before he arrives at his destination, and there is no question that people of this kind esteem most highly that dwellingplace which permits them to be in bed as long, and to get as much rest as they can. If the man goes by train, in order to be at his work at six, he must often rise before five a.m. A useful and practicable idea was ventilated in one of the daily journals with regard to lodgings for men employed in certain large establishments in London. It was observed that many of the largest workshops are situated in outlying localities, where ground, eligible for building sites, is comparatively cheap and plentiful in the immediate neighbourhood of the shops, and considerable portions of this ground are often owned by the individuals or companies to whom the workshops belong; whilst in most cases they could easily purchase some of it. On these pieces of land employers might erect a sufficient number of lofty houses to accommodate comfortably thousands of working men and their families, and these rooms could be let at rents, which even if far lower than those that the men would pay elsewhere, would still yield good interest on the outlay, and secure a good class of steady workmen. The river side of the district running from and including the Isle of Dogs to Woolwich is studded with large works, principally iron shipbuilding yards, employing many thousands of men, and much spare land is lying waste, or covered with rubbish, close by. Such a plan has been carried out by some railway companies for many years, especially in the large works in connection with the London and North-Western Railway at Crewe and Wolverton, where the men invariably lodge in the company's houses.' The advantage derived is immense, not only by the employed, but by the companies. In Paris, model houses for the ouvriers are being built in various places. Some of them are exceedingly lofty (ground being valuable), and are even eight or nine storeys in height. A large central lift conveys up and down the tenants and all goods and furniture. The Emperor himself has caused his name to be inscribed as an exhibitor of the tenth class, which comprises ameliorations for the moral and physical condition of man. His Majesty has designed a model for a workman's house, with every desirable accommodation, which will be also inexpensive of construction. He would charge it with a moderate rent; part of which would stand as a sort of reserve fund, so that after a certain number of years the tenant would be the actual proprietor. His Majesty esteems such a system a sure means of promoting habits of order and regularity among the Paris workmen. Co-operative societies among workmen for building purposes are not likely to be organised except in large towns.

In smaller places and country districts the workmen are much scattered, their wages are not so high, and they are, as a rule, not so quick in their intelligence as in the towns. Moreover, though land is more easily rented, landlords and proprietors are often difficult to deal with, owing to their fear of increasing the rates by building cottages for their workpeople. The changes, however, which must before long be made in the Poor Law administration may diminish their disinclination for a work so just and necessary. There has not been, so far as we are aware, any return made of the condition, calling, and number of those people who have become depositors in the Post Office Savings' Banks, or who have insured their lives or have purchased annuities under the Government insurance system. It is most desirable that such returns should be made; when they are, we shall feel surprised, but very glad, if it should turn out that the classes for whom these institutions were originally designed are those who have most largely availed themselves of them. It is said that the insurers and annuitants, from whatever cause, are few, and that the depositors are chiefly domestic servants, small clerks, shopmen, and, during the harvest time, Irish labourers; but that, with regard to those who are working men, the agricultural class save more in proportion to the amount of their wages than the highly-paid artisan. Now, most of the workmen are quite shrewd and intelligent enough to discern the difference between what they actually do and what it would be to their advantage to do. But they seem infected with a reckless and incurable habit of improvidence, which causes many of them, well knowing what is best, to choose that which is worst. It may be that this temper is only a degenerate form of that rough and almost godless self-reliance which is ingrained in our race; but at any rate there it is, and to deal with it sucessfully may well task the best energies of all who desire the progress of humanity.

In conclusion, we will just remark that in one respect the Government scheme of insurances presses unfairly on women. Their lives are held to be so far better than those of men, partly from their being exposed to fewer dangers, partly from their more temperate habits, that they are charged higher payments in the purchase of an annuity. Granting this, it follows that they ought to pay less to insure a certain sum at their death than men do, but we do not observe that this is the case. Women that are sensible enough to wish to insure, would be shrewd enough also to perceive this anomaly.

Авт.

FOR

ART. V.-BIRMINGHAM AND HARDWARE.

OR every original achievement in mechanism, for each fresh triumph of the fabricative arts, the human race owes a tributary thrill of wonder which should not be unmingled with thanksgiving. One more pile has been driven in the wall of the coffer-dam that preserves civilisation from the terrible sea of barbarism. One more round in the ladder has been gained by which man ascends from the gloomy levels of a mechanical helplessness which makes him the mere subject and prey of the things of nature. It is true, that were this all the achievement, were there no moral, no spiritual ascension realised, over and above the material gain, then the condition of man, though surrounded by all the conveniences and refinements of art, would be more deeply to be deplored, than it was when birds and the winds and waters were his only musical instruments, and when he knew no couch softer than the limp leaves of autumn. For what can be more dreadful than the exalted magnificence of a palace, in which the only life is that of moral degradation, where all the glorious upholsteries do but adorn a base luxuriousness, and the polished marbles are witnesses of nothing that is not spiritually ignoble? But, whilst confessing that material progress achieved, is only as a mere fringe on the edge of man's proper robes, and could never suffice in itself to be a protection from bitter frosts, in which all that is truly noble must expire; to any one who can look, as we can, hopefully on the times, and see amidst the whirlings. and mutations of things at large a new order developing itself, sure in the end to vindicate the Divine government, and, if destructive, only so as the stone cut out without hands' must necessarily break other things in pieces whilst developing itself into the mountain that is to fill the whole earth; to any one so able, happily, to look out upon the world, there must be joy and gratitude in the contemplation of each new success of man's heaven-born invention in adding to the completeness of arts' ministry, and in making good the material defences that are externally to keep at bay the packs of wolvish savagery and the wild hordes of barbarism. There is then, as we said, an admiration due, and a distinct thanksgiving, for the many and great physical and mechanical conquests of the present age; and, if so, then must such men be honoured, and such parts of the earth's surface be held ever memorable, as distinguish themselves by contributing to the fulfilment of those conquests.

