collected for the use of the garrison stationed on the route of these warlike invaders at Mancenion, or the Place of Tents. Certain it is that fragments of coal are being constantly, in the district, washed out and brought down by the Medlock and other streams, which break from the mountains through the coal strata. The attention of the inhabitants would in this way be the more early and readily attracted by the glistening substance. Nevertheless, for long after, coal was but little valued or appreciated, turf and wood being the common articles of consumption throughout the country. About the middle of the ninth century, a grant of land was made by the Abbey of Peterborough, under the restriction of certain payments in kind to the monastery, among which are specified sixty carts of wood, and as showing their comparative worth, only twelve carts of pit coal. Toward the end of the thirteenth century, Newcastle is said to have traded in the article, and by a charter of Henry III., of date 1284, a license is granted to the burgesses to dig for the mineral. About this period, coals for the first time began to be imported into London, but were made use of only by smiths, brewers, dyers, and other artisans, when, in consequence of the smoke being regarded as very injurious to the public health, parliament petitioned the king, Edward I., to prohibit the burning of coal, on the ground of being an intolerable nuisance. A proclamation was granted, conformable to the prayer of the petition; and 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.