condition many centuries ago-could there have been education --could there have been printed books available for the multitude- could there have been food and raiment for ourselves— or could science have advanced? Must not England have remained in the back-ground, its inhabitants unable to exercise that intellectual activity which they have exerted in placing their country in advance of the whole world? Without coal there could have been no extensive use of steam, even if the vast power of that agent had been discovered. Without steam and iron, where should we now be in the advance of civilization over the world? Coal is indeed the indispensable food of all industry. It is a primary material, by whose aid we engender force, and obtain power sufficient for any purpose that has yet been imagined. Marvellous indeed are the results obtained on considering the uses of those materials which form together the great carboniferous series of deposits as developed in the north of England. In a small strip of country, in an area of less than six or eight thousand square miles, which in some parts of Europe would be passed over almost without remark by the practical man, the politican, and the statistician-we find grouped together a multitude of large towns, a population of some millions of people, having, perhaps, more influence on the comforts of civilized man throughout the world than could elsewhere be found in a space of five, or even ten times that amount. Nor is this all. The other great manufacturing and commercial towns of England, with the exception of the capital, are similarly placed with reference to geological position. The coal and iron of the carboniferous rocks forms still the magnet towards which the other desirable things of this world are attracted, and they determine the growth and well-being of towns, not only in England, but elsewhere on the continent of Europe, and lately in America also. In France, Belgium and Germany, we everywhere see towns rising up into manufacturing importance, where fuel and iron exist beneath the soil; and rarely indeed has it been found possible to produce any great improvement in these respects, except where nature has pre-ordained by giving these sources of true riches. It is now well known that, however valuable in themselves other rarer natural products may be, there is no doubt of the normously greater benefit to a people in the case of those materials which either enter into every manufacture, and are so power, or which are greatly increased in value by being t many processes to render them more generally usefu out, at the same time, causing them to be taken out sumption. Coal in this country is obtained at a serious expen risk of human life. It often happens that, on takin newspaper, we see notice that another explosion fro damp has taken place in some coal mine, and that ten, fifty, or a hundred of the workmen have been hurried pared into eternity. Some we read-and these are greatest sufferers-have been destroyed at once, b death by the explosion itself, so that no human po system couid, perhaps, have saved them. But a larg portion have been found at a distance. They were per their task some hundred yards off, they heard the they felt that they were doomed men; they rushed at the pit bottom, but, cut off by the want of a direct com tion, their only chance was to reach the main gallery, if, by any happy accident, they might escape. But the they arrived at this point, they found the effects of the ex the fearful after damp already on its way before them. are stopped by this invisible, intangible, but fatal and in ble barrier. Some throw themselves upon the grou creep on for a few yards in the vain hope of escape. hopeless despair, await the advance of destruction. Su simple history of the whole event. One single inspir the after damp produces convulsions in the throat, and almost certain precursor of instant death, so that it happens that any person escapes to tell the sad tale. I a question, then, worthy of consideration whether, b method that could be adopted, these lives might be pres For whom do these men suffer? Their widows and o their mothers, their sisters, and their friends have a righ upon every one of us who benefit by their labors, but thought of their dangers and sufferings. They labor benefit. We induce them to run these risks, and are b weigh carefully the great social relations which impose duty upon us to improve their condition. Each event S L and expressed in this matter, it would not be allowed to go on as it does from accident to accident. That the subject is obscure and difficult, is not a sufficient reason that it should be neglected; and because the sufferers are patient, the place of the accident far removed, and the objects of it beyond the sphere of our immediate exertions-because few amongst us have visited a coal mine, and know nothing of the danger personally, we are not therefore at liberty to let the matter take its course without an attempt to do good. Some pity should be felt and some sympathy also expressed for those whose lives are spent, and whose deaths may be caused ir providing us with the means of comfort and enjoyment. us think seriously how much we owe to them-the comfort of the fireside, that essential requisite to home enjoyment-the luxuries that surround us-t -the facilities of travelling-the use of and interest in all machinery and manufactures-all these we owe to the coal miner ; and then think how little we do for him in return. He must daily descend some hundred yards into the bowels of the earth, traversing many miles of low subterranean passages, performing his task in the most inconvenient posture, in an atmosphere always impure and choked with dust, if not actually dangerous-lighted by a small candle, or by the yet fainter glimmer penetrating the meshes of a wire gauze-and then, from time to time, exposed to the chance of these accidents. He troubles not our repose-the tale of his distress hardly reaches our ears— - he is poor-he is far awayhe dies but he is our fellow-creature and our fellow-countryman. Each one amongst us is related to him by many bonds, and it is our duty to see that every practicable method is adopted to improve his condition. And if the dangers that surround him must still remain, in spite of all our exertionsif the terrible accidents from explosion must sometimes occur, still we have a duty to perform, for we are bound to use everymeans to diminish their frequency and extent, and to take away, if possible, from their frightful results. This duty is one, not only affecting the legislature, but every individual amongst us; for all may in some way, either directly or indirectly, have influence with those upon whom ultimately the responsibility of so great an act of public justice must fall. -ANSTED. THE MINER. THEY brought him from the dusky mine Strange! from beneath a mass of earth, The youth should thus be lifted forth None knew the face, yet was it fair, That earth from taint of all decay And who might guess how many a day The crowding miners gather'd round- Soon every village wife and maid His was no form to be pass'd by, Yet of that thronging company "The spirits of the mine with ease All scatter'd back, a shapeless dread In beauty, all alone. When, peering through the fearful crowd, A wrinkled woman old Crept slowly forth, and scream'd aloud That visage to behold. The grief in memory fondly nurs'd For threescore years in vain, SOME lineaments of the character of the man were cerned in the child. There remain letters written by tions when he was in his seventh year; and from the it appears, that, even at that early age, his strong wil fiery passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidit sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness had begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. "F says one of his uncles, "to which he is out of measure a gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, flies out on every trifling occasion." The old people neighborhood still remember (1840) to have heard fr |