aston, is the property of Lord Calthorpe, and has been let out on
building leases which entirely exclude all manufactories and inferior classes
of houses. The result has been a crop of snug villas, either stucco or
polished red brick; many of them surrounded by gardens and shrubberies, and a
few of considerable pretension. Of this suburb the Birmingham people think a
great deal; but, as it is built upon a dead flat in long straight lines, its
effect is more pleasing to the citizen after a hard day's work, than to the
artist, architect, landscape gardener, or lover of the picturesque.

Birmingham is, in fact, notable for its utility more than its beauty,--for
what is done in its workshops, rather than for what is to be seen in its
streets and suburbs. Nowhere are there to be found so numerous a body of
intelligent, ingenious, well educated workmen. The changes of fashion and
the discoveries of science always find Birmingham prepared to march in the
van, and skilfully execute the work needed in iron, in brass, in gold and
silver, in all the mixed metals and in glass. When guns are no longer
required at the rate of a gun a minute, Birmingham steel pens become famous
all over the world. When steel buckles and gilt buttons have had their day,
Britannia teapots and brass bedsteads still hold their own. No sooner is
electrotype invented, than the principal seat of the manufacture is
established at Birmingham. No sooner are the glass duties repealed than the
same industrious town becomes renowned for plate glass, cut glass, and
stained glass; and, when England demands a Palace to hold the united
contributions of "The Industry of the World," a Birmingham banker finds the
contractor and the credit, and Birmingham manufacturers find the iron, the
glass, and the skill needful for the most rapid and gigantic piece of
building ever executed in one year.

In order to appreciate the independent character and quick inventive
intelligence of the Birmingham mechanic, he should be visited at his own
home. A system of small independent houses, instead of lodgings, prevails in
this town, to the great advantage of the workmen.

It is only within a very few years that the working classes have had, in a
local School of Design, means of instruction in the principles of taste, and
arts of drawing and modelling; while, until the patent laws are put upon a
just foundation, their inventive faculties can never be fully developed. When
the a