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You will therefore remain in the school-room under ceremony, as evidence of having discovered one very my charge.' proper use of our hands.tes

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At first I was disposed to think the Doctor's treatment slight and inadequate, though I certainly chafed and felt annoyed at being punished in a manner so childish. We might sit and read or study, or do what we pleased, Wickham and I, but it was at a separate table from the other boys we could not be trusted near them." By-and-by I began to find the punishment so mortifying and irksome, that if my hands had been free I really felt ready to have exereised them on Doctor Warr-even in preference to Wickham. But the worst was at meal-times. The Doctor himself brought our dimmer into the school-room. The food was cut up, because, he explained, since it was not safe to trust us with the use of our own hands, it would be sheer madness and culpable folly on his part to allow us dangesous wea:pons like knives and forks. Wickham's hands being unloosed for the purpose, he was made to feed me with a spoon before taking his own dinner. It was at once vexatious and ludicrous to be offered a spoonful of cold mutton and potatoes by the very boy your smouldering passion would lead you even now to pummel. Had it not been for the comfort I derived from feeling it must be at least as disagreeable to Wickham literally to carry out the precept, "if thine enemy hunger, feed him," I believe even the ludicrous view of the subject would have proved insufficient to induce me to have "coals of fire" thus heaped on my head. But I was hungry, and I took in the cold mutton. At tea-time there were more coals of fire, , with this difference I was stoker; my hands being unicosed this time for the purpose of feeding Wickham. Supper-time passed in the same manner as dinner. After this we were undone again, and seen up-stairs to bed by the Doctor, who was wont to constitute himself a kind of guardian policeman over a boy "in trouble,

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"The respect and love and pride we all had for our dear master it is impossible for me to describe. My own recollections of Doctor Warr and his school (the school now, alas! a thing of the past) are among the most pleasurable of my life. They are all mixed up with remembrances of pleasant "waggon holidays" passed on the sweet-scented Wiltshire downs, among the old camps of the Danes and the Romans and the Roundheads, over whose tumuli the pure fresh breezes seemed to me to give out more oxygen and ozone than a whole sea-side at the present day. Mingled are they, too, with recollections of long rambles down in the many windings of Stert Valley, spicant with bulrushes; and of walks by the Mill, and to the Iron Pear Tree, of whose hard fruit no man ever ate, and to the Iron Spring; and, best of all reminiscences, of wanderings over the long sweeps of Roundway Hill, and the return home through the "Go and Do Thou Likewise Gates?___ this being the motto on the iron gates of the park, whose owner drowned himself. I have tried for many years to emulate these long schoolboy walks of pleasure, but now-a-days I generally manage to come home weary and faint, instead of tired and hungry. Id out bus-hole stát sid bad A

Fanny Campbell and I were found out. I hardly know how it was, or why such a fuss should have been made over it after all. Whether it came about through George Wickham, or whether it was my aunt's discovery, I never knew. Our grave Doctor came up into my bed-room one night and woke me. He spoke in an unusually kind and gentle way,

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"Michael Green, dress yourself and come with me. You will want the keys of your box." I knew what was coming. Hurrying on my clothes, I followed him as blindly as if I had been mesmerised. My teeth were chattering and my knees knocked together as I walked in very distress. When we reached the schoolroom and came to my box, the Doctor continued, Your aunt wishes me to receive from you all Miss

all my treasures; and never did beggar feel his poverty as I did, now my riches were gone. I flung myself down on the empty box-empty now of all that could give me pleasure and sobbed out my grief and my distress. Doctor Warr touched me softly on the shoulder, and said in his gentlest voice, "Michael, there are many who would laugh at a boy's grief in such a case as yours. I do not. I was never more deeply in love, or more truly, than when I was your age."

