Besides a school, it is one of the evidences of the improved state of mining communities that they usually have all the adjuncts of civilisation amongst them. There is the church, where the rich and the poor meet together, and in this connection it may be said that miners are as a class either very zealous religionists, or they go to the other extreme, and care for none of these things. The clergy of our day is largely recruited from mining villages; whilst the list of miners who have become home missionaries is a long one. Then there is the Temperance Society, either a Good Templars’ Lodge, or an offshoot from some of the other anti-alcohol societies; there is the Library of well-selected books, which are much read. There is the Savings-bank; the Reading-room, with a full supply of daily newspapers and other periodical literature; the String and Reed Bands; the Bowling Green, Football and Quoiting Field—the amusements of the miners of our day being all on a higher level than those of forty years ago, when cock-fighting and dog-fighting monopolised attention. Nor can we omit to mention that Sick and Funeral and other benevolent Societies are marked associations in every colliery village worthy of the name. Miners are indeed remarkably considerate to each other, when any special emergency occurs to call forth their active sympathy, being ever ready to subscribe for a brother-worker who has been unfortunate beyond the common lot. The prospect of the temporary nature of a mining village at the best, forms a strong temptation for nothing but necessary house accommodation, and that of the barest kind, being provided for workmen. The mining proprietor takes a lease of a mineral field, in the middle of a moor it may be, where no houses exist, and where everything has to be erected and provided. Accommodation for the workpeople has to be erected whether the field proves successful or not; and when the field is exhausted, he is in the power of the landlord whether he must remove the buildings and restore the ground, or leave them as they are. In either of these cases, the mineral lessee receives no compensation for his outlay, usually of many thousands of pounds. Hence, as we have stated, there is much temptation for the colliery lessee to erect flimsy houses in keeping with the possible shortness of their use. But colliery owners often rise superior to this evident temptation, and in spite of the possible unremunerative nature of the mineral field, excellent houses, with copious water-supply, are provided. Where this is done, naturally a better class of workers settle down; and when there is a fairly good prospect before the lessee, it is doubtless nothing but justice to himself and his workmen to afford the men every comfort.