"MINER.—Well, then, sir, I have heard a
complaint that you are too old to fill the office.
(Uproar, and cries of 'Shame!' 'Perfectly
right!' 'Sit down!' and 'No, I will not!')

"MR. DUNN.—You know, sir, if I am very
old I should be very experienced. I may say I
am the most experienced of any of the
inspectors; they all admit that.

"ANOTHER MINER asked if Mr. Dunn was
satisfied with the one shaft at Hartley, and if
not, what steps he had taken to remedy the
delect?

"MR. DUNN said that at this very moment
there were three of the largest collieries in
Northumberland—Seaton Delaval, North Seaton,
and Newsham—managed by the most talented
in Northumberland, all with single shafts. What
would they have him say: did they think it was
his duty to call in question the management of
those men?

"MINER.—Is that an answer to my question,
whether you are satisfied with the single shaft?

"MR. DUNN.—I do not say I am quite
satisfied, but I have no power to alter it."

Here there was some more discussion, after
which

"The Chairman interposed and put a stop to
the discussion. He remarked, with regard to
the advice Mr. Dunn had given, that the miners
had no protection; they had only their labour
to depend on, and when they spoke they were
turned off work"

It is curious in these days when for all sorts
of small and paltry reasons workmen are
continually out on strike—it is curious when one
sees fully-paid artisans dictating terms of the
most exorbitant kind to their employers, and
"knocking off" if they are not complied with—
to see these poor miners enduring a state of
things which they might well and honestly
protest against. Men working in a colliery like
that at New Hartley are working at the risk of
their lives from moment to moment. Nor is that
colliery an exceptional one. The single-shaft
system is largely adopted, and most new
collieries are so worked. And so life is sacrificed:
sacrificed not only by insufficient means of egress
in case of disaster, but for the want of the better
ventilation which two shafts would supply.
Among technical men there is, I hesitate not to
say, a great indifference manifested towards the
human engines, who are the tools they use to
acquire their wealth, and these interested persons
should not be allowed to have too powerful a
voice in any matter where property hangs in one
scale and life in the other. Let the miners
themselves by all means be listened to. They
behave well, and they deserve to be heard.
They have not shown themselves a rebellious
set, they have borne much, and borne it
patiently. Their work is, and must always be
to a certain extent, attended with danger, and
is certainly, under any circumstances, the most
distressing form of labour there is. They have
a right to be protected from every danger that
money can shield them from, and if The Cost
of Coal must be raised in order that proper
precautions may be taken for the safety of
the men who live away from daylight, and
in air always more or less polluted, to gain
them for us, in Heaven's name let it be raised;
for otherwise, as Hood affirmed of the linen
which we wear, so we should have to say of the
fuel which we use—that coal is not what we
are burning, but, "human creatures' lives."

In deep sorrow for this terrible disaster at
Hartley, the public has been glad to find some
relief in helping those whom the slaughtered
miners have left behind. But this is a small
part of what we have to do to repair their
loss. The coal-owners, and all those who live
out of the produce of the mine, are evidently
not to be left to the exercise of their own judgment
as to the manner in which the mine shall
be worked.

Deep repentance—shown as all repentance
should be in acts, should be felt by all those
who, directly or indirectly, have shared in the
negligence which has cost these men their
lives. Prompt reform, with no half measures
no compromises to meet the views of those who
are partly for reform and partly for economy—
is loudly called for.

                  OUR OLD ABBEY.

WE always know least of what lies nearest to
us. Every one says this, and makes the saying
an excuse for much local indolence. A chance
guest in London, guide-book in hand, ferrets
out all the interesting movements, goes to all
the shilling sights, and makes acquaintance with
quaint old remnants of the bygone times, which
the born Londoner never so much as heard of.
There is our grand old Abbey at Westminster;
how many of us know anything about it, beyond
the bare fact that it is one of the finest specimens
of Gothic architecture (that conveniently
comprehensive term!) in England? Mr. Gilbert
Scott has, however, made himself our cicerone in
his beautiful book of Gleanings, and we,
following at a distance in his steps, propose to tell
part of his story in our own way.

When the old bearded Heptarchist, King
Offa, was doing his little bit of mosaic towards
the creation of a kingdom, by laying violent
hands on Ethelbert and East Auglia, killing the
first and joining the second to his own domain
of Murcia that is, in the latter half of the
eighth century—a smaller and less ambitious
church stood on the spot where the grand old
Abbey stands now. Edward the Confessor, that
sweet-smelling saint of monkery, finding that
nearly three centuries of neglect and exposure
had done no kindly work by the old building,
refounded the Abbey as a saint should, and
increased the number of monks to seventy; but,
what was more than either, he rebuilt the church
"with costly expenditure," and in the Norman
style, and thus gave an exemplar to English
architects, which, luckily for us, they were
not slow to profit by. This was tiie first
building in the Norman style raised on
English ground, and it was only fitting that