with a few iron tramways intersecting them and connecting all together. We may admire now the advance of commercial enterprise in it all; but one cannot help a feeling of regret at losing our favourite walk, and knowing that the violets and primroses we used to admire on the hedgerow side are deeply buried in dust and ashes.

Even the very streets are intruded upon, and the forge-hammer resounds close into the highway, with unmusical din invading the privacy of the oldest inhabitant. On a Saturday evening, it wants but a short visit to the adjacent town to show there is plenty of money got by the workpeople, and also that it is freely spent. Provision shops, butchers, bakers, grocers, and the like, are very numerous, and also well filled with customers. The drapers, too, and "slop shops" seem to drive a good trade; but fancy-shops, jewellers, and dealers in articles of vertu do not seem by any means so numerous.

There is usually here a good market on Saturday night, even if the customary market is held on another day; for the men being mostly paid on a Saturday evening, money is more plentiful then; and as all the works, excepting blast-furnaces, stand on the Sunday, most of the men are able to attend. Cheap-Johns and such-like itinerant tradesmen find this a good place of resort; and there are usually several of them vociferating in the streets, vieing with the fishmongers in coarse humour and clamorous opposition to each other. Looking into a pork-butcher's shop, I was struck with the large supply of meat laid in, there being from twenty to thirty pigs hanging up around the walls of this one shop. Expressing my surprise to a stout butcher-boy on a spry wiry pony, who, as equerryin-waiting, was executing the orders of the knight of the cleaver, he seemed sorry for my ignorance. "Why," said he, "bless your loife, if you look in o' Monday noight, there wo' be enough left to graise your shoes."

Inns and beer-houses are very numerous, and do a good stroke of business, towards night especially, when the men, having seen their "old waman's" basket well loaded with marketings, just call in for "one pint" before they go home.

Judging from the general appearance of the people, the smoke and dirt does not seem to affect their health, and make them at all melancholy; on the other hand, there appears to be a munificence of animal spirits, and a jolly-heartiness of manner in their intercourse with each other which we hardly see equalled even at a country fair. "Money in both pockets," and a self-approving feeling of competence to gain more, may have something to do with this, a workman in South Staffordshire not being at all diffident and retiring, but rather fond of showing that he is no "under-hand," and quite able to do his part.

With the young men this feeling of independence is very conspicuous; and nowhere have I seen more precocious airs of manhood exhibited than here, where many of the youngsters, with flaming-coloured waistcoats and swaggering gait, look as if they would hardly own the prince for a brother.

Looking back little more than twenty years, we should find far different scenes enacted in this neighbourhood. Policemen were then more of a novelty; and cock-fighting in out-of-the-way places, and pugilistic encounters in the streets, were carried on almost with impunity. More attractive still were the bull-baitings; and these were so frequent at one time, that almost every large public-house in the colliery districts had its bull, which was tied up for baiting with dogs sometimes several days before it was slaughtered. The publicans found this brutal source of amusement a great lure for attracting numbers of low characters to their houses; and it was suppressed with difficulty.

The only relics we now see of these disgusting pastimes are, a few game-cocks picking about among the heaps of ashes in the back streets, and occasionally a bull-dog, of sinister aspect, following the heels of its master, and looking as though it would be glad of an excuse for grappling with any living thing.

After seeing the workmen engaged at their varied employments,—the collier a hundred fathoms down, with his body bent to occupy as little space as possible, holing under the coal, or driving with his pick-axe a way straight ahead through the living rock; the puddler laboriously stirring at the molten metal in the furnace before him, until he is almost melted before his "heat" is done; and the forgemen round the great hammer, twining about the red-hot balls of iron till the perspiration streams from their swarthy faces, no one, I think, would grudge these hard-working fellows a holiday now and then, if they would use it properly.

