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 cavern, and our guides desired us to look up: The sight was dreadful; the candle, forty yards above us, appeared like a star, and afforded a dim light, juft sufficient to give an idea of the danger we had braved. The cavern was sloped like a bee-hive; the way to the to the top was by the stakes fixed into the sides sloping in wards, sometimes by ladders, many of the steps of which were nearly worn through, and only a slight ballustrade, so that one false step, or the breaking of a rail, would have dashed us lifeless to the bottom: But all danger was now passed, and we were thankful that we had escaped it. The miners frequently go up this way without lights. They told us there never was but one accident happened in this mine, when a man was drowned owing to his own groundless fears. We returned to the boat, and set forward for day-light in high spirits, singing “Long live the king,” "Rule Britannia," and a variety of songs, in which all joined; the miners (one of them in particular) having very fine voices.

At the large cavern I first mentioned we left another light, which when we got the end (600 yards) had a most beautiful effect, appearing like a star with the beams playing upon the waters. We at length, after two hours absence from it, got to day-light again, highly satisfied and pleased with our excursion, and returned to Castleton, with the mixed emotions of terror and admiration.

A few mornings ago (I remember it was a rainy one) as I was walking along one of the back streets in Edinburgh, I was very much struck with a melancholy figure of a blind man, who was singing a song of love. Misery could not have found, among the number of distressed mortals, a form more suited to her nature. While I was contemplating the wretchedness of the object, and comparing it with the strain which necessity compelled him