ter-damsels must needs
swim up from the bottom of the brooks, and bring him gifts, corals,
and pearls, and turkisses. As for gold he scarce heeds it now: he has
a tribe of little elves that wash it out of the sand for him, and
gather it up, like bees, into balls and grains, and then carry it like
honey, and stuff his cane with it. Ay, ay, my worthy smooth-faced
pedlar of all wisdom's small wares! this is why the old man is for
ever moping so, and never dares laugh; this is why he loses his wits
if he chances to hear music, which gladdens the heart of every godly
man; this is why he never goes into company, and is always fretful and
cross-grained: for he knows full well what end he must come to, and
that all his earthly grandeur cannot buy him off; because he has
forsaken his God, and no human being ever saw him in a church."

"This is the hateful part of superstition," exclaimed Edward
indignantly, "which otherwise would only deserve our contempt, and
which, if it did not thus deprave the understanding and the heart,
might delight us by its poetical features, and furnish the imagination
with much fantastical amusement. Are you not ashamed, old man, to
think and prate in this way of the most virtuous, the most beneficent
of men? How many human beings are fed and supplied with comforts by
his extensive transactions? is he not always giving the needy a share
in the blessings with which heaven rewards his industry? He spends his
life in thought, in watching, in care, in writing, in toil, for the
sake of nourishing thousands, who but for him would perish without
employment; and as whatever he undertakes with so much judgement is
favoured by fortune, fools are audacious enough to slander his
understanding which they cannot comprehend, and his virtues which they
are unable to appreciate, with their stupid impertinent
extravagances."

"Fortune!" laught the miner: "you talk of fortune, and fancy that in
using the silliest word in the world you have said something: why, it
is the very same thing that I mean and believe; only that you don't
understand what you say, nor can anybody make any sense of it. My
jewel, the earth, the water, the air, mountains, forests, and vallies,
are no dead lifeless dogs, as you mayhap think them. All sorts of
things dwell and bustle about in them, things that you call powers and
the like: these can't endure to have their old quiet abodes turned
topsy-turvy in this manner, and dug away and blown up