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other pictures of tavern-life under Queen Elizabeth | pany of them all. We are carried to these places and James the First. in chairs (or sedans), which are here very cheap, — a guinea a week, or a shilling per hour,—and your chairmen serve you for porters to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice.

"Bishop Earle, who wrote in the first half of the seventeenth century, has left this character' of a tavern of his time: A tavern is a degree, or (if you will) a pair of stairs above an alehouse, where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner's nose be at the door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is supplied by the ivybush. It is a broacher of more news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here by some spongy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this music above is answered with a clinking below. The drawers are the civilest people in it, men of good bringing up; and howsoever we esteem them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. "T is the best theatre of natures, where they are truly acted, not played, and the business, as in the rest of the world, up and down, to wit, from the bottom of the cellar to the great chamber. A melancholy man would find here matter to work upon,-to see heads, as brittle as glasses, and often broken; men come hither to quarrel, and come here to be made friends; and if Plutarch will lend me his simile, it is even Telephus's sword that makes wounds, and cures them. It is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the murderer or the maker away of a rainy day. It is the torrid zone that scorches the face, and tobacco the gunpowder that blows it up. Much harm would be done if the charitable vintner had not water ready for the flames. A house of sin you may call it, but not a house of darkness, for the candles are never out; and it is like those countries far in the north, where it is as clear at midnight as at midday. After a long sitting it becomes like a street in a dashing shower, where the spouts are flushing above, and the conduits running below, etc. To give you the total reckoning of it, it is the busy man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns-of-court man's entertainment, the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's courtesy. It is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of comedy their book, whence we leave them.'"

It was about then that coffee-houses came into fashion, almost, if not quite, the first being that founded by Thomas Garway, or Garraway, in 1651. It, Jonathan's, and Lloyd's soon became famous haunts of city merchants and stock-jobbers, continuing their fame to the present day. Others, without number, were soon opened in all other parts of London.

"A cabinet picture of the coffee-house life of a century and a half since is thus given in the wellknown Journey through England' in 1714. I am lodged,' says the tourist, in the street called Pall Mall, the ordinary residence of all strangers, because of its vicinity to the Queen's palace, the Park, the Parliament House, the theatres, and the chocolate and coffee houses, where the best company frequent. If you would know our manner of living, 't is thus:We rise by nine, and those that frequent great men's levees find entertainment at them till eleven, or, as in Holland, go to tea-tables; about twelve the beau monde assemble in several coffee or chocolate houses; the best of which are the Cocoa-tree and White's Chocolate-Houses, St. James's, the Smyrna, Mrs. Rochford's, and the British Coffee-Houses; and all these so near one another, that in less than an hour you see the com

"If it be fine weather, we take a turn into the Park till two, when we go to dinner; and if it be dirty, you are entertained at piquet or basset at White's, or you may talk politics at the Smyrna or St. James's. I must not forget to tell you that the parties have their different places, where, however, a stranger is always well received; but a Whig will no more go to the Cocoa-tree or Ozinda's, than a Tory will be seen at the Coffee-house, St. James's. "The Scots go generally to the British, and a mixture of all sorts to the Smyrna. There are other little coffee-houses much frequented in this neighborhood, -Young Man's for officers, Old Man's for stock-jobbers, paymasters, and courtiers, and Little Man's for sharpers. I never was so confounded in my life as when I entered into this last: I saw two or three tables full at faro, heard the box and dice rattling in the room above stairs, and was surrounded by a set of sharp faces, that I was afraid would have devoured me with their eyes. I was glad to drop two or three half-crowns at faro to get off with a clear skin, and was overjoyed I so got rid of them.

"At two, we generally go to dinner; ordinaries are not so common here as abroad, yet the French have set up two or three good ones, for the convenience of foreigners, in Suffolk Street, where one is tolerably well served; but the general way here is to make a party at the coffee-house to go to dine at the tavern, where we sit till six, when we go to the play; except you are invited to the table of some great man, which strangers are always courted to, and nobly entertained."

We commend Mr. Timbs's book as one of the pleasantest that can be turned to for gossiping information about London life during the past two hundred years. His subject introduces him to nearly all the greatest politicians, wits, playwrights, and merchants of London since the days of Charles the Second, and he handles it in the best possible way.

BELGIAN BONE CAVES.

