library, supported by seventy miners, paying
two shillings a year each. The works seemed
to be chiefly Scotch divinity, with a very few
voyages, and a volume of narrative, or fiction,
here and there. What a blessing it would
be to these people if some kind person would
send them a good assortment, and a plentiful
one, of works of fiction! What a new world
it would open to them during the long snows
of winter, and in the light evenings of
summer, when the men are exhausted by
their hot toil under ground, or at the furnaces;
and the women and girls are stooping over
their "hand-sewing," and wealing their eyes
out, ay, even little children, with embroidering
for twelve hours every day!

This embroidery is done for sale in Glasgow.
The muslin, ready stamped for working, and
the cotton are sent from Glasgow, and the
women have it in hand wherever they go—
the bit that they are at work upon being
stretched in a little hoop of wood, to prevent
its curling and puckering. You see a woman
standing in her doorway, a child sitting with
her back against the house-wall (the poor
back, which, in a growing child, needs not
this monotonous needlework for twelve hours
a day to weaken it!) sewing away, at skilled
work, for what? The dexterous woman
could once, when such work was at the
highest, earn a shilling a day. She earned
that for a little while last year, when the
Exhibition induced the Glasgow people to
send a vast quantity of goods to London.
Now she earns by the same labour, sixpence,
or at most, sevenpence. Her little girl,
aged nine, but so small as to look younger,
earns, by her daily twelve hours' work,
twopence halfpenny. On inquiring whether the
little creature has the comfort of laying by
twopence, or even a penny a week on her
own behalf, we find that this has never been
thought of; that there is no opportunity or
inducement to do it, and thus to the child is
her whole young life, with its repressed
activities, devoted to toil, she does not know
why, nor for what aim. She fulfils her
destiny, as the French would say.

There is a school, and there are girls in it
younger than this little needlewoman. Boys
and girls looked thoroughly healthy; the
room was airy, and the master intelligent-
looking and kind, though his appearance did
not lessen our impression of the melancholy
poverty of the place. The members of the
school have fallen off sadly, more than in
proportion to the diminished population of
the place. The average attendance is eighty
in summer, and one hundred in winter. The
scholars pay from one shilling and sixpence
to two shillings and sixpence per quarter;
and it is a proof of the value that the parents
set upon education that, out of a population
which falls short of nine hundred, earning,
on an average, nine shillings per week, there
should be one hundred children paying for
their schooling at this rate. Some of the
oldest boys could show arithmetical exercises
which justify their hopes of getting to be
clerks in Glasgow warehouses, and two have
learned a little Latin — that darling pride of
the humble Scotch! They think, and talk of
Allan Ramsay, who was a native of these
hills; and somebody has painted outside the
library something which is called a portrait
of the poet. Whatever may be the taste
of the painting, we like the taste of putting
it there.

At the very top of the settlement, when
we have passed all the cottages, and "the
Ha'," and the potato patches, and the heaps
of lead ore, we come to a place which takes
all strangers by surprise: a charming house,
embowered in trees, with honeysuckle hanging
about its walls, flowers in its parterres,
and a respectable kitchen-garden, where the
boast is that currants can be induced to
ripen, and that apples have been known to
form, and grow to a certain size, though not
to ripen. This is the agent's house, and here
are the offices of the Mining Company. The
plantation is really wonderful, at such an
elevation above the sea; and it is a refreshing
sight to the stranger arriving from below.
There may be seen, growing in a perfect
thicket, beech, ash, mountain ash, elm, plane,
and larch, shading grass-plats, and enclosed
walks, so fresh and green that, on a hot day,
one might fancy oneself in a meadow-garden,
near some ample river. In this abode there
is a carriage, and a servant in livery;— a
great sight, no doubt, to the people, who can
hardly have seen any other, except when
sportsmen come to "the Ha'," with all their
apparatus of locomotion and of pleasure. In
connexion with this abode is the office of the
Company, where the books are preserved as
far back as 1736. There may be seen
specimens of the ores found in the valley; and,
among other curiosities, a small phial of
water, about half-filled with gold from the
Californian vein before-mentioned. There it
is, in rough morsels, just like the specimens
from California and Australia, which may be
seen everywhere now. The water in the
phial is to make the gold look brighter; and,
for the same purpose, the owner lays it upon
some dark surface,— as the sleeve of a coat,—
that strangers may see it to the best
advantage. Here is only about ten pounds'
worth; so there is no fear of the miners
choosing the wrong casket, out of the three
that Nature has placed before them.

Our cart had been dismissed long ago; and
we were to return to Abington in the
carriage, and driven by the servant in whom the
worldly splendour of the place is concentrated.
We were to stop by the way and see
the smelting; and we saw it accordingly.
Descending from the successive platforms where
the bruised ore is washed, till it is almost
pure dust of lead, we put our heads into the
noisy vault, where the great water-wheel was
revolving and letting fall a drip which filled