The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-02 00:00:00

making, they should still remember the seamen. The
noble earl having adverted to the increase of shipping
casualties, and consequently the greater necessity for such
institutions as this, concluded by proposing the toast.
Complimentary toasts followed, after which the company
separated.

TERRIBLE COLLIERY EXPLOSION,

TWENTY-FIVE LIVES LOST.

On Wednesday morning a fearful explosion of firedamp,
causing the loss of 25 lives, occurred at the Pelton Col-
liery, a pit working about nine miles south-west of New-
castle-on-Tyne, and five miles from Durham. The Pelton
Colliery is not a very extensive working, and is owned by
Messrs. Hutchinson and Co., who have everbeen known by
the care they take in lookingafter the proper ventilation of
their pit. Latterly, a new seam, called the Buston Bank
seam, has been opened, and an additional number of work-
men engaged therein. Between two and three o'clock on
Wednesday morning 30 men and boys went down the
shaft to work the night shift in the new seam, and they
pursued their vocation for about two hours, when an un-
usual smell of gas was noticed. This, however, created
no serious apprehensions among the colliers at the time.
Shortly after five in the morning a terrible explosion was
heard, not only in the pit, but throughout the whole neigh-
bourhood above ground. Immediately dense volumes of
smoke and dirt were vomited from the mouth of the pit,
and the whole district became panic-stricken. Crowds of
people, many of whom had relatives in the pit, rushed to
the bank to learn what had occurred, and as soon as the
nature of the appalling catastrophe became known, the
scene was heartrending. A number of volunteers quickly
set to work with a will to render aid to those down
below. The viewer and under-viewer took the
direction of the volunteers, and in the course of an hour or
two a score of men had descended the shaft. At first the
stithe was too overpowering to allow of the men doing much,
but when this had been partially cleared away, the volun-
teers were enabled to reach the scene of the explosion. It
was then discovered that not fewer than 25 poor fellows
had met their death, either by the explosion itself, or the
equally deadly after-damp. Their bodies, some shockingly
burnt, others in a quiet, calm, and placid sleep to all ap-
pearance, were scattered all over the seam, and the sight
was too appalling for the volunteers who had descended
the shaft. The search was then proceeded with to discover
the living, and up to a late hour yesterday three persons
had been found alive. Then the work of sending up the
bodies began, and as the relations of each identified a father,
a brother, or a kinsman, they were carried to their homes
in the village close by. Owing to such a large crowd
having assembled on and about the mouth of the pit, the
services of a body of constables had been called in to keep
clear a space for the workers. Messrs. Hutchinson are
doing all they can to alleviate the sufferings of the widows
and orphans of those whose lives have been thus momen-
tarily snatched away. There is yet one more of the bodies
to be found, as up to four o'clock yesterday afternoon 24
had been sent up the shaft. Every inquiry will be made as
to the cause of the explosion, and the Government inspec-
tor of mines is already busied about the workings. Sucha
fearful explosion has not been known in the county for
some years. What makes the explosion more strange is
the fact that the owners of the colliery not long since
erected a ventilating apparatus on a large scale, which has
hitherto been found to work very well.

Loclzhart and Sir Walter Scott.

(From the Inverness Courier.)

The late John Gibson Lockhart was not a social or
clubable man. He was fastidious and reserved, silent in mixed
company (he heard only with one ear, and was too proud to
acknowledge it), was inveterately prone to satire, so that he
earned for himself the appellation of " The Scorpion," and
he was a victim to dyspepsy, which, perhaps, like charity,
should cover a multitude of sins. His fine acute intellect
and classic taste were often obscured, and his better sym-
pathies chilled, by pain and languor. To a few friends,
however, Lockhart at times unbosomed himself.- With
them, his cold, sarcastic, haughty manner melted away—
at least for a season—and in those genial hours ho was the
most confiding and delightful of companions. As showing
the better nature and higher feelings of the man, we are
tempted to publish a private letter addressed to the late Mr.
Wm. Laidlaw, the factor and friend of Sir Walter Scott,
in which Lockhart speaks of the sense of duty and respon-
sibility under which he wrote the memoirs of his illustrious
father-in-law—a work which, with all its faults, is unques-
tionably the best biography since Boswell's " Life of John-
son." There is a great tenderness in the following letter ;
and the picture which the writer draws of his happy fire-
side contrasts painfully with his latter years, when broken
health, a desolate hearth, and feelings lacerated by paternal
troubles and anxieties, might have made him join the la-
mentation of the ancient British bard—
" God bath provided unpleasant things for me :
Dead are those I love!"
Few letters of Lockhart's are so generally interesting, or so
valuable biographically, as the subjoined :--