THE explorations of the Belgian bone caves, which have been carried on for some time past by MM. Van Beneden and Dupont, have been referred to several times in the pages of The Reader. We have now to lay before our readers an account of the progress of the work up to the end of November last, and for this purpose we make use of a report recently presented by M. Dupont to the Belgian Minister of the Interior. We may premise that all the bone caves in this locality furnish indisputable evidence of one fact, viz.: that the cave-dwellers were destroyed by a sudden inundation, which covered the whole of Belgium and the North of France, the evidences of which M. Dupont finds in the limon of Hesbaye and the yellow clay of the fields, and in the peculiar arrangement of the débris in the caverns. The cave at present under examination was discovered in May last, and is situated on the banks of the river Lesse, opposite the hamlet of Chaleux, about a mile and a half from the well-known Furfooz cave.

At an epoch long before that of its habitation by man, this cavern was traversed by a thermal spring.

It is well lighted, is easy of access, and its situation The number of objects obtained from this cavern is most picturesque. The number of objects found is greater than that obtained from the whole of the in this cave is enormous, and would appear to point caves previously explored. Of worked flints, in to an extended period of occupation by these primi- various stages of manufacture, thirty thousand were tive people. The grand trou de Chaleux, as M. Van collected. Besides these, M. Dupont obtained sevBeneden has proposed to call it, has also been sub-eral cubic metres of bones of all kinds, the horses' jected to the inundation, but the contents have been teeth already mentioned, and a vast quantity of mispreserved almost intact, and this circumstance gives cellaneous articles. a value to the discoveries which was to some extent wanting in the Furfooz caves. According to M. Dupont's theory, the former inhabitants of the cave, warned by the dangerous cracks in the walls and ceiling, suddenly abandoned their dwelling-place, leaving behind them their tools, ornaments, and the remains of their meals. Soon afterwards the roof and sides fell in, and the pieces thus detached covered the floor. In this manner the remains have been preserved from the action of the waters, and have remained undisturbed until the present day. The unfortunate inhabitants doubtless saw in this occurrence the manifestation of a superior power, since the cavern does not appear to have been inhabited after this period, only a few worked flints and bones, probably the result of an occasional visit, having been discovered on the upper surface of the

cavern.

The facts acquired by the excavations at Chaleux, combined with those obtained at the Furfooz caves, form a striking picture of the early ages of man in Belgium. "These ancient people and their customs reappear, after having been forgotten for thousands of years, and like the fabulous bird in whose ashes are found the germ of a new life, antiquity becomes regenerated from its own debris. We see them in their dark, subterranean dwellings, surrounding the hearth, which is protected by the supernatural power of immense, fantastically-shaped bones, engaged in patiently making their flint tools and utensils of reindeer horn, in the midst of pestilential emanations from the animal remains, which their indifference allowed them to retain in their dwelling. The skins of wild beasts, having the hair removed, were stitched together by the aid of their sharpened flints and ivory needles, and served as clothing. We see them pursuing wild animals, armed with arrows and lances tipped with a barb of flint. We take part in their feasts, where a horse, bear, or reindeer replaces, on days when their hunting has been successful, the tainted flesh of the rat, their only resource against famine. Their trading extended as far as the regions now forming part of France, from whose inhabitants they obtained shells, jet, with which they delight to ornament themselves, and the flint which is so valuable to them. falling-in of the roof drives them from their principal dwelling, in which lie buried the objects of their faith and their domestic utensils, and they are forced to seek another habitation..... We know nothing certain of the relation of these people with those of earlier times. Had they ancestors in this country? The great discoveries of our illustrious compatriot Schmerling, and those which Professor Malaise has made at Engihoul, seem to prove that the men whose traces I have brought to light on the Amongst other objects brought to light during the Lesse did not belong to the indigenous races of Belexcavations were the forearm of an elephant, which gium, but were only the successors of the more anappears to be that of the mammoth of Siberia, ancient population. I have even met with certain evianimal which did not exist in Belgium at that epoch. "When we reflect that, till within a comparatively short time, these bones were looked upon as those of a race of giants, and gifted with miraculous We have given in the above abstract an account powers, we cannot be surprised that our inhabitants of the most important features in M. Dupont's reof the caverns of the Lesse, whose civilization may port, which is of great interest. We trust that these be compared to that of those African nations who explorations, which have been carried on at the exare sunk in the darkest depths of fetichism, at-pense of the government, will be continued. tributed similar properties to those enormous bones which were placed as a fetich near their hearth."

