Next look'd I in a darksome den,
Webbed o'er with spider's thread,
Where bookes were piled, and on eache booke
I" metaphysics" read;

Spoke Hermes," Friend, the price of these
Is puzzling of the brain,

A gulf of words which, who gets in,
Can ne'er get onte again."

I then saw "law," piled up alofte,
And asked its price to know;

"Its price is, conscience and good name,"
Said Hermes, whispering low.
Nexte, "Physic and divinity,"

I stood as I was loth,

To take or leave, with curling lip,

Said Hermes, "Quackery, both !"

Now, friend," said I," since of your wares You no good thing can telle, You are the honestest chapman That e'er had wares to selle."

DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND:

OR,

MANNERS OF LONDON MERCHANTS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Tempore mutato de nobis fabula narratur. Decio, a man of great figure, that had large commissions for sugar from several parts beyond sea, treats about a considerable parcel of that commodity with Alcander, an eminent West India merchant; both understood the market very well, but could not agree. Decio was a man of substance, and thought nobody ought to buy cheaper than himself. Alcander was the same, and not wanting money, stood for his price. Whilst they were driving their bargain at a tavern near the Exchange, Alcander's man brought his master a letter from the West Indies, that informed him of a much greater quantity of sugars coming for England than was expected. Alcander now wished for nothing more than to sell at Decio's price, before the news was public; but being a cunning fox, that he might not seem too precipitant, nor yet lose his customer, he drops the discourse they were upon, and putting on a jovial humour, commends the agreeableness of the weather; from whence falling upon the delight he took in his gardens, invites Decio to go along with him to his country house, that was not above twelve miles from London. It was in the month of May, and as it happened upon a Saturday in the afternoon, Decio, who was a single man, and would have no business in town before

Tuesday, accepts of the other's civility, and away they go in Alcander's coach. Decio was splendidly entertained that night and the day following; the Monday morning, to get himself an appetite, he goes to take the air upon a pad of Alcander's, and coming back meets with a gentleman of his acquaintance, who tells him news was come the night before that the Barbadoes fleet was destroyed by a storm; and adds, that before he came out, it had been confirmed at Lloyd's coffee-house, where it was thought sugars would rise twenty-five per cent. by change time. Decio returns to his friend, and immediately resumes the discourse they had broke off at the tavern. Alcander who, thinking himself sure of his chap, did not design to have moved it till after dinner, was very glad to see himself so happily prevented; but how desirous soever he was to sell, the other was yet more eager to buy; yet both of them afraid of one another, for a considerable time counterfeited all the indifference imaginable, till at last Decio, fired with what he had heard, thought delays might prove dangerous, and throwing a guinea upon the table, struck the bargain at Alcander's price. The next day they went to London; the news proved true, and Decio got five hundred pounds by his sugars. Alcander, whilst he had strove to overreach the other, was paid in his own coin: yet all this is called fair dealing; but I am sure neither of them would have desired to be done by, as they did to each other.

Fable of the Bees, 1725.

CHILTERN HUNDREDS.

The acceptance of this office, or stewardship, vacates a seat in parliament, but without any emolument or profit.Chiltern is a ridge of chalky hills crossing the county of Bucks, a little south of the centre, reaching from Tring in Hertfordshire to Henly in Oxford. This district belongs to the crown, and from time immemorial has given title to the nominal office of stewards of the Chiltern hundreds. Of this office, as well as the manor of East Hundred, in Berks, it is remarkable, that although frequently conferred upon members of parliament, it is not productive either of honour or emolument; being granted at the request of any member of that house, merely to enable him to vacate his seat by the acceptance of a nominal office under the crown; and on this account it has frequently been granted to three or four members a week.

grate, watching in dreaming unconsciousness the various shapes and fantastic forms appearing and disappearing in the bright, red heat of thy fire-here a beautiful mountain, towering with its glowing top above the broken and diversified valley beneath-there a church, with its pretty spire peeping above an imagined village; or, peradventure, a bright nob, assuming the ken of human likeness, thy playful fancy picturing it the semblance of some distant friend-I say, whilst thou art sitting in this fashion, dost thou ever think of that race of mortals, whose whole life is spent beyond a hundred fathoms below the surface of mother earth, plucking from its unwilling bosom the materials of thy greatest comfort?

and render a season of severity and pinching bitterness, one of warmth, and kindly feeling, and domestic smiles. If thou hast never heard of these useful and daring men who

"Contemn the terrors of the mine,
Explore the caverns, dark and drear,
Mantled around with deadly dew;
Where congregated vapours blue,

Fir'd by the taper glimmering near,
Bid dire explosion the deep realms invade,
And earth-born lightnings gleam athwart th' infernal
shade;"

—who dwell in a valley of darkness for thy sake, and whose lives are hazarded every moment in procuring the light and heat of the flickering flame-listen with patience, if not with interest, to a short account of them, from the pen of one who is not unmindful of

"The simple annals of the poor."