You may think the punishment described, a stupid one, but when you come to reflect on the actual stupidness of all wrong-doing, I don't think you will feel disposed to eavil at the wisdom' of punishing Campbell's letters." I gave them out all my store faults "in kind" especially when such punishments prove as effectual and deterrent as Dr. Warr's. I know that the very stupidness of the condition in which we were placed taught us in a parable the lesson we had to learn, and made us both so heartily ashamed of ourselves, that before the next day was over, when the Doctor inquired if we thought we had learned negatively the use our hands were not for, and whether we were of opinion that they might be restored to us without danger to the rest of the community or each other, we were unanimous in the affirmative. We were accordingly unloosed, and congratulated by Dr. Warr on having learned something of value. He then shook hands with us severally, and recommended our mutually performing the same 23 MPICOT ont flol 1 15°C uit nopril Lott visam eqor to suiq edhe gurut ad infw I HA” Ashbe nit II bi nor trust of the Ji Tabianos jommes In TIP” | B 997 THG09Lt nous to hi,DA, RE 25#ds A 1 a mít ob voy tool aged rout› mit drew | calul 1 H BA #io I Jaí? Joi »

He saw me to my room; and as I sobbed myself to sleep I felt that my first dream of love was over. Will you laugh at me if I add that I had vowed her eternal fidelity, and sent her thirteen postage stamps to write to me during the holidays?

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A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF FIRE-DAMP.

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upset me. Some of us were then furnished with lights. I was one of those that were not. When I say that the lights were all naked and without protection, the reader will see that my visit must have been made a good many years ago. Under the guidance of the foreman we then set off on our tour. The main passage, along which we went at first, was what I imagine would be considered a lofty and spacious gallery, laid with rails. It was comparatively broad, and seemed to my eye about nine or ten feet high. We proceeded along this for, I daresay, a quarter of a mile. By-and-by our leaders

SOME years since I paid a visit in Staffordshire, and one of the entertainments by which my host sought to make my time pass pleasantly was a descent into a coal mine. I rather liked the idea, as I had never been down one, and at onte agreed to go. The mine that was to be honoured with our inspection was that of West B It was an old mine, of considerable size and depth-the depth of the shaft being, if I recollect rightly, about 960 feet. There were some six or eight in our company, among whom were two young men, the sons of the owner, and a superior workman-I do not know his proper technical designation-perhaps under-turned into an apparently unused side gallery, narground bailiff; at any rate, something equivalent to what we above ground should call the foreman.

rower than the main passage, in which the foreman had something about the ventilation to point out to I expected that we would go down in a bucket, the owners. Hitherto we had seen no men mining; or box, but there was nothing of that sort; we we had met men with horses drawing trucks, and stood upon something like a small platform and others going about their occupations, but no men clung to the chain by which we were lowered. I working. We proceeded along this smaller gallery rather repented of my readiness to join the party for about 150 yards or so. The place was dirty, when I saw the means by which we were to descend, sloppy, and wet, and, of course, dark; and feeling no but I had not courage or time to dissent from what particular interest in what the foreman was desirous seemed the recognised mode of procedure. No one of pointing out to the owners, I lagged behind a else seemed to mind it, and two or three of those who little. I might have been twenty paces behind the were familiar with the ways of the place stuck out one rest of the party, when a sudden light started up of their legs at right angles to stave us off from the among them-I can compare it to nothing but the sides of the shaft as we descended. "All right," said flash with which lightning is imitated in the theatre. some one, and away we went. My first sensation The reader knows (or if he does not know, I shal! was that sort of deliquium or swimming in the head tell him) that this is done by placing a lighted that the reader may have experienced when he taper-end between the middle and ring finger of the dreams that he is falling down a precipice. For-hand, held out with the palm upwards. Into the tunately it did not relax the muscles, for as it passed away I found myself clinging to the chain like grim death; probably it was only momentary, as I had time to observe the rapidity with which we passed into total darkness. The story about seeing stars at noonday from the bottom of a coal pit cannot be true, at any rate if the pit is what is called an up-cast shaft. We went down the up-cast shaft--that is, the shaft by which the air which has entered the pit by the down-cast shaft returns to the upper regions, after having circulated through the mine; and looking upwards through this air, we could see nothing of the opening of the pit almost immediately after beginning to descend. I suppose the air was so loaded with impurities, coal dust, vitiated vapours, &c., that, seen in quantity, it was as muddy and impenetrable to light as the river Thames at London Bridge, although on the small scale both appear transparent. Down, down, we went, and presently we became aware of a little drizzling rain. It was the water, which, pouring or trickling from the sides of the shaft, sparked off from every projection. As we went deeper this got worse, and by the time we reached the bottom we were in a heavy shower.