An important point seems to be established by M. Dupont's researches, viz. the extended commercial relations of these primitive peoples. The flint which was used for the manufacture of their implements is not that of Belgium, but, according to M. de Mortillet, was brought from Touraine. Several specimens of fossil shells, most of which had been perforated, probably for the purpose of being strung together, and worn as ornaments, were collected, and were submitted to M. Nyst, the wellknown palæontologist. He recognized most of them as belonging to the calcaire grossier of Courtagnon, near Rheims. Two species belonged to the department of Seine-et-Oise. Some fragments of jet and a few sharks' teeth were from the same locality. "We cannot therefore deny," says M. Dupont, "the relations of these men with Champagne, whilst there is no evidence to show their connection with Hainaut and the province of Liége, which could have also furnished them with their flint."

Judging from the quantity of bones found in the cavern, the principal food of these cave-dwellers was the flesh of the horse. M. Dupont collected nine hundred and thirty-seven molar teeth belonging to this animal, a number which corresponds to about forty heads, supposing each set of teeth to be complete. The marrow seems to have been in great request, all the long bones having been broken, so as to extract it. Most of them retain traces of incisions made by their flint tools. The large number of bones of water-rats would also lead us to suppose that they formed a part of the food of these people, as did the badger, hare, and boar.

But a

dences of our primordial ancestors at Chaleux, but the trail was lost as soon as found. Our knowledge of these ancestors stops short at this point."

MR. TUPPER'S WORK AS A POET.*

which they themselves satisfy. Every one has reALL the greater poets have formed the taste marked the struggle through which Wordsworth had to pass before, in the evening of his days, he found a generation in whom he had instilled a thirst for the "lonely rapture of lonely minds," and full of gratitude for the clear draughts of melody with which he slaked that thirst. Even Mr. Tennyson had to fight his way over minds that rebelled against

* Moxon's Miniature Poets. A Selection from the Works of MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER, M. A., D. C. L., F. R. S.

Rose robed in dazzling immortality.
Thou art become as one of us,' they cry;
'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid a heaven of song.

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng.""

If such a winged throne could be kept for Keats, with his rich and sensuous but unhuman imaginings, how much larger and steadier a seat must be reserved for the graceful, intellectual embonpoint, the large, full-bottomed humanity of Tupper's cheery genius.,, Oblivion never "shrank like a thing reproved as it shrinks beneath the accents we have already quoted of our own domestic poet, no less sublimely mild" than Sidney's. Tupper indeed has not yet left us, and long may his throne swing kingless in unascended majesty, if that soft vesper

