nd
the most severe inquisitorial measures were adopted to restrict or
altogether abolish the use of the combustible, by fine, imprisonment, and
destruction of the furnaces and workshops! They were again brought into
common use in the time of Charles I., and have continued to increase
steadily with the extension of the arts and manufactures, and the
advancing tide of population, till now, in the metropolis and suburbs,
coals are annually consumed to the amount of about three million of tons.
The use of coal in Scotland seems to be connected with the rise of the
monasteries.... Under the regime of domestic rule at Dunfermline, coals
were worked in the year 1291--at Dysart and other places along the Fife
coast, about half a century later--and generally in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries the inhabitants were assessed in coals to the churches
and chapels, which, after the Reformation, have still continued to be paid
in many parishes. Boethius records that in his time the inhabitants of
Fife and the Lothians dug "a black stone," which, when kindled, gave out a
heat sufficient to melt iron.--_Rev. Dr. Anderson's Course of Creation._

JENNY LIND. BY FREDRIKA BREMER.

There was once a poor and plain little girl dwelling in a little room in
Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. She was a poor little girl indeed, then;
she was lonely and neglected, and would have been very unhappy, deprived
of the kindness and care so necessary to a child, if it had not been for a
peculiar gift. The little girl had a fine voice, and in her loneliness, in
trouble or in sorrow, she consoled herself by singing. In fact she sang to
all she did; at her work, at her play, running or resting, she always
sang.

The woman who had her in care went out to work during the day, and used to
lock in the little girl, who had nothing to enliven her solitude but the
company of a cat. The little girl played with her cat and sang. Once she
sat by the open window and stroked her cat and sang, when a lady passed
by. She heard the voice and looked up and saw the little singer. She asked
the child several questions, went away, and came back several days later,
followed by an old music master, whose name was Crelius. He tried the
little girl's musical ear and voice, and was astonished. He took her to
the director of the Royal Opera of Stockholm, then a Count Puhe, whose
truly generous and kind heart was concealed by rough speech and a morbid
temper. Crelius