And perhaps, up to the present moment, greatest of all in this respect, stands Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District;

District;-Birmingham, with its old Soho, the source of all practical steam-power;-Bromwicham, or 'Old Brum,' at this day the chief seat and centre of almost all manner of workmanship, especially in mediums of brass and iron. And if a subject so grim and smoky, so hard and angular, may not actually be sung in song, it may at least very fittingly have its commemoration in a bulky volume of solid prose. Such a volume is now before us, and will long be preserved, a laborious and meritorious record of the height to which at this day the fertilising flood of the Nile of inventive industry has risen.

*

What art of industry is there, indeed, that does not find its exposition in Birmingham? Into this fuliginous centre are sucked from day to day vast heaps of things, solid, crude, and raw; silver, iron, brass, lead, and spelter; wood; cotton; coal, sand, and clay; and forth, day by day, it vomits to the ends of the earth its variously packed cargoes of everything materially useful under the sun. Forward they go, in endless succession;-boilers, and boiler plates, iron bedsteads, cast-iron hollow ware, conserved with tin or with enamel; all kinds of brass instruments, implements, and toys; locks, nails, screws; medals, coins; various things tubular or in wire; all that papier-maché, most obsequious in its serviceableness, all that lordly gold can lend itself to produce; apparatus for flashing the light afar that is to guide the mariner on the seas, or to assist the chemist or the optician; and a long and mingled list of alkalies, acids, soaps, pigments, colours, varnishes, lacquers, pins, needles, fish-hooks, guns, buttons, saddles, statuary, stained glass, ropes, hinges, tea-pots, steel pens, sewing machines, swords, bells, jacks, bellows, saws, planes, heavy edge-tools, fire-irons, fenders, grates, umbrellas, parasols, parkesine,' railway rolling stock, wax matches, photographic and pharmaceutical chemicals, and coffins. From the volume which gives an account of an industry so vast and varied, we propose to extract, for our readers' benefit, a few interesting details.

A long and elaborate account of brass and the brass manufactures is supplied by Mr. W. C. Aitken. 'What Manchester is in cotton, Bradford in wool, and Sheffield in steel, Birmingham is in brass; its articles of cabinet and general brassfoundry are to be found in every part of the world; its gas-fittings in every city and town into which gas

The Resources, Products, and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District: A Series of Reports Collected by the Local Industries Committee of the British Association at Birmingham, in 1865.' Edited by Samuel Timmins. Pp. 721. London: Robert Hardwicke, 192, Piccadilly. 1866.

has

has been introduced; from Indus to the Poles'-[one would hardly inquire, however, for gas at the North or South Pole!]— 'on the railways of every country and one very sea, its locomotive and marine engine solid brass tubes generate the vapour which impels the locomotive over the iron road, and propels the steamboat over the ocean wave; its yellow metal bolts, nails, and sheathing hold together and protect from decay wooden walls of our own and other countries' ships; its "Manillas," once made in tons, are the circulating medium of the natives of the Gold Coast, and its rings and ornaments of brass, sent out in immense quantities, are the chief decorations of the belles on the banks of the distant Zambesi.'

The Manillas' just referred to were a species of ringmoney which was exported to the Spanish settlements on the New and Old Calabar, and the Bonny Rivers in Africa. It was made of copper, largely alloyed with lead, and hardened with arsenic. In an evil hour, an unscrupulous trader, some years ago, got a quantity made of cast-iron, with an electrocoat of copper. On the arrival of these coins at their destination, the fraud was detected at once, and the iron Manillas' now lie by the side of the African river where they were landed. They are 'taboo' to the Africans, and remain a standing monument of improbity and dishonour. No more Manilla money was sent for from Birmingham until very recently; nor then, without the precaution taken of sending the sable mintmaster' to this country to examine every coin before accepting it as satisfactory. The mintmaster showed himself quite equal to his duty. A few coins, slightly different in composition, but externally closely resembling the accepted bulk, and such as a Birmingham man would have passed over, were at once thrown aside, with an expressive 'ugh' from the examiner.

Whilst alluding to orders from savage regions, we may notice that much of the brass wire made in Birmingham finds its way to the Old Calabar, in the form of 'guinea rods,' packages of one hundred of which, each three feet in length, are exported, are used as the circulating medium by the natives, and at the death of the possessor are buried with the body. The orders for this article often amount to from five to twenty tons each. To the Gold Coast are also sent large numbers of rings made of solid brass wire, and others made of brass tube. A single order for tubular rings executed in Birmingham three years ago, extended to 240,000 rings, 3 in. diameter, and required for the manufacture nearly 3 tons of brass.

The consumption of material in the brass trades is immense.

Not