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the rich double blossoms and heavy hyacinth-like odors of a style so saturated with sentiment, till they learned to long for the beauty they had at first despised. The same may be said with even more obvious truth of the rugged humor and keen imaginative fidelity of Mr. Browning's muse. And so we cannot wonder that it is comparatively late in his career before Martin Farquhar Tupper has wrung for himself the vacant throne waiting for him among the immortals, and after a long and glorious term of popularity among those who know when their hearts are touched without being able to justify their taste to the intellect, has been adopted by the suffrage of mankind and the final decree of publishers into the same rank with Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning. Mr. Tupper is quite conscious that the critical moment of his fame has at length arrived. In a preface marked by his usual sententious wisdom, height is to set for us before it rises for them. But this is at least the moment which prefigures his explains why he asked the admission which has not reception among the immortals, and the fitting time been denied him to this brotherhood of poets:therefore to say a word of his extraordinary powers. "It has occurred to me to request the famous poetical Sosii of Dover Street to authorize a Selection the taste which he satisfies. As we began by remarking, Tupper has formed To one not familiar from my various Rhymes and Rhythms in Moxon's with Tupper there is a certain disappointment at Miniature Series, and aware (as I needs must be by first, such as many complained of in reading, for this time) that I have readers and friends in many instance, Wordsworth's lines written near Tintern nooks and corners of our habitable globe, I have Abbey, in the meditative egotism which may be ob done my best to fill this niche, and to answer my served in him no less than in Wordsworth. The publishers' purpose as well as my own, by grouping disciples of Wordsworth are reconciled to this by as a Selection, not alone several such poems as the the necessarily prophetic character of those who world has been kind enough heretofore to mint-mark bring new lessons to mankind. As a thoughtful with its approbation, but also some that have been critic wrote, "It came to pass in those days that found fault with, and others that are quite new. man who has run the gauntlet of so-called criticism that no doubt suggested the true character of WordsWilliam Wordsworth went up into the hills." And fearlessly and successfully for wellnigh thirty years, worth's poetic mission. With Mr. Tupper the exis not at this hour careful to catch vain praises, or planation is somewhat different. He, too, as he to escape from as vain censures. Let us all retain our opinions peaceably; and if any one will honestly sential to him is not a mere consequence of the simtells us, "magnifies his office," but the egotism esjudge an author, let him first read his works, the plest way of reporting the thoughts which came to very last thing thought of by certain professional the writer, as in Wordsworth's case, for he is not so critics. Englishmen, however, of every class, are in much the mere canal of his thoughts, the aqueduct the main lovers of fair play, especially when all that is asked of them is an open field and no favor. To by which they reach us, as the very object and substance of most of his finest thoughts, the vision itself, such I commend this beautifully printed volume as no less than the stage on which the vision appears. a mere book specimen worthy of the Elzevirs. This is the first stumbling-block to his disciples. But then, when they come to see what there is in that genial personality, that it is a sort of glorified Anglo-Saxon essence which frankly unveils itself under the mere appearance of egotism, the apparent stumbling-block becomes a step to genuine admiration. Take, for instance, the following gay and delicate verses on Mr. Tupper's "beautiful brain,” seeming to paint the first singing, as it were, of the kettle of genius before the evaporation of prose into verse begins, - lines which, with a significant meaning, which we shall presently understand, Mr. Tup

"MARTIN F. TUPPER.

"ALBURY, December, 1865."

A

A man of less accurate mind would have thought it needless to point out that his popularity extends only to the habitable globe, but it is one of the distinctions which has endeared Mr. Tupper to his many admirers, that he brings out into clear view those universal and half-unconscious assumptions of human thought, the indisputable character of which is recognized as soon as they are put down in his massive and lucid English before the readers. The public will hail with satisfaction the award which assigns Mr. Tupper his place beside the great poets of our generation, and we cannot doubt that the noble company of the great poets who strove in vain for that recognition which Mr. Tupper has gloriously achieved, will rise up to ratify the judgment:

"The inheritors of unfulfilled renown

:

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton

Rose pale, his solemn agony had not

Yet faded from him: Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved,
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot,
Arose; and Lucan by his death approved:
Oblivion as they rose shrunk like a thing reproved.
"And many more whose names on earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,

per

has named "Sloth."

"SLOTH.

"A little more sleep, a little more slumber,

A little more folding the hands to sleep,'
For quick-footed dreams, without order or number,
Over my mind are beginning to creep,-
Rare is the happiness thus to be raptured

By your wild whispers, my Fanciful train,
And, like a linnet, be carelessly captured
In the soft nets of my beautiful brain.
"Touch not these curtains! your hand will be tearing
Delicate tissues of thoughts and of things; -
Call me not! -your cruel voice will be scaring
Flocks of young visions on gossamer wings:
Leave me, O leave me! for in your rude presence
Nothing of all my bright world can remain,-
Thou art a blight to this garden of pleasance,
Thou art a blot on my beautiful brain!

Saturday

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into his usual identification of that mind with his
own representative personality. He speaks of the
manifest destiny which urges on his own "energies
ethereal," but he is only the microcosm in which we
see the delineation of the macrocosm indicated at
the commencement of the poem :-

"Unflinching and unfearing,
The flatterer of none,
And in good courage wearing
The honors I have won!
Let Circumstance oppose me,
I beat it to my will;
And if the flood o'erflows me,
I dive and stem it still,
No hindering dull material
Shall conquer or control
My energies ethereal,
My gladiator soul!
I will contrive occasion,
Not tamely bide my time;
No Capture, but Creation
Shall make my sport sublime!
Let lower spirits linger

For sign by beck or nod,

I always see the finger

Of an onward-urging God!"

"My energies ethereal,

My gladiator soul."

An "ethereal gladiator," that is what Mr. Tupper would make out of the strong Anglo-Saxon stuff of which his countrymen are made. That is what Mr. Tupper has already made out of himself.

