that insular nation which finds its strongest stimulus
in domestic comfort and wealth. Apropos, has some one pursued a small
discovery of mine, that, had I not been a stranger of a proscribed
nation, and had not your English earl and the esquires been hostile to
all save the hereditary plough, might have found employment for
thousands and prevented the history of your fathers and of myself?
That bed of argillaceous deposit around the course of your Lerne, which
I found to be of the same quality as the porcelain clay of Meissen,
does it still merely bear a few scanty blades of corn, or is its value
appreciated, and is it occupying hundreds of those who starved and were
discontented, to the great surprise of their respectable landlords? I
wonder whether a few little figures that I modelled in the clay for
specimens, and baked in my hostess's oven, are still in existence. The
forms of clay were there. Alas! I asked in vain of your English
magnates for the fire from heaven to animate the earth, or rather I
would have brought it, and I suffered."

It was amusing to see how much delighted honest Harold was with this
letter, and how much honoured he seemed by his dear old Prometesky
having spent so much time and thought upon writing to him. It fired
him with doubled ardour to investigate the Hydriot Company, and he
could hardly wait till a reasonable hour the next day. Then he took
Eustace down with him and returned quite talkative (for him) with the
discoveries he had made, from one of the oldest workmen who had become
disabled from the damp of working in the clay.

The Company had been set up by a clever speculating young attorney, but
the old man remembered that "that there foreign gentleman, the same as
was sent to foreign parts with the poor young squires," was "always
a-puddling about in it; and they did say as how he tried to get my
lord, and Squire Horsman, and Squire Stympson to see to setting up
summut there; but they wasn't never for 'speriments, and there was no
more talk of it not till that there young Crabbe got hold, they say, of
some little images as he had made, and never rested till he had got up
the Company, and begun the works, having drawn in by his enthusiasm
half the tradesmen and a few of the gentlemen of the place."

Three years of success; then came a bad manager; young Crabbe struggled
in vain to set things right, broke down, and died of the struggle; and
ever since the unhappy affair had li