Suddenly we stopped; we had reached the foot of the shaft. We found ourselves in the midst of a group of horses, one of which, a blind old beast, I remember, came knocking up against me, and nearly

palm a quantity of powdered resin is poured, not spread out but piled up around the taper. The resin is then chucked into the air, and is ignited in passing through the flame, which then spreads out like a large mushroom. The whole is over almost instantaneously, and the resemblance to sheet lightning, to those who do not see the operator, or the mushroom, but merely the flash of light, is very perfect. Well, this was exactly what I saw-with a difference. The difference was, that when the light flashed up to the roof and assumed the mushroom shape, it did not disappear like the other. Instead of being extinguished as instantaneously as it arose, it continued extending and spreading out along the roof on every side. My first idea when I saw the light was, that this was some civility on the part of the owners to show off the mysteries of the place to their visitors, as I had seen the Blue-John Mine in Derbyshire, and other stalactitic caves, illuminated by Roman candles and other lights. That idea only lasted for a second. As the light extended, every one rushed panic-stricken from it as fast as they could run. I guessed the truth in a moment, and turned to fly. There was no difficulty in finding my way, the whole place being illuminated. After flying along for some time I looked back; the whole of the gal lery where we had been was one body of fire-not a bright lambent blaze, but lurid, reddish volumes of

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flame, rolling on like billows of fiery mist. Their form was liker that of the volumes of black smoke which we may see at times issuing out of large factory chimneys, than anything else I can compare it to. My notions of explosions of fire-damp were, that they took place with the rapidity of an explosion of gunpowder. But it was not so in this case, at any rate. I do not mean that it was slow, but that its speed was no greater than that of a man. All those who were at the end of the gallery where it took place did, in point of fact, outrun it. Neither was there any ncise or sound of explosion; at least, I noĮticed none, and if there had been I think I must have observed it, for, all things considered, I was tolerably collected. The report must have taken place at the pit-mouth, as from the mouth of a gun. The fire rolled silently along in great billows of reddish flame, one wave tumbling over another, in quick succession. And a curious and a very beautiful thing was the edges of these billows; they were fringed with sparks of blue flame, dashed off like sparks from a grindstone. Even at that dreadful moment I could not avoid being struck by their beauty.

flickering about a stone there, but ever moving towards the shaft. As it thus abated, presently one head was raised from the ground, then another, until we all began to get up. We then gathered together, but there were no mutual congratulations, nor external acknowledgment of thanks to God, however much some may have felt. But I doubt if there was much feeling of that kind, the sense of peril was yet too strong; we had escaped one great danger, but we knew that we were still exposed to the risk of many others which often followed such explosions. The first danger was want of air; the fire had used what was in the mine almost wholly up, and we might perish from want of it. "Follow me," said the foreman, and he started off, not for the mouth of the mine, but for some part of it which, from its connections or position, he knew to be better, or more likely to be supplied with air than any other part. The miners knew this too, doubtless, for on our arrival at the place in question, we found them trooping in from different quarters, until there might be.above a hundred present; and I was much struck by one thing in them which was not according to my anticipations. I thought that men who were habitually exposed to any danger became callous to it, and faced it with indifference. It was not so with these miners; we, who scarcely understood the magnitude of the danger through which we had passed, were far cooler and more collected than they.

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All this I must have gathered at a glance-in an instant of time. In front of the billowy mass of fire rolling on towards me I saw the dark figures of my companions tearing along at headlong speed. Then turning, I again dashed on. When I came to the loftier main passage I heard a voice behind me cry out, "Down on your face!" and by-and-most every one of them was thoroughly unmanned, by one figure after another sprang past me and dashed themselves headlong on the ground. I can liken the reckless, frantic way in which it was done, to nothing but boys, when bathing, taking "headers" into a stream. Without reasoning about it I followed suit, and flung myself into a puddle, and then peering backwards under my arm, waited the .. approach of the sea of flame, the wall of fire, which was approaching. It had not yet come out of the side gallery, but the glare of its light preceded it. Presently it rolled into sight, filling the whole mouth of the side gallery, from top to bottom. Had it overtaken us in it, not a soul would have escaped alive; but when it entered the larger gallery it lifted, just is one sees a mist lifting on the mountains, and then rolled along the roof, passing over our heads. How much space there was between us and it, I cannot say; I imagine it filled the upper two-thirds, leaving a space of perhaps two or three feet free from flame. Nor can I well say how long we lay below this fiery furnace; it might have been five minutes or a quarter of an hour. Judging from our sensations it must have been hours, but we did not experience so great heat as I should have expected. We felt it more afterwards; probably the anxiety of the moment made us insensible to its intensity.