The pitmen, who are employed in bring ing coals to the surface of the earth, from immensely deep mines, for the London and neighbouring markets, are a race entirely distinct from the peasantry surrounding them. They are principally within a few miles of the river Wear, in the county of Durham, and the river Tyne, which traces the southern boundary of Northumberland. They reside in long rows of one-storied houses, called by themselves 66 pit-rows," built near the chief entrance to the mine. To each house is attached a small garden,

"For ornament or use,"

and wherein they pay so much attention to the cultivation of flowers, that they frequently bear away prizes at floral exhibitions.

Within the memory of the writer, (and his locks are not yet "silver'd o'er with age," the pitmen were a rude, bold, savage set of beings, apparently cut off from their fellow men in their interests and feelings; often guilty of outrage in their moments of ebrious mirth; not from dishonest motives, or hopes of plunder, but from recklessness, and lack of that civilization, which binds the wide and ramified society of a great city. From the age of five or six years, their children are immersed in the dark abyss of their lower worlds; and when even they enjoy the "light of the blessed sun," it is only in the company of their immediate relations: all have the same vocation, and all stand out, a sturdy band,

•HUDDESFORD.

separate and apart from the motley mixture of general humanity.

The pitmen have the air of a primitive race. They marry almost constantly with their own people; their boys follow the occupations of their sires-their daughters, at the age of blooming and modest maidenhood, linking their fate to some honest "neebor's bairn:" thus, from generation to generation, family has united with family, till their population has become a dense mass of relationship, like the clans of our northern friends, "ayont the Cheviot's range." The dress of one of them is that of the whole people. Imagine a man, of only middling stature, (few are tall or robust,) with several large blue marks, occasioned by cuts, impregnated with coaldust, on a pale and swarthy countenance, a coloured handkerchief around his neck, a "posied waistcoat" opened at the breast, to display a striped shirt beneath, a short shorter than the jackets of our blue jacket, somewhat like, but rather untied at the knee, on the "tapering calf" velvet breeches, invariably unbuttoned and and finished downwards by a long, lowa blue worsted stocking, with white clocks, quartered shoe, and you have a pitman before you, equipped for his Saturday's cruise to 66 canny Newcastle," or for his Sabbath's gayest holiday.

seamen.

"

On a Saturday evening you will see a long line of road, leading to the nearest large market town, grouped every where with pitmen and their wives or lasses,' laden with large baskets of the "stomach's comforts," sufficient for a fortnight's consumption. They only are paid for their labour at such intervals; and their weeks are divided into what they term pay week," and "bauf week," (the etymology of "bauf,"* I leave thee, my kind reader, to find out.)-All merry and happytrudging home with their spoils-not unfrequently the thrifty husband is seen "half seas over," wrestling his onward way with an obstinate little pig, to whose hind leg is attached a string, as security for allegiance, while ever and anon this third in the number of "obstinate graces," seeks a sly opportunity of evading its unsteady guide and effecting a retreat over the road, and "Geordie" (a common name among them) attempts a masterly retrograde reel to regain his fugitive. A long cart, lent

• Quare? Whether some wag has not originally given the pitman the benefit of this term from befier or baffolier, to mock or affront; "aiblins." it may be a corruption of our English term "baik." to disap point.

by the owners of the colliery for the purpose, is sometimes filled with the women and their marketings, jogging homeward at a smart pace; and from these every wayfarer receives a shower of taunting, coarse jokes, and the air is filled with loud, rude merriment. Pitmen do not consider it any deviation from propriety for their wives to accompany them to the alehouses of the market town, and join their husbands in their glass and pint. I have been amused by peeping through the open window of a pothouse, to see parties of them, men and women, sitting round a large fir table, talking, laughing, smoking, and drinking con amore; and yet these poor women are never addicted to excessive drinking. The men, however, are not particularly abste. mious when their hearts are exhilarated with the bustle of a town.

When the pitman is about to descend to the caverns of his labour, he is dressed in a checked flannel jacket, waistcoat, and trowsers, with a bottle or canteen slung across his shoulders, and a satchell or haversack at his side, to hold provender for his support during his subterrene sojourn. At all hours, night and day, groups of men and boys are seen dressed in this fashion wending their way to their colliery, some carrying sir Humphrey Davy's (called by them Davy's") safety-lamp, ready trimmed, and brightened for use. They descend the pit by means of a basket or "corfe," or merely by swinging themselves on to a chain, suspended at the extreme end of the cordage, and are let down, with inconceivable rapidity, by a steam-engine. Clean and orderly, they coolly precipitate themselves into a black, smoking, and bottomless-looking crater, where you would think it almost impossible human lungs could play, or blood dance through the heart. At nearly the same moment you see others coming up, as jetty as the object of their search, drenched and tired. I have stood in a dark night, near the mouth of a pit, lighted by a suspended grate, filled with flaring coals, casting an unsteady but fierce reflection on the surrounding swarthy countenances; the pit emitting a smoke as dense as the chimney of a steam-engine; the men, with their sooty and grimed faces, glancing about their sparkling eyes, while the talking motion of their red lips disclosed rows of ivory; the steam-engines clanking and crashing, and the hissing from the huge boilers, making a din, only broken by the loud, mournful, and musical cry of the man stationed at the top of the pit shaft," calling down to his companions

in labour at the bottom. This, altogether, is a scene as wild and fearful as a painter or a poet could wish to see.

