'TALPA' LOQUITUR. 163 



What comes after a famine, Greening ? What is 

 the recoil of Scarcity ? Abundance very true : 

 then will be the tug of war, then ! for good and bad 

 together. " A cruel brute, this Lion," we shall say ! 

 and yet he pastures on the cruellest of all : he cracks 

 the bones of the true blood-suckers ; and " when it's 

 bad weather for thieves," they say, " the true man 

 may sleep the sounder," let the rain rattle on his 

 corn-stack how it may. " Let Mr. Lion roar again,' 

 you will say, when you've seen the end. Even your 

 tiny MOLE is a ruthless beast of the field to slugs, 

 and snails, and caterpillars, and such land-sucking 

 fry a fierce subnavigator, in his way: but his 

 track turns up some pretty cultivation ; it only wants 

 spreading, far and wide ! It's not so wise to throttle 

 him as you think. I grieve to see him hanging 

 gibbeted his clever paddles stopt, by cruel igno- 

 rance. For he is your only granulation-master ; he 

 taught us drainage and sz^-cultivation and we 

 shall learn of him another, and a greater lesson, 

 some day, and call him a prophet- when we've 

 done hanging him and have got some speculation 

 in our own eyes (whose sense is shut at present), 

 instead of saying he can't see. Day and Night ! 

 M 2 



