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"Mr. Cardly," here interrupted Mr. Harberry, "how long does it take to count a million?" "That depends," said the school-master, "on the rapidity of the calculator; some calculators count faster than others. An ordinary boy, counting two hundred a minute, would require nearly three days and a half to count a million." "Very good," said Mr. Harberry; "please go on with your story, sir."
One of these shrewd "calculators" once told me, that, when he saw a man with four panes of glass in his house, and no clock, he either sold him one straightway, or "set him down crazy, or a screw." "Have you no other 'signs of promise'"? I asked. "O yes," he replied, "many!
I doubt if any Roman festival was as vast or striking as the Derby day, or if any Imperial triumph could show such a prodigious muster of faithful people as our young Princess saw on Saturday, when the nation turned out to greet her. The calculators are squabbling about the numbers of hundreds of thousands, of millions, who came forth to see her and bid her welcome.
"Ah, those men of cold appearance," he growled, "those men with discreet countenance, those close-shaving calculators, those moralists! What fools they do make of themselves when once started! Who can imagine to what insane extremities this one may have been driven under the spur of some mad passion!" And stamping violently his foot upon the carpet, from which arose clouds of dust,
But the calculating power alone should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to have the smallest amount of reason in it; since a machine can be made to do the work of three or four calculators, and better than any one of them. Sometimes I have been troubled that I had not a deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers.
The scenes of dissension which filled the palace and court were scandalous beyond all contemporary example: and, the strength of the two parties vibrating in the scale, according as corrupt calculators looked to the extent of Godoy's present power, or to the probability of Ferdinand's accession, the eyes of both were turned to the hazardous facility of striking a balance by calling in support from the Tuileries.
The feverish fervour of his temperament was, it is true, occasionally shown in a remarkable energy of delivery, or a sudden and unexpected burst of the more impetuous powers of oratory; but these were so evidently natural and spontaneous, and so happily adapted to be impressive of the subject, rather than irrelevant from its bearings, that they never displeased even the oldest and coldest cynics and calculators of the House.
If he is fond of astronomical studies he will join the association of astronomers, with its philosophers, its observers, its calculators, with its artists in astronomical instruments, its scientists and amateurs, and he will have the telescope he desires by taking his share of the associated work, for it is especially the rough work that is needed in an astronomical observatory bricklayer's, carpenter's, founder's, mechanic's work, the last touch being given to the instrument of precision by the artist.
But the age of horseflesh is gone that of engineers, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the pleasure of coucoudom is extinguished for ever. Why not mourn over it, as Mr. Burke did over his cheap defence of nations and unbought grace of life; that age of chivalry, which he lamented, apropos of a trip to Versailles, some half a century back?
Before that hard-bitten crew whom Burke ridiculed the "calculators and economists" he will talk airily of golf and ladies' fashions; and ladies he will seek to impress by the Praise of Vivisection or the Defence of Philosophic Doubt.
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