“Father, my prayer is answered,” said Tubal, and quick, to make his knowledge sure, the four built up the first rude forge, and piled it high with wood, and put fire to it, and, as it burned, cast in the metal, which they watched until it reddened and flashed, coruscating. Then Tubal drew the metal forth, and beat it between two stones, and flattened it, and, twisting, gave it ever new forms, while Erix, with Ariel and his mother, stood admiring, and reasoned of its uses. And thus did Tubal work with cunning and with strength, from day to day, until he had won the skill to fashion the metal to his will; to arm his arrows and his spear, and devise new weapons for the chase. He soon found out the way of beating iron upon itself, nor lacked the wit of many inventions to aid his labor; and the ponderous sledge wielded by his arms, black with soot, from morn to eve resounded along the heaving sea, which knew no heavier din when, long after, Vulcan forged beneath Ætna. His tribe stood around him thick, and wondered at his work, and learned of him; and when, as time rolled on, the elders told his story to their sons, they called him the father of all who worked in metal. SECTION IX Ariel went dreaming on his way; nor sought to rival his brother at the forge, nor questioned the right which he assumed to rule among his fellow-men. He acknowledged his brother’s worth, and knew him to be the completest man to meet the stern necessities of life—to lay deeply in that new age a strong foundation upon which others were to build, for good or ill, through many a revolving year, the politics of the earth. To himself it was given to see the future in its action; and it passed before him so distinct and bright, that Zella, sitting at his side, oft turned away with fear, as his tongue grew eloquent over a tale of greatness and of sorrow still hidden within the womb of time. Thrice blessed is he who knows his work and does it; who learns in early youth that the practical is the only good, nor chases phantoms, till, the harvest past, he turns a poor gleaner upon another’s steps, and begs from bounty what should be his of right. But Ariel had other hopes, not willed, but given for a purpose, to which he was bound as the winged chorister is bound to the melody which springs unbidden from its throat. He lived in the ideal, and strove to grasp the mysterious laws by which the world within acts upon the world without. The soul’s own greatness to all of God’s labor a greatness gives, which lesser spirits never know; and the soul’s beauty is poured upon all matter, as the setting sun, in ripe October, pours a purple flood of departing light upon the gorgeous landscapes of my native North. This Ariel knew; and when he listened to the voices of the sea, of the wood, and of the lesser herbage, growing; to the sighing of the air, and the creaking, and the grating of bough on bough, rocked by the wind; he believed that all were