There were great hollows that looked like caves on one hand, and precipitous banks on the other; little bursts of sound, coming upon one suddenly, of miners talking or laughing below the mule tracks; patient mules, laboring on in the darkness; patient or impatient men, toiling from morning till night; even women denied the fair sunshine of the outer world.

Here were carts being loaded. Here were men making great fissures in the coal; the air was filled with a shimmering dust, oddly gleaming in plates as the light struck it. It filled the nostrils and the throat, and I wondered how the miners dared open their months to talk.

"You can't think how bright it all seems outside, after I get through," said the young woman, whose name, I learned, was Matilda Vernon. "Sometimes I think it's almost worth while to be shut up, things look so different. You live in two worlds like."

I had a terrible sensation of dread in going out,–more palpably felt than when I entered. What if these horrible jagged masses should fall on or in front of me, obstructing my path! I could see myself flying before me, and my breath grew so short that it was something like agony as I toiled up and up, led by a miner so bulky that he almost filled the passage at times.

I could have shouted for joy when at last I saw the faint far glimmer of the beautiful glad light,–the light of the blessed sun. I could not wonder that the miners asked for the boon of the eight hours law. It certainly seems long enough, and too long, to be imprisoned in the bowels of the earth.

Back again to the station, ready for the journey West,–I could hardly believe that it was not yet ten o'clock in the morning.
Garry Moss.

ENGLAND AND HER COLONIES.

England's pride in her colonies and dependencies has some serious drawbacks. To have planted her flags in every quarter of the globe, to be able to say that she is the mistress of an empire "upon which the sun never sets," to have ports in every sea, and fortresses on every continent, are surely things of which the little islands of Britain may well be proud.