ss of his existence, and accuse him of intemperance.

AMONG THE MINERS.

A fishing village has a picturesqueness and a kinship with Nature and
the hills, utterly lacking in a mining locality. The squalid rows of the
latter, arranged in wretched, heart-breaking symmetry, are an offence to
the landscape. Mud and filth cumber the door-steps, runnels of
malodorous water ooze along the rows, ragged and ill-kempt bairns tumble
about like little savages. A pitiful sight it is to see the black squads
of colliers returning to their homes after a day in the damp bowels of
the earth: greasy caps with little oil-lamps attached, wet, miry
clothing and grimy faces, all make up a most saddening spectacle. The
wages given to these poor fellows are miserably meagre, considering that
after the age of forty-five, their limbs are stiffened with rheumatism
and their lungs the seat of chronic asthma. It is not surprising that
miners should be intemperate, and that their recreations should rise no
higher than dog-racing and cock-fighting.

It is very unpleasant to think that so much good bone and muscle is
being ground and destroyed by work so brutalising and unnatural. Coal
must be brought to the surface for the wants of civilisation, and in the
process the collier is destroyed, body and soul. Society needs
constantly to be reminded of its duties towards those who, in Helot
fashion, clean the drains and work the mines. Those duties involve more
than the distribution of tracts.

I had the opportunity of speaking to a crowded meeting of miners in the
county of Stirling quite recently, and was immensely pleased with the
behaviour and close attention of the audience. Before the speaking
began, the proceedings resembled a University Graduation Ceremony, that
is, there was a great deal of whistling, cat-calling, and rowdy
merriment. The audience kept on their caps, and many of them, disdaining
the use of chairs and benches, squatted against the walls in the
position so dear to subterranean workers. Once the lecture began, the
resemblance to a University gathering ceased, for the colliers behaved
like gentlemen. What subject, it may be asked, could possibly interest
an assembly of illiterate miners? It so happens that, in Scotland, we
have a great number of working-men poets, who have, in a homely but very
graphic way, voiced the feelings of the labouring classes, and given fit
expression to every joy and sorrow that men experience in this mor