The mine-workers delve in the dark bowels of the earth for coal, iron, copper, tin, and other minerals. No beast works in more dirt, nor under more brutal circumstances. Out of the light of day, far below, in pitchy blackness, illumined only by the faint light of a lamp fastened to his head, the _serf_ toils--exposed to death from suffocation, by the falling-in of earth, from great outbursts of water, from accidents of many kinds, and from the fearful _explosions_! He gets more money--but in the light of day, when he has cleansed himself from some of his weight of filth, the gin and beer shop give him the readiest and only resource! The lives of these toilers and of their families are scarcely imaginable. An explosion sometimes destroys nearly a whole village! The vast numbers, men, women, and children, who labour in shops and factories of all kinds, present a very uniform appearance of misery and degradation. They swarm in the great towns, amid the _débris_ [kon] of coal and iron works, and in the _purlieus_ of the places of labour--dirty, noisome, barbarous. No High-Caste, unless by mistake, ever goes among them; and even the lower avoid them. Worked by their task-masters all the day, from early morning till late at night, for such pittance as may keep them _at work_, what can be expected? Young girls and lads work together; there is no decency (there hardly can be), connections are formed, children come; but who is to care _for them_? What can describe truly the actual state of things? When work is over, weary, without respect from others, and feeling none, therefore, for themselves; no decent home, wife and children draggled and wretched like themselves, where else to go but to the warm and brilliant-lighted drink-places? Here is warmth, shelter, comforting drink. Is it surprising that these, _the only homes_, take nearly all earnings; and that the small remainder gives to the bare rooms, ragged garments, and squalid wives and children, that aspect of misery and brutishness? Whole quarters of towns are given up to this degradation. The portals of Temples, the porticoes of grand edifices, the very steps of public charities, are crowded with these victims of ignorance and selfishness--a selfishness peculiar to the cold nature of these Barbarians, and which receives its finest and most exquisite polish among the High-Caste. I speak of the steps of Charity Halls, where relief is supposed to be given to the starving; but on the very steps misery may find its last, wretched repose. It seems to be accepted as _inherent in the nature_ of things that this abounding debasement and wretchedness, wherein _crime_ breeds by an inexorable law, _must be_. The crime must be watched and kept within bounds, and guards must carefully repress the disorders of this foul _shame_, but the thing itself is inherent and ineradicable. It may be so to the barbaric nature.