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tide, which, like the well-springs at the source of some great river, are small and imperceptible at first, but soon swell to become a great flood.

No reasonable doubt can exist that a large proportion of the first deviations from health are remediable when sufficiently early precautions are observed, and the vitiating conditions to which they owe their origin are detected and removed. Ignorance on all matters connected with the preservation of health is no doubt wide spread and deep

rooted, but the science of preventive medicine has in our days made great progress, and the efforts of various sanitary associations deserve all praise. To the ignorant and intelligent alike, it is to be recommended that they should not regard slight deviations from health as unworthy of regard. The inconvenience from impaired health, without actual sickness may be slight and transient, but if of longer duration or frequent recurrence, it may not "safely be trusted to time, or to an old wife's nostrum."

MONCKTON MILNES' MONOLOGUE.
"And the beating of my own heart
Was the only sound I heard."-MONCKTON
MILNES.

I CAME to the House of Commons
With a strong speech full of life,

To prove it well to marry

The sister of one's wife.

I moved the second reading,
And no one said a word,
And the beating of my own heart
Was the only sound I heard.

The man who sits for Pontefract

Of course a bridge must break:
I'll break the matrimonial bridge

For the ancient borough's sake-
For a man to marry his grandmother
Perhaps may seem absurd,
But a scruple as to the lady's age
Was the only sound I heard.
My good friend Robert Collier

Said, "I'll help you all I can :

I think that any woman

Ought to marry any man." Quoth I," Then marry your sister."

Quoth he "That never occurred To my mind. The sister of one's wife Was the lady of whom I heard."

Up got Lord Robert Cecil,

Most logical was he,

And he said, "If you follow Mr. Milnes

You must legalize bigamy."

By a syllogistic process

He proved me rather absurd,
And the moan of bigamists oppressed
Was all the sound I heard.

Then Walpole quoted Shakspeare,
And Tacitus also-

And told me I was a poet,

Which I didn't exactly know.

A really serious compliment

To his chaff would have been preferred,

But a laugh from the Opposition

Was all the sound I heard.

Then up I got and told them

That canonical law was bosh:

"If a man mayn't marry his aunt or niece, Your marriage law wont wash.

If I like the sister of my wife

I'll marry her-like a bird.”

But ironical cheers from the Tories
Were the only sound I heard.
-Press.

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We have no hesitation in saying that till this story is confirmed on authority much higher "in point of veracity than that of His Majesty King George IV., we shall attach very little importance to it. The Duke of Wellington had his failings as a politician and as a man; but the king is not to be believed, nor is the name of the Duke of Wellington, Peel, or Canning, to be sullied by anything that fell from his lips. He had become by this time not only the greatest liar in his three kingdoms, but simply destitute of the sense of truth. He "had not truth enough in him to make a lie." This very chapter contains evidence of the veracity as well as of the kingly politeness of the "first gentleman in England."-Saturday Re

view.

WE have received a prospectus announcing the projected publication of a new journal, on a plan which will be novel in the present day, although it is an extension of the old system of "news-letters," which once circulated in various parts of the country. The paper is to be called the London Correspondent, and every article in it will be written in the form of a letter, similar to the letters of "London Correspondents" in provincial papers, only that these will embrace almost every topic, and be written by men of established reputation. The idea is a promising one, and Mr. Colman Boroughs, the editor, is competent to carry it out with success. The new journal will be looked for with some little curiosity by the public.-London Review

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Oh, brave lads of the West,
Joy to each valiant breast!
Three days of steady fight-
Three shades of stormy night-
Donelson tumbles.
Surrender, out of hand!
"Unchivalrous demand!"

(So Buckner grumbles.)

March in, stout Grant and Smith,
(Ah, souls of pluck and pith!)
Aaul down, for the Old Flag,
That black and bloody rag-
Twelve thousand in a bag!

True hearts are overjoyed-
But half as many scamper,
(Ah, there's the only damper!)
Through the very worst of weathers,
After old Fuss-and-Feathers

And foul Barabbas-Floyd.
Was't funk that made them flee?
Nay-they're as bold as we-
"Twas their bad cause, d'ye see,
Whereof they well were knowing
(For all their brag and blowing,
Their cussing and their crowing),
That is what cowed 'em!
Keep the Old Flag agoing-

Crowd 'em, boys, crowd 'em!

In Zollicoffer's camp, it seems, were found quantities of children's clothes, plundered from loyal houses by the rebels, and carefully preserved for the use of their own offspring.

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From All the Year Round.

THE COST OF COAL.

fenced in by a wooden rail. Above the abyss, and at a great elevation over my head,

In the midst of a bare and barren coun-I saw what I had seen before from below, try that offered nothing attractive to the eye, and possessed every element that could impress the imagination with a sense of gloom -in the midst of a country stretched out in an interminable flat, with here and there some dark gully or ravine, or some little wood-brown and wintry and leafless-there stood before me a kind of tower of rough gray stone, of mean altitude, and surrounded by many dingy sheds and outbuildings.