There certainly is a marked improvement in the different recreations offered to workmen at the present time; for the cock-pit, the bull-ring, and the prize-fight have given way before exhibitions, excursion-trains, and rural fêtes. Gentlemen, too, have made the discovery that the public may be admitted into their parks and flower-gardens without fear of any serious damage being done. No one can have witnessed the crowds of people going from the "Black Country" I am describing to spend their holiday at Enville Hall, Chillington Pool, or Hagley Park, without feeling deeply what a boon the proprietors have bestowed upon the lower classes by occasionally throwing open their grounds. The places named, being all contiguous to the mining districts, are often thronged with miners, colliers, puddlers, and nailors; and if these classes can be admitted with impunity, other proprietors in less populous localities need not hesitate in following so good an example.

Dudley Castle and Hill is a famous place of resort, being close into one of the most densely populated localities. The vast limestone caverns which are near to this place are upon some extraordinary occasions brilliantly lighted up with fireworks, making a scene of unusual grandeur and sublimity, and attracting many strangers from a distance, to mingle with the crowd flowing in from the vicinity. These extensive quarries of limestone having been worked in a great measure for the supply of the iron-works around, the men employed at these works, as well as those who

VOL. III.

K

have been actually engaged in quarrying the limestone, feel a sort of personal interest in this display, and take pride in it as something in a measure belonging to themselves. Here are found numerous specimens of Trilobites, or "Dudley Beetles," as they are familiarly called; and a visitor with a keen eye may possibly have the pleasure of picking one out of the solid rock, or finding one among the loose stones lying about.

From the castle hill there is a grand view of the adjacent country and the coal-fields of South Staffordshire. It is not all smoke either; for looking to the west, towards the Wrekin, a beautiful agricultural country opens widely before us, and the borders of Staffordshire and Shropshire are seen as yet in all their pristine purity. How long this will last is doubtful, as geologists are of opinion that the coal-fields extend under the new red sandstone from one county to the other, though probably lying at a great depth. On looking out from this eminence, one cannot help admiring the close proximity of all the materials necessary for the making of iron. At a short distance before us lie the beds of iron-ore, and above and below them are placed different seams of coal, as if they were put there just in readiness for smelting the ironstone on the spot; while at our feet are disposed the strata of limestone for fluxing the metal, by separating it from earthy combinations when in an incandescent

state.

After visiting the great limestone caverns, it would be well if a stranger could go down into one of the pits where they are getting the thick coal, for the sake of the strong contrast in the appearance of the two minerals. Better still if he can find a pit where they are getting the coal in the old style, and leaving huge black columns for supporting the roof. After seeing the light reflected from the vaulted roof of the limestone workings, and the fretted pendants shining with almost crystalline splendour, the darkness of the deep coal-mine seems almost palpable. The few candles glimmering here and there receive little or no reflected light from the walls; and in places where the coal has been got at a great thickness, and the roof is lofty, we hardly know, in looking upwards at the sable crypt, whether we are resting our eyes on a rayless ceiling of coal, or peering into impenetrable darkness. Owing to the great thickness of this measure of coal, which is in some places more than ten yards, it is considered more dangerous for the men to work in; and colliers employed in getting it have been accustomed to receive a higher rate of wages than those who work in the thinner seams of coal.

The thick coal was found so near the surface in the neighbourhood of Dudley, that it was got in "open work," without sinking shafts. It is many years ago since I paid a visit to this "open work," which was considered one of the "lions" of the place; but I remember walking along green pastures, where there seemed no trace of the vast body of carbon underneath, until all at once we came to the face of the coal, which was opened out like a large stone quarry, and had scarcely a foot of soil separating the main body of coal from the greensward above.

It is not surprising, after seeing this veritable "mine of wealth," that the coal-works are so thickly dotted about; for if any one possesses what would elsewhere be considered an insignificant patch of ground, this rich measure makes it well worth while to erect machinery and sink shafts.

It would be beneficial, I think, to the colliers if, after toiling all day, and being blackened over with coal-dust, the Japanese custom of getting into a tub was more frequently resorted to. Very often in the evening you may see men who have returned from their work as black nearly as chimney-sweeps, with just the oval of their faces partially washed, and which, set in the sooty framing of smoke and dirt, makes them look worse than if they had not washed themselves at all. They are rather fond of having their shirt-fronts open; so that there is generally a full exhibition of their neck and chest, showing where the streams of perspiration have been running down, leaving marks something like the pattern on a dark moiré-antique. On a Saturday evening there is certainly something done towards getting the dirt off more effectually, and often in the summer time by the young men getting into the canal, and there performing their ablutions; but purifying the person generally after working, as they do, stripped to the waist, in an atmosphere laden with coal-dust, seems almost essential to health and comfort, and yet is an undertaking a collier never thinks of entering upon every day.