All have heard of the dreadful accidents in coal-mines from explosions of fire-damp, inundations, &c., yet few have witnessed the heart-rending scenes of domestic calamity which are the consequence. Aged fathers, sons, and sons' sons, a wide branching family, all are sometimes swept away by a fell blast, more sudden, and, if possible, more terrible, than the deadly Sirocca of the desert.

Never shall I forget one particular scene of family destruction. I was passing along a "pit-row" immediately after a firing,' as the explosion of fire-damp is called, when I looked into one of the houses, and my attention became so rivetted, that I scarcely knew I had entered the room. On one bed lay the bodies of two men, burnt to a livid ash colour; the eldest was apparently sixty, the other about forty-father and son :on another bed, in the same room, were "streaked" three fine boys, the oldest not more than fifteen-sons of the younger dead-all destroyed at the same instant by the same destructive blast, let loose from the mysterious hand of Providence and I saw Oh God! I shall never forget-I saw the vacant, maddened countenance, and quick, wild glancing eye of the fatherless, widowed, childless being, who in the morning was smiling in her domestic felicity; whose heart a few hours before was exultingly beating as she looked on her

:

gudeman and bonny bairns." Before the evening sun had set she was alone in the world; without a prop for her declining age, and every endearing tie woven around her heart was torn and dissevered. I passed into the neat little garden-it was the spring time-part of the soil was fresh turned up, and some culinary plants were newly set-these had been the morning work of the younger father-his spade was standing upright in the earth at the last spot he had laboured at; he had left it there, ready for the evening's employment: -the garden was yet blooming with all the delightful freshness of vernal vegetation its cultivator was withered and dead-bis spade was at hand for another to dig its owner's grave.

Amidst all their dangers, the pitmen are a cheerful, industrious race of men. They were a few years ago much addicted to gambling, cock-fighting, horse-racing, &c. Their spare hours are diverted now to a widely different channel; they are for the most part members of the Wesleyan sects;

and, not unfrequently in passing their humole but neat dwellings, instead of brawls and fights you hear a peaceful congregation of worshippers, uttering their simple prayers; or the loud hymn of praise breaking the silence of the eventide.

The ancient custom of sword-dancing at Christmas is kept up in Northumberland, exclusively by these people. They may be constantly seen at that festive season with their fiddler, bands of swordsmen, Tommy and Bessy, most grotesquely dressed, performing their annual routine of warlike evolutions. I have never had the pleasure of seeing the Every-Day Book, but I have no doubt this custom has there been fully illustrated.

British Mines.

For the Table Book.

Mines of gold and silver, sufficient to reward the conqueror, were found in Mexico and Peru; but the island of Britain never produced enough of the precious metals to compensate the invader for the trouble of slaughtering our ancestors. Camden mentions gold and silver mines in Cumberland, a mine of silver in Flintshire, and of gold in Scotland. Speaking of the copper mines of Cumberland, he says that veins of gold and silver were found intermixed with the common ore; and in the reign of Elizabeth gave birth to a suit at law between the earl of Northumberland and another claimant.

Borlase, in his History of Cornwall, relates, "that so late as the year 1753 several pieces of gold were found in what the miners call stream tin; and silver is now got in considerable quantity from several of our lead mines."

A curious paper, concerning the gold mines of Scotland, is given by Mr. Pennant, in the Appendix, No. 10. to his second part of a "Tour in Scotland, in 1772;" but still there never was sufficient gold and silver enough to constitute the price of victory. The other metals, such as tin, copper, iron, and lead, are found in abundance at this day; antimony and manganese in small quantities.*

Of the copper mines now working in Cornwall," Dolcoath," situated near Camborn, is the deepest, having a 220 fathom level under the adit, which is 40 fathoms from the surface; so that the total depth is 260 fathoms, or 1560 feet: it employs upwards of 1000 persons. The "Consolidated Mines," in Gwennap, are the most productive perhaps in the world, yielding from 10l. to 12000l. a month of copper ore, with a handsome profit to the shareholders. "Great St. George" is the only productive mine near St. Agnes, and the only one producing metal to the "English Mining Association."

Of the tin mines, "Wheal Nor," in Breague, is an immense concern, producing an amazing quantity, and a large profit to the company. "Carnon Stream," near Perran, is now yielding a good profit on its

A Missouri paper states, that copper is in such abundance and purity, from the falls of St. Anthony to Lake Superior, that the Indians make hatchets and ornaments of it, without any other instrument than the hammer. The mines still remain in the possession of the Indians.