The seeming egotism of this poem, attributing, as it appears to do, beauty of a high order even to the whity-brown nerve-tissue of Mr. Tupper's brain itself, vanishes as soon as its extraordinary subtlety and boldness of conception are fully perceived. Mr. Tupper, dream-absorbed, and caught in the soft nets of his own beautiful brain,- Mr. Tupper, finding any disturbing agency, whether of domestic servant or of that "hind "elsewhere more than once referred to by him, or indeed of any other interrupting influence, a How fine is that contrast:blot on the intrinsic beauty of the brain in the network of which he is a struggling captive,- Mr. Tupper, half-lulled again by the "sweet vision" in that beautiful brain,—finally, Mr. Tupper's heart reeling in the swift waltz" of his beautiful brain,— are all, especially the last, metaphors so bold that the earnest student of his poetry is driven to look beneath the surface. And there he sees at once that But it is not only in teaching us to see really the poet sees really in himself the genius of Eng- broad and comprehensive thoughts in the apparent that he sees that it is the peculiar danger egotism of his reflections that Mr. Tupper has eduof England to be even too much ruled by her intel-cated the taste which he gratifies. As Wordsworth lectual class, to be caught, in short, "in the soft net educated us to appreciate truly the (almost naked) of her beautiful brain," that the agency which is simplicity which he always observed, so Tupper has most unpleasantly awakening her, and preventing educated us to appreciate truly a simplicity of anher from giving herself up to that influence, is the other kind,—a cooing, domestical simplicity, almost true "blot on her beautiful brain," namely, the la- dovey in its sweetness and innocence, which when boring class, giving rise no doubt to the condition-closely associated with the strong Anglo-Saxon feelof-England question, - that, in spite of this awakenings we have described, - the "gladiator-soul" elemakes a very rare ing blot on the brain, the voice of the intellectual ment of Mr. Tupper's poetry,siren is still in danger of prevailing,-nay, that combination indeed. Take, for example, the second finally, the very heart of England is yielding to the stanza in the poem called "Fons Parnassi," or "Solintoxication, and whirling madly about in the swift ace of Song": waltz of the intellectual thoughts which can neither sober it nor govern themselves. And now we see why he has named the lines "Sloth." It is moral sloth which prevents the will and heart of England from asserting themselves against the toils laid for them by the morbidly active brain.

land,

Mr. Tupper is often as impressive as this, but not often quite so subtle. You must study him indeed, like all great poets, to grasp his full greatness, but usually his apparent drift and his real drift are one and the same. And, as in this poem, he himself almost always stands, and usually without any sort of disguise, for the English character. Take, for instance, the grand lines on "Energy," beginning:

"Indomitable merit

Of the stout old Saxon mind,

That makes a man inherit

The glories of his kind,

That scatters all around him

Until he stands sublime,

With nothing to confound him,
The conqueror of Time."

:

"Ah! thou fairy fount of sweetness,
Well I wot how dear thou art
In thy purity and meetness

To my hot and thirsty heart,
When, with sympathetic fleetness,
I have raced from thought to thought,
And, arrayed in maiden neatness,
By her natural taste well taught,
Thy young Naiad, thy Piería,
My melodious Egeria,
Winsomely finds out my fancies

Frank as Sappho, as unsought,
And with innocent wife-like glances
Close beside my spirit dances,

As a sister Ariel ought, -
Tripping at her wanton will,
With unpremeditated skill,
Like a gushing mountain rill,

Or a bright Bacchante, reeling

Through the flights of thought and feeling,
Half concealing, half revealing,

Whatsoe'er of spirit's fire,

Beauty kindling with desire,

Can be caught in Word's attire;
Evoe! Fons Parnassi,
Fons ebrie Parnassi."

The whole piece is unfortunately too long for quota- The unchastened mind, as yet uncultivated by Mr. tion, but we must show how simply and powerfully, Tupper's influence, will revolt against this, as the after this introduction to show us that he is really enemies of Wordsworth who composed the parody speaking of the English national mind, he glides | about "naughty Nancy Lake" rebelled against his

UNDERGROUND PERILS.

simplicity. But the dove of Mr. Tupper's muse will | That we should feel such a creature-yearning at all overcome them at last, and make them see the ex- while reading Mr. Tupper is the strongest proof we quisite taste and feeling of "an innocent wife-like" could bring of the rare generalizing power which Egeria, - how completely it rids us of any of the belongs to his wise, genial, and innocent poetic ambiguous feelings excited by the story of Numa nature. and Egeria, - an Egeria, too, who does not dance in Mr. Tupper's presence at all without having her sister with her. Even so, we may perhaps a little regret some of the last lines. We don't think "an innocent wife-like" Egeria should have been at all like a Bacchante, even a Bacchante in "Word's attire," though we have no doubt that is a very respectable attire. We don't think the allusion quite in Mr. Tupper's ordinary tone. Still the innocent sweetness of the general conception is perhaps even enhanced by the slip.

