These extreme variations follow the miner through the whole region in which his tempting scenes of labor lie, and require a degree of prudence seldom met with in that wild woodland life. The consequence is, a group of maladies under which the strongest constitution at length breaks down. But I am convinced from personal experience, that with proper precaution and suitable food, many, and most of these evils may be obviated. The southern mines are in elevations which exempt them from the maladies incident to the low lands which fringe the streams farther north. There are no stagnant waters, no decomposition of vegetable matter, no miasma drifting about in the fog, to shake and burn you with alternate chill and fever. I never enjoyed better health and spirits; and never encountered in a great moving mass, notwithstanding their irregularities, so few instances of disease traceable to local causes. I have seen more groaners and grunters in one metropolitan household, than in any swarming ravine in the southern mines. SUNDAY, JAN. 7. Lapses from virtue are not unfrequently associated, in the character of the Spanish female, with singular exhibitions of charity and self-denial. She is often at the couch of disease, unshrinkingly exposed to contagion, or in the hovel of destitution, administering to human necessity. She pities where others reproach, and succors where others forsake. The motive which prompts this unwearied charity, is a secret within her own soul. It may be as a poor expiation for conscious error, or the impulse of those kindly sentiments not yet extinct, or gratitude for that humanity which foregoes merited reprehension. Be the cause what it may, it justly retains her within the pale of Christian charity, and entitles her to that sympathy in her own misfortunes which she so largely bestows on the sorrows of others. Denunciation never yet protected the innocent, confirmed the wavering, or recovered the fallen. That spirit of ferocity which breaks the bruised reed, partakes more of relentless pride than virtuous disapprobation. Many sever themselves from all sympathy with the erring, from the mistaken apprehension that the wider the chasm, the more advantageous the light in which _they_ will appear. But that chasm which seems so wide to them, narrows to a faint line in the eye of Omniscience. Forgiveness is our duty; not that forgiveness which scorns and forsakes the object on which it is bestowed, but which seeks to reclaim the erring, and reinstate the fallen in merited confidence and esteem. When repentant guilt trembled and blushed in the presence of Him whose divine example is our guide, no frown darkened His brow, no malediction fell from His lips; His absolving injunction was—_go, and sin no more_. The brightest stars are they which have emerged from a horizon of darkness.