Our way back to the station leading through some of the back streets, and past several rows of workmen's cottages, there was a good view of the weekly cleaning-up that was going on. Many of the houses were already "tidied," fit for the coming Sunday, and even a considerable space in front of the door swept up in an orderly manner. Others were progressing, but not so efficiently, as the inmates appeared to be adding considerably to the filth already accumulated in the road by leaving the result of all their mopping and sweeping close to the door-step, or at such a distance as it could be thrown without the trouble of crossing the threshold. There were some houses, however, which had not been commenced upon yet; and I was told that it was not uncommon to find a few of the women commencing preparations at ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, when the rest were thinking of going to church or chapel.

It was now getting late in the evening; but the people seemed stirring about more briskly than ever, and many of the children were playing about the roads, as though they were not at all afraid of being fetched in and sent to bed at any regular time.

On reaching the station, it was thronged with people going and coming by the last trains; and I was not at all sorry when the engine steamed up, and quickly carried us away out of the Black Country once again into the fresh, breezy air, where the "pits" were not deep-sunk shafts, but simply holes of water for the cattle, and the "fields" not of coal, but arable and pasture.

A Frugal Marriage.

I SUPPOSE that we have all of us some sort of acquaintance with the firm of Hunker, Munker, and Co., of Great Boodle Street, S.W., Bankers; for it must surely be the right thing to say of them, that they are very eminent in the Banking World-whatever the observation may mean, and I for one am by no means sure that I am in possession of its precise significance. But I think that we, all of us, know Messrs. Hunker, Munker, and Co., at least by name; some of us may even know Munker by sight (Hunker has been dead many years now; he was removed by gout in the stomach from Great Boodle Street to an elegant edifice of white marble, in an architectural point of view presenting a façade something between a miniature Greek temple and a slice of a cottage ornée, in Kensal-Green Cemetery),—tall, thin, melancholy man, Munker, aristocraticlooking, I am informed by competent judges, with cheeks that droop flabbily and pendulously over his hard stiff white kerchief, heavy eyelids, half hiding small bloodshot black eyes, a nose with a tendency to redness of hue, and of a swollen, shapeless pattern, a rather lipless mouth, depressed into a pucker at its each corner. He dresses in black always, -perhaps in perpetual mourning for the departed Hunker,-in tight black, which exhibits to perfection the colossal proportions of his knees; he has large hands and feet,-on the latter a phenomenal development of knobs and bosses; and a crimson watch-ribbon at his fob points to the hidingplace of his watch, just as in suburban gardens a floating strip of paper marks where mignonette-seed has been buried, and the perfumed plant may some day be expected to emerge. Some of us, a small minority, may have now and then received one of the eminent firm's lilac-coloured cheques, as good as gold those cheques surely, and very nearly as beautiful looking, with every figure and letter the nucleus, as it were, of an intricate cobweb of flourishes, the arabesqued parallelogram for the signature being a singularly happy portion of the design, and the whole a crowning piece of exquisite handiwork on the part of the engraver. Some, a still smaller minority, may have even had accounts open in their names in the books of Messrs. Hunker, Munker, and Co.; may have even possessed balances in the firm's coffers, and valuables in the firm's cellars. But these are people whom I have only to congratulate; any other sort of remark in regard to them, coming from me, would be out of place and uncalled for.

Hunker, Munker, and Co.'s bank in Great Boodle Street was no more like one of those noisy joint-stock City banking institutions, than a quiet family-hotel, with an evangelical head waiter, a testament and hymn-book in every bed-room, and wax-candles, well charged in the bill, resembles a Whitechapel public-house reeking with gin and gas, and crammed with intoxicated clients. There was no hurry about Hunker's, no noise, no