The tower itself was approached on one side by a high and narrow wooden bridge, of somewhat slender construction, which connected the great stone building with a large mound or hillock at a little distance, and on the other by a flight of rude stone steps. The tower was surmounted by a strange and sinister apparatus of wheels and ropes and beams.

the two racklike wheels. They were still revolving slowly and noiselessly, and the sliding ropes which passed over them were lost in the great black chasm at my feet. Doubtless the wheels were so arranged as to lower or to raise those ropes at pleasure, and now they were raising them, silently, smoothly, and the spiral twist of the cordage was coming up out of the darkness, strand by strand, and inch by inch. There were two ropes, one thicker and whiter than the other, and they were both ascending.

What a depth that dark hole must be that those ropes should go on rising and rising out of it, and still the line not come to an end! I watched it long, and it rose and rose still, and no end seemed possible. So I drew close to the mouth of the great black hole, and This apparatus, raised high into the holding firmly to a wooden rail which guarded air, looked like the machinery of a rack, and it-holding on against the Demon which said imparted to this building the look of a great "Jump in "-I looked down into the darklonely torture-chamber, or a place of execu-ness, and so waited straining my eyes, and tion. The wheels and the ropes which went saying "No," as the Demon said "Jump round them were in motion, but from time in." to time they would stop for a little while, and presently, as if at some given signal, would turn and work again, revolving noiselessly and smoothly.

The inside of that tower-like building, with the grim apparatus above it, was the end and destination of the journey which I had undertaken, and hardly pausing to note what is here set down, lest that dogged resolution which I felt should weaken or change, I made straight for the flight of steps which I have mentioned as giving access to the building. There were some men stationed on those steps to guard the place from intruders; but I had a certain password, which I spoke as they advanced to meet me, and when they heard it they stood aside and let me by.

At last, as I watched, there was a sudden change in one of the ropes. I think it was turned into an iron chain; and in the next moment two strange-looking and darkly clad men appeared, clinging to the chain. Swiftly they rose up out of the blackness into the light. But this was not all. There was more of a burden hanging to the rope than this, for the chain was tightened that hung below the two darkly clad men, and something more was rising out of the dark hole which another turn of the wheel would bring to light.

The end of the chain that hung below was clasped and girt about the bodies of two dead men. It was grappled about their waists, and so their heads had fallen back, their faces were turned up to the sky, their hair streaming down in ragged locks, their arms and legs swung helplessly and heavily, and the weight of death was in every limb and in every part of every limb. This ghastly apparition rose out of the black abyss, and it was not a dream. While I was looking, the second rope turned into a chain, and one I paused on a wooden stage, across which strangly clad man, with a pale face, clung to a bitter wind was driving keenly. There it. Below him there hung grappled to the yawned at my feet a great black abyss, end of the chain a single corpse, with stream

There is a kind of half-averted glance with which one looks towards a thing that one dreads to see, approaching it with hesitating eyes. Just thus I approach the mention of what is to come with a half-reluctance, and write with an unwilling hand and with a hesitating pen.

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE.

849

ing locks and upturned face, like the others, and with powerless limbs that hung down as if the darkness claimed them, and was loath to give them up. This was not a dream either.

I left the platform chilled to the soul, and with a blank and sickening heart; and descending again the stone steps, I passed round the tower-like building to its other side, and looked up to where the high and long viaduct of wood was to be seen bridging across the space between the tower and the great mound or hillock of which I have spoken before. I saw that at the farther end of it, and all about the mound, and on the flat ground beneath, was gathered a great concourse of pale and silent people, who all looked towards the tower and towards the high and slender viaduct or bridge. While I waited, and looked with them in the same direction, I saw a low truck pushed out from the tower and wheeled swiftly across the bridge, and on that truck was a black coffin. Presently a tall and gaunt figure of very strange appearance, with long hair and beard floating out on the cold wind, came after the coffin from within the tower, and he leaned over the bridge, his figure showing against the sky, and he pointed suddenly towards the coffin as it rolled, and cried aloud to the people below and around:—

"THIS IS CHRISTOPHER WANDLESS!"

I saw all this. The dark stone building, and the high bridge and the coffin wheeled across it, and the gaunt man who called out the name of him who lay within it. And this was not some strange stage play. It was not a picture from some new Dance of Death. It was not a dream. It was reality.

I went, then, to the other side of the great mound on which the crowd was assembled, and at the foot of it I saw a train of carts of all sorts and kinds waiting to receive the dead, some with straw in them to give the corpse a softer bed. When a coffin was brought down from the mound and placed in one of the carts, those who had not been able, for the press upon the hillock above, to get near and look upon the dead man's face, would crowd round the cart, and clamber up upon it, and stand upon the wheels, and the coffin-lid would be pushed aside, and all who could get a chance would gaze upon the sight within it.

And as I looked towards the stone building with the high structure of beams and wheels above it, I saw that those wheels were still revolving slowly, and the ropes again ascending. Again the dark truck was pushed out upon the wooden viaduct, and this time it was followed by another; then, as before, the weird figure of the man with the long hair and beard was seen upon the bridge, and again he pointed with his hand to the coffins, and again he called aloud to the people :

"These are John Liddell and Oswald Gleghorn!"

