ge Sand, and French preachers of proletarian
perfection will not find their notions of the ennobling effects of manual
labour realised.

There are exceptions, but as a general rule, after a hard day's work, a man
is not inclined for study of any kind, least of all for the investigation of
abstract sciences; and thus it is that at Wolverton library, novels are much
more in demand than scientific treatises.

In Summer, when walks in the fields are pleasant, and men can work in their
gardens, the demand for books of any kind falls off.

Turning from the library to the mechanics' institution, pure science is not
found to have many charms for the mechanics of Wolverton. Geological and
astronomical lectures are ill attended, while musical entertainments,
dissolving views, and dramatic recitations are popular.

It must be confessed that dulness and monotony exercise a very unfavourable
influence on this comfortable colony. The people, not being Quakers, are not
content without amusement. They receive their appointed wages regularly, so
that they have not even the amusement of making and losing money. It would
be an excellent thing for the world if the kind, charitable, cold-blooded
people of middle age, or with middle-aged heads and hearts, who think that a
population may be ruled into an every-day life of alternate work, study, and
constitutional walks, without anything warmer than a weak simper from year's
end to year's end, would consult the residents of Wolverton and Crewe before
planning their next parallelogram.

We commend to amateur actors, who often need an audience, the idea of an
occasional trip to Wolverton. The audience would be found indulgent of very
indifferent performances.

But to turn from generalities to the specialities for which Wolverton is
distinguished, we will walk round the workshops by which a rural parish has
been colonised and reduced to a town shape.

* * * * *

WOLVERTON WORKSHOPS.--To attempt a description of the workshops of Wolverton
without the aid of diagrams and woodcuts would be a very unsatisfactory task.
It is enough to say that they should be visited not only by those who are
specially interested in machinery, but by all who would know what mechanical
genius, stimulated as it has been to the utmost during the last half century,
by the execution of profitable inventions, has been able to effect.

At Wolverton may be seen collected together in companies, each under command