dreary bleak waste around shall laugh with the gleam of corn. For
you know the nature of this Cumberland soil,--you, who possess much
of it, and have won so many fair acres from the wild; you know that
my uncle's land, now (save a single farm) scarce worth a shilling
an acre, needs but capital to become an estate more lucrative than
ever his ancestors owned. You know that, for you have applied your
capital to the same kind of land, and in doing so, what blessings--
which you scarcely think of in your London library--you have
effected, what mouths you feed, what hands you employ! I have
calculated that my uncle's moors, which now scarce maintain two or
three shepherds, could, manured by money, maintain two hundred
families by their labor. All this is worth trying for; therefore
Pisistratus wants to make money. Not so much,--he does not require
millions; a few spare thousand pounds would go a long way, and with
a modest capital to begin with, Roland should become a true
squire,--a real landowner, not the mere lord of a desert. Now
then, dear sir, advise me how I may, with such qualities as I
possess, arrive at that capital--ay, and before it is too late--so
that money-making may not last till my grave.

Turning in despair from this civilized world of ours, I have cast
my eyes to a world far older,--and yet more to a world in its giant
childhood. India here, Australia there,--what say you, sir, you
who will see dispassionately those things that float before my eyes
through a golden haze, looming large in the distance? Such is my
confidence in your judgment that you have but to say, "Fool, give
up thine El Dorados and stay at home; stick to the books and the
desk; annihilate that redundance of animal life that is in thee;
grow a mental machine: thy physical gifts are of no avail to thee;
take thy place among the slaves of the Lamp,"--and I will obey