d
on with wonderfully little show in Birmingham, and no state. We could not
give a better instance of the difficulty of "judging by appearances" than in
the following sketch from nature.

There is a broad street of tall mean houses, which, except at the workmen's
dinner hour, seems always empty.

In this street is a large house of a dirty, faded appearance; the cobwebbed
windows blocked up; the door with a broken knocker and a sad want of paint.
It is evidently the ci-devant residence of a Birmingham manufacturer of the
old school, before the suburbs of Edgbaston and Handsworth sprang up, now
turned into a warehouse or receptacle for lumber. As to apply to the front
door would be useless, you turn up a dark passage at the side, and reach
another dingy door, which gives way with a rattle at your touch, and closes
with a rattle and a bang; passing through you ascend a flight of creaking
deal stairs, and reach a suite of low rooms, about as imposing in appearance
as a deserted printing-office. A few juvenile clerks--the very converse of
the snug merchants' clerks of the City of London--are distributed about. A
stranger would not give 50 pounds for the furniture, capital, and credit, of
the whole concern.

And yet, in this strange place, is conducted a trade of many tens of
thousands per annum, with branches in all the principal towns of Germany,
Spain, Portugal, South America, and British India!

A rapid idea of the Birmingham hardware trade may be obtained from the
extensive show-rooms of Messrs. Herbert, in the Bull-ring.

If we have failed to do justice to any branch of manufacture, we have a very
sufficient excuse in the difficulty we experienced in obtaining access to
manufactories, or even information as to what was worth examination.

HEALTH AND EDUCATION.

After detailing at such length the material advantages of this interesting
and important community, we should not be doing right if we did not present
the reverse of the medal in certain drawbacks and deficiencies which
seriously interfere with the prosperity and progress of "the hardware
village."

The Birmingham public are so often in the habit of hearing from their
favourite orators that they are the most intelligent, moral, and intellectual
people in the world,--that their town is the healthiest, and their opinions
the soundest, of any community in England, that it is not extraordinary if
they overlook blots which are plain enough to a stran