Let the man who lives by his daily sweat pause in his toil, and, with his foot upon his spade, watch the white smoke that floats in the distance; listen to the lessening thunder of the engine that, instinct with Vulcanic life, has rushed, devouring space, before it. That little curl of smoke hangs in the air a thing of blessed promise—that roar of the engine is the melody of hope to unborn generations. But now, the digger of the soil looks moodily at that vapour, and his heart is festering with the curse upon the devil Steam; that fiend that grinds his bones beneath the wheels of British Juggernaut. Poor creature! The seeming demon is a beneficent presence that, in the ripeness of time, will work regeneration of the hopes of men. Let the poor man—the mechanic of a town—look around him. Let him in his own house, humble though it be, acknowledge the presence of a thousand comforts which, had he lived two centuries ago, he could not with a baron’s wealth have purchased. Not mere creature enjoyments; but humanizing, refining pleasures, drawing man nearer to man, expanding the human heart, and imparting to humanity the truest greatness in the greatest gentleness. “What!” it may be asked, “can you have the hardihood, or the ignorance, to vaunt these days above the days of Elizabeth? These days with famine throwing the shuttle—with ignorance, wholly brutish, digging in the pit—with gold, a monster all brain, and so the very worst of monsters—dominating throughout the land, and crushing the pulses of thousands within its hard, relentless grasp? Would you not rather pray for a return of those merry, merry days, when men were whipped, imprisoned, branded, burnt, at little more than the mere will of Majesty, for mere opinion—but who had, nevertheless, bacon and bread and ale sufficient to the day?” No; we would go no step backward, but many in advance; our faith still increasing in the enlarged sympathies of men; in the reverence which man has learned and is still learning to pay towards the nature of his fellow-men; in the deep belief that whatever change may and _must_ take place in the social fabric—we have that spirit of wisdom and tolerance (certainly _not_ a social creature of the golden days) waxing strong among us,—so strong that the fabric will be altered and repaired brick by brick, and stone by stone. Meanwhile, the scaffolding is fast growing up about it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] THE LITTLE GREAT AND THE GREAT LITTLE