After I had stood looking up at that terrible bridge for a time, watching the rolling of the coffins, and listening to the calling of the names, I turned about, and saw at a distance a long, long row of small low houses a single row some quarter of a mile or more from end to end. Towards this row of houses I observed that the carts were driven as soon as they had received their terrible burden.

I was half afraid of intruding upon grief which I had no right to meddle with in going near that village; but still I followed one of the carts at a distance, and, when it had at length reached the farther end of the row of houses and the coffin had been taken into one of them, I drew near to the door. A crowd of people was assembled on the threshold and in the room within. At the doors of the adjoining houses stood a few women, some with a strange sullen look on their faces, and some with a stupid stunned expression very miserable to see. But from within the house into which the body had been carried there came from some person whom I could not see for the bystanders, a sound of such lamentation as I never heard before. It was a woman's wailing cry fast repeated, and perfectly monotonous, but of such a terrible and peculiar sorrowfulness, so passionate and heart-broken, that I could not, dared not, remain there and listen to it. It was an unbearable cry which I may never forget, and I turned and went away from it. I could bear the horrors of this scene but indifferently, but the grief I could not bear at all. The cry I heard may have been that of a mother with her dear, dear boy brought back to her-and this I fancied to be the case; or it may have been the wail of some

widow-but I know of it that it was unbear- | A couple of drunken men were reeling along

able to hear, and that I went away from its sound with a miserable heart.

And so I passed by all this row of houses and saw that they were filled with coffins. Some were piled upon the bedsteads, and some propped on benches and stools on the floor and covered with sheets, through which their hideous outlines showed. Over some, newly arrived, the neighbors were standing in groups, and loving hands were arranging the dead, and wiping the stains from their faces, as it seemed. Some were silent, which was very terrible, and some were moaning and weeping; but none were crying with the same peculiar wail which I had heard issuing from that house at the end of the village.

Most of the houses had their doors standing open, and in one instance, where two of the doors came very near together, a couple of children—a girl and boy, I think were playing at bo-peep, in and out.

Was that not a dream either? No. I neither heard the sound of the woman's wail, nor saw the children playing at bo-peep in a terrible dream, any more than the other horrors that I had witnessed.

I was awake and standing on English soil, in the village of New Hartley, in Northumberland. The gray stone building like a tower was the fatal Hartley Colliery. The rack-like wheels and cords that rose above it formed part of the apparatus for lowering the pitmen into the shaft, and bringing them up again; and the bodies which I had seen brought up from that black chasm were those of the miners who perished in the depths three hundred feet below.

the main thoroughfare, and I lost sight of them as they plunged into one of the houses where the crowd was thickest round a corpse. The little Methodist chapel in the middle of the village was open and full of people, who went there to identify a body which was laid on one of the benches. It was that of a boy, whose face was not disfigured as some of the others were.

From the village I went back to the colliery, and ascended once more to that dreadful platform. The wheels were still turning, and the ropes ascending with their awful load. One could hardly find standing room for the piles of coffins which were placed about in readiness, and for those which were being borne past to the particular spot on the platform where the bodies were laid out. At that place an old woman was standing with a quantity of linen, which she tore into pieces for winding-sheets. These were stretched out and kept from blowing away by weights on their corners till they were wanted, and round about stood those who unfastened the chains with which the corpses were girt about, besides those who were wanted to identify the dead, the doctors, and others. The colliery boys were there to recognize the faces of the other boys who were brought up from below. One after another, at intervals of about a quarter of an hour, the loads of dead were raised, the bodies were reached from the abyss over which they hung by the men who stood there for the purpose, and laid, clothed as they were, upon the outstretched sheet. Poor men, and poor boys, their faces and limbs were grimed with black, and many disfigured in an awful degree. Poor patient hard-working men !

Before returning to the colliery, I lingered a little longer in the village and noticed more of that sullen expression of which I It was a sight almost as touching as it was have spoken appearing in many faces. I noticed, too, to my surprise, that there was a sort of gala-look about the inside of the houses. Far from having neglected to put things straight, as one would have thought they would, the miserable inhabitants seemed to have brightened everything up, and arranged their abodes with a more than common care and neatness. I have also an impression that the women were smartly and carefully dressed. Among the people out side the houses this certainly was so, and artificial flowers were stuck in their bonnets in most cases-flowers of the brightest kind.

ghastly to see them brought up thus, and lain in their coffins the sheet folded over them, clothed as they were-clothed only in a few scant garments, however, for the air below, though damp, is, I believe, not cold, and they want but little clothing when they are at work. The bodies did not seem to be stiff, and the limbs were easily composed. Some were much more frightful to look upon and more decomposed than others, and some of the boys had color in their lips certainly, and if I remember rightly-it is difficult to be accurate in such a case-had some tint of redness in their faces. "A laddie's cof

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