ckets your chance is none at all, but is exchanged for a
certainty of loss. So as to the gold lottery of Australia, I suspect
(and, observe, not assuming the current reports to be false, but, on the
contrary, to be strictly correct for each separate case, only needing to
be combined and collated as a whole) that if each separate century[43]
of men emigrating to the goldfield of Mount Alexander were to make a
faithful return of their aggregate winnings, that return would not prove
seductive at all to our people at home, supposing these winnings to be
distributed equally as amongst an incorporation of adventurers; though
it _has_ proved seductive in the case of the extraordinary success being
kept apart so as to fix and fascinate the gaze into an oblivion of the
counterbalancing failures.

There is, however, notoriously, a natural propensity amongst men to
confide in their luck; and, as this is a wholesome propensity in the
main, it may seem too harsh to describe by the name of _mania_ even a
morbid excess of it, though it ought to strike the most sanguine man,
that in order to account for the possibility of any failures at all, we
must suppose the main harvest of favourable chances to decay with the
first month or so of occupation by any commensurate body of settlers; so
that in proportion to the strength and reality of the promises to the
earliest settlers, will have been the rapid exhaustion of such promises.
Exactly _because_ the district was really a choice one for those who
came first, it must often be ruined for _him_ who succeeds him.

Here, then, is a world of disappointments prepared and preparing for
future emigrants. The favourite sports and chief lands of promise will
by the very excess of their attractiveness have converged upon
themselves the great strength of the reapers; and in very many cases the
main harvest will have been housed before the new race of adventurers
from Great Britain can have reached the ground. In most cases,
therefore, ruin would be the instant solution of the disappointment. But
in a country so teeming with promise as Australia, ruin is hardly a
possible event. A hope lost is but a hope transfigured. And one is
reminded of a short colloquy that took place on the field of Marengo.
'Is this battle lost?' demanded Napoleon of Desaix. 'It is,' replied
Desaix; 'but, before the sun sets, there is plenty of time to win it
back.' In like manner the new comers, on reaching the appointed ground