he merchant's, and bringing it to their doors. Of course you may
save something by going at once to the merchant's. The poor cannot do
this, and have to pay an extra price on this, as on almost everything
they consume.

And now once more I am by my sea-coal fire, burning up cheerily in this
bleak winter night. Let me light up another cigar, and indulge in a
reverie. I am in a Welsh port on the Bristol Channel. Yesterday it was
a small borough, with an ancient castle, and an appearance of dirt, and
poverty, and age. To-day its moors have become docks, or covered with
iron roads, its few streets, but lately deserted, now stretch far away
and are teeming with busy life. Where the heron flew with heavy
wings,--where the sportsman wandered in search of fowl,--where idle boys
played, thousands of habitations and warehouses have been planted. There
the snort of the iron horse is heard morning, noon, and night. There the
ships of almost every country under heaven float. There you meet German,
and French, and Dane, and American, and Italian, and Greek. What
collects that many-coloured and many-language-speaking crowd? Where has
come the money to build those big warehouses, to excavate those capacious
docks, to plant those iron rails, to make on this ancient desert a Babel
busier and more populous than Tyre or Sidon of old? The answer is soon
given. Up those bleak hills, a few miles away, are the coal-works, a
little further still are more, a little further still are more, beyond
them are the iron-works, and thus we go on, coal and iron everywhere, all
fast being changed by magic industry into gold. Nature has destined
England to be the workshop of the world. She sent here the Saxon race,
she filled the bowels of the land with ores more valuable than those of
Potosi. To France and Spain she gave wine; to the countries lying on the
Baltic, timber and grain; to Russia, hemp and tallow; to Lombardy, its
rich silk; to Calabria, its oil; to Ceylon, its spices; to Persia, its
pearls; to America, its cotton; to China, its tea; to California, its
glittering gold; but she has given us the iron and the coal--without
which all her other gifts were vain--and with which all the others can be
bought. To the rank we take amidst the nations of the earth, from the
first we were destined. Ours is not the blue sky of Italy, nor the warm
breath of the sunny south, but it is an atmosphere that fits man for
persevering industry and d