narration of facts. Moderns of intelligence, in visiting this spot, have gratified their imaginations, already heated by such descriptions as the escape of the Argonauts, and the disasters of Ulysses, with fancying it the scourge of seamen, and that in a gale its caverns roar like dogs;' but I, as a sailor, never perceived any difference between the effect of the surges here, and on any other coast, yet I have frequently watched it closely in bad weather. It is now, as I presume it ever was, a common rock, of bold approach, a little worn at its base, and surmounted by a castle, with a sandy bay on each side. The one on the south side is memorable for the disaster that happened there during the dreadful earthquake of 1783, when an overwhelming wave (supposed to have been occasioned by the fall of part of a promontory into the sea) rushed up the beach, and, in its retreat, bore away with it upwards of two thousand people.

CHARYBDIS.

Outside the tongue of land, or Braccio di St. Rainiere, that forms the harbour of Messina, lies the Galofaro, or celebrated vortex of Charybdis, which has, with more reason than Scylla, been clothed with terrors by the writers of antiquity. To the undecked boats of the Rhegians, Locrians, Zancleans, and Greeks, it must have been formidable; for, even in the present day, small craft are sometimes endangered by it, and I have seen several men-of-war, and even a seventy four gun ship, whirled round on its surface; but, by using due caution, there is generally very little danger or inconvenience to be apprehended. It appears to be an agitated water, of from seventy to ninety fathoms in depth, circling in quick eddies. It is owing probably to the meeting of the harbour and lateral currents with the main one, the latter being forced over in this direction by the opposite point of Pezzo. This agrees in some measure with the relation of Thucydides, who calls it a violent reciprocation of the Tyrrhene and Sicilian seas; and he is the only writer of remote antiquity I remember to have read, who has assigned this danger its true situation, and not exaggerated its effects. Many wonderful stories are told respecting this vortex, particularly some said to have been related by the celebrated diver, Colas, who lost his life here. I have never found reason, however, during my examination of this spot, to believe one of them.

For the Table Book. A FRAGMENT.

FROM CORNELIUS MAY'S "JOURNEY TO THE GREATE MARKETT AT OLYMPUS""SEVEN STARRS OF WITTE."

One daye when tired with worldly toil,
Upp to the Olympian mounte

I sped, as from soul-cankering care,
Had ever been my wonte;
And there the gods assembled alle
I founde, O strange to tell!
Chaffering, like chapmen, and around

The wares they had to sell.
Eache god had sample of his goodes,

Which he displaied on high;

And cried, "How lack ye?" "What's y're neede?"
To every passer by.

Quoth I, "What have you here to sell?

To purchase being inclined;"

Said one,

"We've art and science here,

And every gifte of minde."

"What coin is current here?" I asked,

Spoke Hermes in a trice, "Industrie, perseverence, toile,

And life the highest price."

I saw Apollo, and went on,
Liking his wares of olde;

"Come buy," said he, "this lyre of mine,
I'll pledge it sterling golde;
This is the sample of its worthe,

'Tis cheape at life, come buy!"
So saying, he drew olde Homer forth,
And placed him 'neath my eye.

I turn'd aside, where in a row

Smalle bales high piled up stood;
Tyed rounde with golden threades of life,
And eache inscribed with blood,
"Travell to far and foreign landes ;"

"The knowledge of the sea;"

"Alle beastes, and birdes, and creeping thinges, And heaven's immensity;"

"Unshaken faithe when alle men change,"

"The patriot's holy heart;" "The might of woman's love to stay

When alle besides departe."

I next saw things soe strange of forme,
Their names I mighte not knowe,
Unlike aught either in heaven or earthe,
Or in the deeps below;

Then Hermes to my thoughte replied,
"Strange as these thinges appeare,
Gigantic power, the mighte of arte
And science are laide here;
Yeare after yeare of toile and thoughte

Can buy these stores alone;
Yet boughte, how neare the gods is man,
What knowledge is made known!
The power and nature of all thinges,
Fire, aire, and earthe, and flood,
Known and made subject to man's wille,
For evill or for good.".

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.

This is an eccentric, good-humoured character-a lover of a chirruping cup-and a favourite with the pitmen of Durham. He dresses like them, and mixes and jokes with them; and his portrait seems an appropriate illustration of the following paper, by a gentleman of the north, well acquainted with their remarkable manners.

THE PITMAN.

For the Table Book.

"O the bonny pit laddie, the cannie pit laddie,
The bonny pit laddie for me, O!-
He sits in a hole, as black as a coal,

And brings all the white money to me, O !"
OLD PIT SONO.

Gentle Reader,Whilst thou sittest toasting thy feet at the glowing fuel in thy

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?

The pitman enables thee to set at nought the "pelting of the pitiless storm,"

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 "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 seamen, blue jacket, somewhat like, but rather velvet breeches, invariably unbuttoned and untied at the knee, on the "tapering calf" 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 "canny Newcastle," or for his Sabbath's gayest holiday.

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

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 abstemious 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-his spade was at hand for another to dig its owner's grave.

66

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;