After the lapse of some time the volume of fire above began to diminish, the stratum got thinner and thinner; it eddied, and curled, and streamed about, leaving the more prominent parts of the roof exposed like islands; then it wandered about like fiery serpents and tongues of flame, licking a corner here, or

and shook in every fibre. I know the ague well (experientia docet), and the uncontrollable shaking which bids defiance to the strongest exercise of the will, but I never saw a worse tremor in ague than in these men. While gathered together in this part of the mine a loud crack ran through the roof above our heads, which so alarmed the already nerveless miners that some of them actually sunk upon the ground. The explanation of this anomaly in men's courage is, I think, that where they see their danger, and can exert themselves to ward it off or escape it, familiarity with it will produce contempt for it; but where they are utterly helpless, and know that they are so, familiarity with it only adds to its terrors. This is the case with earthquakes. No familiarity with them enables a man to meet them with composure; the more he has felt, the more frightened he becomes. I remember seeing another instance of the same kind on board the Tyne, when she was wrecked on the rocks at St. Alban's Head. The sailors on deck were as cool as cucumbers, but the stokers and firemen below were unmanned exactly in the same way as the miners at West B→. They could not see their death, and they could do nothing to save themselves if the ship had foundered.

After waiting a considerable time in this part of the mine-perhaps an hour-we again started, and made for the mouth of the pit. As we approached it we heard shouts, and presently came upon a body of men, who, having heard the explosion, had been sent down to see what mischief had been done. Although the explosion had travelled so deliberately when it passed over us, it had had sufficient violence when it

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reached the shaft to blow the roof of the building adjoining the pit-mouth clean off. Fortunately, it had not destroyed the gear there, and we were able to ascend without delay, Right glad was I to and myself once more in the open air. The explosion had drawn a crowd of agitated men and women to the mouth of the mine. Alas! the meaning of the dull report, and the cloud of smoke, and the fragments of the building at the pit-mouth flying in the air, were too well known in the neighbourhood, and

many an anxious heart found relief in a burst of tears when we were able to announce, on our appearance at the surface, that no lives had been lost. We escaped d with almost miraculously slight injury for men who had gone through an explosion of fire-damp. I saw one man, who had got a lick from the flame, having his shoulder treated with oil, or some such application, but that was the only casualty that came under my notice.

I have never been down a coal-pit since.

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[It was a mediæval superstition that women dying in child-bed did not go into purgatory, but were carried direct into the bosom of the Mother of God.]

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MARY, mother of all mothers,
First in love and pain,-on carth
Having known, above all others,
Mysteries of death and birth,
Take, from travail sore released,
One more mother to thy breast!
She, like thee, was pure and good,

Happy-hearted, young and sweet;
Given to prayer, of Dorcas mood,

Open hand and active fect; Nought missed from her childless life In her full content as wife.

But God said (though no one heard, Neither friend nor husband dear)"Be it according to My word :

Other lot awaits thee here: One more living soul must be Born into this world for Me.” ' So, as glad as autumn leaf

Hiding the small bud of spring, She, without one fear or grief,

Her "Magnificat" did sing: And his wondrous ways adored, Like the handmaid of the Lord. Nay, as neared her solemn day Which brought with it life or death, Still her heart kept light and gay, Still her eyes of earnest faith Smiled, with deeper peace possessed"He will do what seems Him best." And He did. He led her, brave

In her blindfold childlike trust, To the threshold of the grave→

To His palace-gate. All just He must be, or could not, here, Thus so merciless appear.

