660 THE UNIVERSE. 



districts, brutalized by isolation and the most degrading su- 

 perstition. The venerable father of mineralogy, Agricola, 

 influenced himself by the legends of the workmen, in his 

 celebrated work describes these spirits as minutely as if he 

 had held them in his hand ; not a detail of form or dress is 

 wanting. 



The belief was a last ray of the antique philosophy which 

 held that every particle of created matter was animated by 

 invisible intelligence, and possessed sensibility and a spirit 

 of harmony. 



According to the believers in the Cabala, there ex- 

 isted innumerable legions of gnomes, which were scattered 

 through the bowels of the earth. The humble German 

 miner believed there were elves (Kobolds) hidden in every 

 nook and corner of the caverns, working silently and spread- 

 ing everywhere activity and life ; pigmies of the mountains, 

 dressed like miners, whose instinctive foresight enabled 

 them to forge metals, to heap up precious stones in veins, 

 and also to collect mysteriously in the darkness those sin- 

 gular petrifactions which were one day to reveal to us un- 

 known worlds. Although they loved him greatly, these 

 Kobolds fled before the approach of man. They had been 

 rarely seen, but every happy event in the ancient mines 

 was attributed to them. 1 



1 Schleiden took a far bolder flight than Agricola had done. The old mineral- 

 ogist of Suabia had only describe^ the genii of earth; Schleiden represented them 

 at work. In his work on The Plant (La Plante) there is a beautiful engraving 

 representing little gnomes laboriously occupied in laying bare all the riches of 

 earth. Some hew the rock in order to withdraw large trunks of fossilized trees; 

 others collect or solder together the torn fragments. Each gnome or Kobold ap- 

 pears under the form of a little laborious and decrepit miner. The background 

 of the picture is occupied by a cascade, which bounds and foams among the rocks. 

 Schleiden, La Plante, pi. 13. 



