imported. Only about ten thousand tons were annually cast. Now eight
hundred thousand is the average annual production. Equally great has
been the increase in coal mining. "Coal," says Macaulay, "though very
little used in any species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel
in some districts which were fortunate enough to possess large beds, and
in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage. It
seems reasonable to believe that at least one half of the quantity then
extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The, consumption of
London seemed to the writers of that age enormous, and was often
mentioned by them as a proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They
scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmed that two hundred and
eighty thousand chaldrons--that is to say, about three hundred and fifty
thousand tons-were, in the last year of the reign of Charles II., brought
to the Thames. At present near three millions and a half of tons are
required yearly by the metropolis; and the whole annual produce cannot,
on the most moderate computation, be estimated at less than twenty
millions of tons."

After thus passing in survey the England of our ancestors five or six
generations back, the author closes his chapter with some eloquent
remarks upon the progress of society. Contrasting the hardness and
coarseness of the age of which he treats with the softer and more humane
features of our own, he says: "Nowhere could be found that sensitive and
restless compassion which has in our time extended powerful protection to
the factory child, the Hindoo widow, to the negro slave; which pries into
the stores and water-casks of every emigrant ship; which winces at every
lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier; which will not suffer the
thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked; and which has repeatedly
endeavored to save the life even of the murderer. The more we study the
annals of the past, the more shall we rejoice that we live in a merciful