" London, January 19, 1837.
My dear Laidlaw,—l received yesterday your letter and
a very munificent donation of ptarmigan, for both which
accept my best thanks. They were both welcome as remem-
brances of Scotland, of old days, and of your kindness and
affection, of which last, though I am the worst of corre-
spondents, neither I nor my wife aro ever forgetful. The
account you give of your situation at present is, consider-
ing how the world wags, not unsatisfactory. Would it were
possible for me to find myself placed in something of a simi-
lar locality, and with the means of enjoying the country by
day and my books at night, without the necessity of di-
viding most of my time between the labours of the desk

—more drudge labours mostly—and the harassing turmoil
of worldly society, for which I never had much, and now-a
days have rarely indeed any relish. But my wife and chil-
dren bind me to the bit, and I am well pleased with the
fetters. Walter is now a tall and very handsome boy of near
11 years; Charlotte a very winsome gipsy of eight—both
intelligent in the extreme, and both, notwithstanding all pos-
sible spoiling, as simple, natural, and unselfish as if they
had been bred on a hill side and in a family of 12. Sophia
is your old friend—fat, fair, and by-and-by to be 40 —which
I now am, and over—God bless the mark !—but though I
think wiser, at least more sober, neither richer, nor more
likely to be rich than I was in the days of Chiefswood and
Kneside —after all our best days, 1 still believe.
" Politics, over which we used sometimes to dispute, I
have quite forsworn. I have satisfied myself that the age
of Toryism is by forever; and the business of a party which
can in reason propose to itself nothing but a defensive at-
titude, without hope either of plunder or honour, seems to
me to have few claims on those who, when it was in power
never were permitted to share any of the advantages it so
lavishly bestowed on fools and knaves. So lam a very
tranquil and indifferent observer.

" Perhaps, however, much of this equanimity as to pass-
ing affairs has arisen from the call which has been made on
me to live with the past, bestowing for.so many months all
the time 1 could command, and all the care I have had any
real heart in, upon the MS. remains of our dear friend. I
am glad that Cadell and the few others who have seen what

I have done with these are pleased, but I assure you none
of them can think more lightly of my own part in the mat-
ter than Ido myself. My sole object is to do him justice,
or rather to let him do himself justice, by so contriving it
that he shall be, as far as possible, from first to last, his
own historiographer ; and I have therefore willingly ex-
pended the time that would have sufficed for writing a
dozen books on what will be no more than the compilation
of ono. A stern sense of duty— that kind of sense of it
which is combined with the feeling of his actual presence in
a serene state of elevation above all petty terrestrial and
temporary views, will induce me to touch the few darker
points in his life and character as freely as the others which
were so predominant ; and my chief anxiety on the ap-
pearance of the book will be not to hear what is said by
the world, but what is thought by you and the few others
who can really compare the representation as a whole with
the facts of the case. I shall, therefore, desire Cadell to
send you the volumes as they are printed, though long before
publication, iu the confidence that they will be kept sacred
whilst unpublished to yourself and your own household ;
and if you can give me encouragement on seeing the first
and second, now, I think, nearly out of the printer's hands,
it will be very serviceable to me in the completion of the
others. I have waived all my own notions as to the manner
of publication, &T., in deferenCe to the bookseller, who is
still so largely our creditor, and, I am grieved to add, will
probably continue to be so for many years to come.
"Your letters of the closing period I wish you would send
to mo ; and of these I am sure some use, and some good use
may be made, as of those addresses to myself at the same
time, which all, however melancholy to compare with those
of the better day, have traces of the man. Out of these
confused and painful scraps I think I can contrive to put
together a picture that will be highly touching of a great
mind shattered but never degraded, and always to the very
last noble--as his heart continued pure and warm so long as
it could beat.—Ever affectionately yours,
"J. G. LOCKHART." •

Mn. MERRIMAN. —I confess it was a laughter-
moving exhibition. His enigmas and bon-mots were not,
strictly speaking, of the first order. As for instance, when
the lady, in the richness of her classic beauty was resting
on her horse, Brown would address the gentleman with
the whip and with the gold band down his trousers—" I
say, sir ! Mr. Coleman, sir !" " Well, sir, Mr. Brown, what
can Ido for you ?" " Yes, sir." " I say, what can I do
for you ?" "I was thinking, Mr. Coleman." "Oh, you
were thinking ! Indeed, Mr. Brown ; you had better take
a chair, and rest yourself after that exertion." "I was
thinking, Mr. Coleman, why it was that you were such a
favourite with the ladies." " Why lam such a favourite
with the ladies of the audience ?" "Yes, of the
audience. Because—because you have such a command
over the ring." In a second Mr. Coleman gives him a severe
" cut" on the leg, which causes Brown to leap into the air
with a cry of assumed agony. The mottled charger begins
to get into motion; the band strikes up, the paper hoops are
brought, Mr. Brown walks round diligently behind Mr.
Coleman, as eager not to lose sight of the horse for a mo-
ment.—Dickens's "rill the Year - Round."