ns, with their
glittering subterraneous chambers, will be hocus-pocust into mere
store-houses, wretcheder ones than if they were made of wood, into
miserable wareshops and stalls. What then would the dwarfish sprites,
and the mighty mountain-spirit, and all the goblins and elvish imps,
and the swarm of gnomes there below have to do? and yet they are
always, some of them cleverly, some of them clumsily, putting their
hands to the wheel. And the waters! and the vapours! O thou blind and
deaf generation, that wilt not see and understand, what is yet much
more easily comprehensible than your dead, lifeless world! If life and
growth, and the workings by which life is propagated and multiplied,
can ever come to a standstill, then in your own realm too, in the
places where you fancy you see life, it is a sheer illusion and cheat.
The solid earth is alive, but in a different manner; and when it
happens to draw in its breath, when the old giant yawns and stretches
his tired limbs, and tries to arrange them more comfortably, you are
all aghast, and set up a howl about earthquakes, while your walled
hovels are running after you for variety's sake, and your towers are
tumbling into your pockets and slippers."

"You are a strange man," said the other, "and much too hot-headed to
listen to reason. Surely we ought to love truth above our puerile
prejudices. We do not make nature, but she is already such as she is,
spread out before us, for us to watch her ways and learn from her
teaching."

"Nature!" exclaimed the old miner; "that is just another of their
stupid words! My mountain has nothing to do with nature; it is my
mountain. About that I know everything; of your nature I know nothing
at all. Just as if a tailor, who had a coat to make, were to keep on
prating about nothing but wool, and merino sheep! To such a pitch have
people already brought matters, that they can't look at anything as
what it is, but search out some great big generality to which they may
tie it and slay it and embowel it. What say you to this? I once talked
to a man out of Hungary, a fellow-countryman of yours, but he had his
wits more about him; and he told me of a vine, I believe not far from
Tokay, which must have stood upon a vein of gold, and in which a
stream of gold brancht out and ran through all the wood. He shewed me
a bit of this vine, and I could clearly see and distinguish the
gleaming of the gold that had grown up with it. He gave me his word