We have dwelt principally on the commercial, the economical considerations of the enterprise, for they are what must render it possible. But the friends of Christian missions, and the advocates of Universal Peace among nations, have yet a deeper interest in it. In the words used by Prince Albert at the dinner at the Mansion House respecting the forthcoming great Exhibition of Arts and Industry, ‘Nobody who has paid any attention to the particular features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end—to which indeed all history points—the realisation of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible speed; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirements placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power of lightning.’ Every short cut across the globe brings man in closer communion with his distant brotherhood, and results in concord, prosperity, and peace. THE TRUE STORY OF A COAL FIRE. IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER II. Down the lower shaft the young man continued to descend in silence and darkness. He did not know if he descended slowly or rapidly. The sense of motion had become quite indefinite. There was a horrible feathery ease about it, as though he were being softly taken down to endless darkness, with an occasional tantalising waft upwards, and then a lower descent, which made his whole soul sink within him. But he grasped the chain in front of him with all his remaining force, as his only hold on this world—which in fact it _was_. From this condition of helpless dismay and apprehension, poor Flashley was suddenly aroused by a violent and heavy bump on the top of his iron umbrella! He thought it must be some falling miner, or perhaps his ponderous-footed elfin abductor, who had leaped down after him. It was only the accidental fall of a loose brick from above, somewhere; but the dead bang of the sound, coming upon the previous silence, was tremendous. The missile shot off slanting from the iron umbrella—seemed to dash its brains out against the side of the shaft—and then flew down before him, like a lost soul.