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Practical questions may sometimes actually arise about which an honest man may be in doubt, and practical questions may be imagined, which only an expert could answer; but Jeremy Taylor says, very admirably, that "the preachers may retrench infinite number of cases of conscience, if they will more earnestly preach and exhort to simplicity and love; for the want of these is the great multiplier of Men do not serve God with honesty and heartiness, and they do not love Him greatly, but stand upon terms with Him, and study how much is lawful, how far they may go, and which is their utmost stretch of lawful, being afraid to do more for God and for their souls than is simply and indispensably necessary and oftentimes they tie religion and their own lusts together, and the one entangles the other, and both are made less discernible and less practicable. But the good man understands the things of God; not only because God's Spirit, by secret emissions of light, docs properly instruct him, but because he has a way of determining his cases of conscience which will never fail him. For, if the question be put to him whether it be give a shilling to the poor, he answers that it is not only fit, but necessary, to do so much, at least, and to Amake it sure, he will give two; and in matter of duty he takes to himself the greater share; in privileges and divisions of right, he is content with the least; and in questions of priority and dignity he always prevails by cession, and ever is superior by sitting lowest, and 'gets his will, first, by choosing what God wills, and then what his neighbour imposes and desires." *

SINCE Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter, English Protestantism has had no great casuists. Nor is this to be regretted. Simplicity, robustness, and manliness of character, are seriously imperilled whenever the conscience is perplexed by the refinements and intricacies in which casuistry delights. It is safer to leave men to the guidance of those great and obvious moral laws whose authority every pure and honest heart acknowledges. The maxim, "Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves," may convey sound advice to a man who wants to build up a fortune, but it is utterly false when applied to the culture of character. Not the minor details of conduct, but the supreme objects of human life and the broad principles of integrity and honour, should receive our chief thought. To be more anxious to avoid little sins than to develop great virtues, will produce an effeminate moral delicacy, instead of a heroic vigour; and people who are very scrupulous about small matters, are often miserably weak in the presence of great temptations. There is a moral and religious valetudinarianism which is ruinous to moral and religious health. If a man's physical constitution is sound, a few general principles will guide him better than a a whole encyclopædia of minute regulations about "what to eat, drink, and avoid." healthy appetite, vigorous exercise, pure air, temperance in all things, and adequate rest, will do far more to keep him in good health than taking incessant drugs, and measuring his bread and meat by And let a man have a fervent love for what is pure, and just, and honourable: let him have a cordial abhorrence of what is sensual, mean, tricky, and ungenerous, and he will not go far INT wrong.

ounces.

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1 be said that casuistry is necessary for spiritual "directors," just as medical science is necessary for doctors. But Protestantism has, very wisely, made no provision for placing sick souls under the care of spiritual physicians. Casuistry and the Confessional go together, and we have renounced them both. Our principle is, that the soul is safest in God's hands; that no man, whatever his sanctity, or knowledge of human nature, or skill in ethical analysis, is competent to "direct" another man's moral and spiritual life. The diseases to be remedied are too subtle, the symptoms, for the most part, too vague and indefinite, to make an accurate diagnosis possible; and the "treatment" is beyond the resources of all human wisdom. The only sound method of training men to purity, integrity, and honour, is to let them know the broad outlines of God's law, and then to trust them to the light of conscience and the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Moreover, most of the moral evils from which men suffer will not disappear under direct remedies; what is necessary is, the development of positive loyalty to God, and goodness.

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As for such questions as good Richard Baxter raises in his "Christian Directory," many of them are so easily solved by plain common sense, others are so frivolous, and others arise from such exceptional conditions of human life, that it was hardly necessary to discuss them. Who, for instance, need make it a matter of solemn inquiry whether or not it is lawful " for a person that is deformed to hide their deformity by their clothing? and for any persons to make themselves (by clothing, or spots, or painting)

to seem to others as comely and beautiful as they
can ?". It is to be hoped, too, that husbands and
wives are very seldom perplexed with the question,
"what to do in case of known intention of one to
Nor were the men of the
murder the other?"
Commonwealth at all what I take them to have
been, if they needed to be told what to do "if a gen-
tleman have a great estate, by which he may do
much good, and his wife be so proud, prodigal, and
peevish, that if she may not waste it all in house-
keeping and pride, she will die, or go mad, or give
him no quietness"-poor gentleman! What a man's
duty would be "in so sad a case," most husbands

* Ductor Dubitantum, Works, vol. xi. 366.

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