price of some manuring; clover and potatoes
flourish, and keep cows, and the cows yield
more manure; regular cropping goes on from
that time, and all the fertile plain which you
see there to the left of you, O Hermit, has
been made thus out of sandhills, by the
solicitude of small proprietors. Them it
remunerated, because they gave their own care and
toil, their own leisure. It would have answered
the purpose of no estate owner to pay
men wages for the reclaiming of this land;
but when it was acquired in patches by hard-
handed men, then by such labour it was
practicable, as Arthur Young has it, "to turn
sand into gold." These men all thrive. They
live, it is quite true, with close economy; but
that is not because (unless in extraordinary
years of famine) they are pinched by want,
but because they have a motive for acquiring
money they have a hope of raising themselves
higher in the scale of wealth, by adding
other little acres to their patrimony. It is
this labour, with keen interest in the work,
and with a fair hope of such return as human
nature prompts us all to look for, that makes
men contented and industrious; this sense of
property, that it is possible by hard work to
acquire, that makes the peasant peaceable
and gives him a conservative interest in the
maintenance of law and order. It is because
a labouring Irishman, in Ireland, can, by no
labour, human or super-human, living in
Ireland, raise himself in the social scale, that all
his energy of character has been perverted,
when at home, into an energy of recklessness."

"But," said the hermit, "how can you
convert these wretched men into proprietors
upon waste land? They cannot buy land;
would you have it given to them?"

"No," said the traveller, "not given
certainly. It is not one thing only that Ireland
wants; it is not one provision that will remedy
all her complaints. She wants a course of
treatment, which has been most properly
commenced. The Encumbered Estates Courts
are now taking out of the hands of practically
insolvent landlords numerous estates which,
being sold for the benefit of creditors, come
into the hands of men able to work them
properly. This checks one symptom of disease;
for hitherto, instead of wastes becoming
cultivated, we have had cultivated land becoming
waste. Lands properly attended to, give
work and wages. Now, if the wastes were, we
will say, purchased by Government, their
marketable value being small, they would be
saleable in parcels of a few acres in extent,
at prices which a labourer might compass by
a few years' industry. Facilities could easily
be given; but the great thing would be an
inducement to labour and to save, a possibility
of rising in society above the lowest step.
The ground acquired would engage much of
the leisure of contented men; and for the rest,
in point of character, despite the common
error of prejudice, in equal circumstances of
encouragement, I would back any Irishman
against a Fleming."

"Are these your private notions?" asked
the hermit.

"No: what I think about the Irish
character, I think in common with all men who
have paid unprejudiced attention to the
subject. What I say of waste lands is political
economy, for the grinding of which I always
use a Mill much and deservedly esteemed in
England."

"And so you get your Irish panacea?"

"So I get no panacea, Mr. Hermit—there
is no single panacea for a social evil. Bodies
politic are complex things; but so I get a
good prescription, which may advantageously
be worked into the treatment of a case which
certainly is not incurable. Now you may
just let down your curtain, friend. I told
you there was nothing to be taught me of
the world. As for your globe, as I before
said, it is just an Illustrated Newspaper.
I'm sick of news. As for your magic, pooh!
What magic of the past would not be clumsy,
if put next door to the common-places of to-
day. Well, it's no fault of yours. And so
this toy of yours has made you miserable."

"Yes, Traveller, this vivid picture of the
world has made me fret against the spell
which keeps me bound to know and never
use my knowledge. What reality of heaven
can there be for me, to whom this earth, and
all the men and women loving, suffering, and
labouring upon it, are but a hermit's toy?
Yet you profess to know the world, and
fly it!"

"Certainly, my friend. For you must
understand that habit, chance of education,
temper, and a thousand accidents of life, all
fly to a man's eyes, and there is no such thing
as the possibility of five men seeing everything
alike. One sees a ball, and says it's round;
two says it's square; three considers it a
pyramid; four says it's like a marlinspike;
and five says there is nothing to be seen at
all. They are not perverse. There are not
many perverse people now-a-days, but we do
see things so very differently, that I consider
eyes to be of no use in the world at all."

"But other senses"—

"Well, it's extremely hard for a man to
feel a thing and own that it feels round, when
he sees positively that it's square. He goes
by rule of square, and then we call it
prejudice; a pardonable matter after all."

"But prejudices yield?"

"Not very often in adults, they yield in the
next generation. Slow work, Hermit."

"Slow, but sure. You who were impatient
to leap into the water for a phantom child,
refuse to fight the tide of difficulty, even to
help a nation in distress."

"There are plenty of men at work, my
friend, trying their strength against the
waves. Now let me try my appetite. 'Tis
easier to see the world than find one's dinner
in it."