The same exquisite purity of feeling shows itself in Mr. Tupper's love of crystals and all symbols of purity. The thoughts shooting through his brain when "the calm chaos-brooding dove" of Silence is present with him he likens to crystals, in spite of the partial painfulness of the suggestion of crystals dancing about in the soft net of a "beautiful brain."

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IF the Apostle Paul had lived some centuries later on, he might have had occasion to add to the list of perils which he underwent those underground dangers to which so large a portion of our population are subject, and of which the Report of the Inspectors of Coal-Mines forms the instructive, though ominous, death-roll.

People sitting before their cheerful Christmas fire have very feeble notions of the difficulty and risk that every nub of coal represents. They have a generally vague impression of the gloomy interior of a coal-pit, that rises to a certain degree of intensity when any particular tragedy on a large scale is unfortunately enacted, such as those at the Hartley or the Risca collieries; but except on such occasions as these they have but little idea of the daily and hourly danger incurred by those whose province it is to procure that most essential article for carrying on British commerce and supplying warmth to the British population. The Reports, albeit they are blue-books, deserve to be studied attentively by every intelligent person; for though we are not all colliery proprietors or coal-merchants, we are all indirectly interested in the coal question; and even as a matter of humanity we cannot help feeling a certain amount of sympathy with the lives and fortunes of three hundred and seven thousand of our fellowcountrymen, that being, according to the Report, about the number of coal-miners employed during the past year.

And when we come to consider that, even after years of diligent and stringent government supervision, when every possible rule has been made for tific investigations, for every 109,000 tons of coal the protection of life, founded upon the most scien

There is no doubt a certain intentional incongruity between the dove-like character of Silence and her crystallizing modus operandi on the brain. The one is soft purity, the other hard purity; and Mr. Tupper means to teach us by the contrast how really consistent is the soft cooing of domestic peace with the hard and luminous brilliance of poetic conception. He is very happy in conveying moral les-brought to the light of day, one life is lost, what sons by these metaphors. In an address to the fly-must have been the hecatombs annually sacrificed ing years he says,

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underground in the days when it was nobody's business to look after the safety of the collier, when he was nothing but a wretched troglodyte, unknown and unnoticed save by those whose policy it was to get as much as they could out of him! It really is a terrible thing to think that every 109,000 tons demands a life, and that during the year 1864 for every 354 persons employed one was struck down, and it fully justifies the pressure put on coal-masters to prevent by every possible means such a lamentable state of things.

where every one will feel at once the originality and beauty of the phrase "coveyed hopes and fears." It transports you immediately to the tridge-field, you hear the whirr of the startled brood as, like hopes and fears, they rise from their nest in It will always happen, however, that whatever the bosom of earth, and the report of the gun which rules are made, whatever improvements effected, brings down one and leaves the others, a living they will be frequently rendered nugatory by the type of the apparently harsh and capricious selec- stupidity and carelessness of those for whose protions of destiny. Yet does not the sportsman se-tection they were adopted, and it is surprising what lect the fattest partridge for his aim, just as destiny so often destroys the richest, best-fed hopes, and leaves the lean ones uninjured?

-

But we must conclude arbitrarily, or we should never conclude at all; and as Tupper finely says, a truth which, like all his truths, has grown upon us more and more the more deeply we study his works,

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"All created yearnings tend
In a rapid ever stronger
To that cataract, The End."

a large proportion of accidents is due to this cause. Some of them read almost like acts of suicide; the worst of it being that the one who is to blame is seldom the only victim, but that others are generally

included in the fatal results.

It might be expected that the more recently a coal district has been worked the smaller percentage would there be of accidents or deaths, owing to the increased appliances and better working ar rangements of the newer collieries, as compared with those which have been at work for some time.

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