bottom of it just reached the rock; he looked up. "I would have gone just one foot deeper before I gave in," said he; he called George. "Come, George, we can know our fate in ten minutes."
They shoveled the clay away down to about one inch above the rock, and there in the white clay they found a little bit of gold as big as a pin"s head.
"We have done it this time," cried Robinson, "shave a little more off, not too deep, and save the clay." This time a score of little nuggets came to view sticking in the clay; no need for washing, they picked them out with their knives.
The news soon spread, and a mult.i.tude buzzed round the hole and looked down on the men picking out peas and beans of pure gold with their knives.
Presently a voice cried, "Shame, give the men back their hole!"
"Gammon," cried others, "they paid for a chance, and it turned out well; a bargain is a bargain." Gardiner and his mates looked sorrowfully down.
Robinson saw their faces and came out of the hole a moment. He took Gardiner aside and whispered, "Jump into our hole like lightning, it is worth four pound a day."
"G.o.d bless you!" said Gardiner. He ran and jumped into the hole just as another man was going to take possession. By digger"s law no party is allowed to occupy two holes.
All that afternoon there was a mob looking down at George and Robinson picking out peas and beans of gold, and envy"s satanic fire burned many a heart. These two were picking up at least a hundred pounds an hour.
Now it happened late in the afternoon that a man of shabby figure, evidently not a digger, observing that there was always more or less crowd in one place, shambled up and looked down with the rest; as he looked down, George happened to look up; the newcomer drew back hastily.
After that his proceedings were singular; he remained in the crowd more than two hours, not stationary, but winding in and out. He listened to everything that was said, especially if it was muttered and not spoken out; and he peered into every face, and peering into every face it befell that at last his eye lighted on one that seemed to fascinate him; it belonged to a fellow with a great bull neck, and hair and beard flowing all into one--a man more like the black-maned lion of North Africa than anything else. But it was not his appearance that fascinated the serpentine one, it was the look he cast down upon those two lucky diggers; a scowl of tremendous hatred--hatred unto death. Instinct told the serpent there must be more in this than extempore envy. He waited and watched, and, when the black-maned one moved away, he followed him about everywhere till at last he got him alone.
Then he sidled up, and in a cringing way said:
"What luck some men have, don"t they?"
The man answered by a fierce grunt.
The serpent was half afraid of him, but he went on.
"There will be a good lump of gold in their tent to-night."
The other seemed struck with these words.