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Nay, very great was the confidence which clients reposed in the rings of their counsel-so that one who hired a handsome one got a larger fee than his betters:

-"Conducta Paulus agebat Sardonyce, atque ideo pluris quam Cossus agebat

Quam Basilus !". -(VII. 143–5.)

-But all this is a parenthesis. I return to my road-side swell, After sitting with us for a stage or two, we found him to be an occasional coachman on that line of road; he drove us some fifteen or twenty miles, and in such a wild harum-scarum style as made us all quake several times for fear of being overturned. He did not deign to apply to any of us for the usual gratuity; and I think he would have failed if he had.

A few miles further on we picked up another passenger-apparently a decent kind of mercantile man, of middle age. He soon got upon talking terms with the guard, and also with us, and disclosed himself, in a confident and zealous manner, to be a tee-totaller. Most eager, indeed, he was, both in season and, it would seem, out of season, to propagate his principles. It was quite laughable the abrupt dash he made into his favourite subject, which was thus. 66 D'ye know, Mr Guard, I've not tasted a drop of spirits, wine, or malt liquor, this seven years!" "You look like it!" replied the guard, in such a quaint bitter way, that we all burst into laughter. But the tee-totaller was not to be dismayed; and at length Q. and I got embroiled in the discussion. He was evidently a good-natured, but foolish fellow, with only a sort of little slang about "temperance,"-which he said meant "tee-totalism"-in defence of his most unpopular doctrines, and which he kept repeating over and over again. He said that he himself was a happy instance of the effects of tee-totalism; for whereas he had once been very subject to headaches, he now never had them-post hoc, of course, propter hoc. He contended that it was a sin to touch either spirits, or wine, or malt liquor.

"What! wine that maketh glad the heart of man?" quoth I. He seemed a little staggered, for he evidently knew that I had quoted Scripture.

"Ah, yes," said he, after a slight hesitation," but that means""Come, old gentleman," interrupted the guard, triumphantly, "don't like it, eh? Answer it!"

And so I will; d'you think I don't know how to answer it? It means that it's good where it's taken-as physic !"

"What did God Almighty make barley for?" gruffly enquired a passenger that had not hitherto spoken; and received no answer to his question.

"Don't you think," said Q., "that they are all good and allowable things, but that the sin lies in our abusing them, as in abusing any thing else!' "No, oh no; they're all liquid poison !"

"Ah, ha, old chap-you're hard up for an answer to any thing these gentlemen say!" interposed the guard, with an exulting air. "Now lookee, sir," he continued, earnestly, "you see I'm often out all night long, in bitter cold nights—like last night, for instance- and wet through often into the bargain for fifty miles together; now you arn't such a muff as to say that I mayn't now and then get down and take a drop of something warm to keep the life in me?"

"Oh dear, no! you may take a dish of tea".

"Go to -!" furiously growled the guard, turning away as far as he could his whole body from the holder of such damnable doctrines. In answer to a question of mine, our teetotaller declared it his opinion that it was wrong to have wine for the sacrament!! That cold tea, or even cold water, ought to be substituted for it!!-I asked the simpleton if he had never read his Bible, and found that our blessed Saviour did "drink of the fruit of the vine, and give it to his disciples?" He replied that that didn't prove wine to be a good thing, and that he had never had a headache since he had left it off!-Here our discussion ended. It was now about three o'clock in the afternoon, and Q. and I were almost perished with cold. The bitter wind kept blowing at us with cruel constancy, frequently accompanied with hail and sleet. Not a glimpse had there been of genial sunshine all the day; but far and wide, over the bare verdureless country,

stretched the gloomy wintry sky with which we had set out. I felt the cold most in my legs. Throwing my cape over my head, I strove several times to go to sleep and forget it; but I could not do so for more than a few minutes together. How often did I curse my folly in coming on the out. side!-By the time that we had arrived at the inn where we were to dine I felt so benumbed-as evidently did Q. and his servant-that I could hardly get down. In the parlour of the inn was cheerfully crackling and blazing a large wood fire; and hungry as I was, I let five out of our precious twenty minutes pass in warming myself before attempting to eat. partook heartily of some excellent hot boiled round of beef and mealy pota

toes.

I then

You should have seen the face of our tee-totaller, who dined with us, when he saw me raise to my lips a large glass of famous, clear, amberhued ale, with a snowy crest upon it!

"Hadn't you better pour some out for that gentleman ?" said I, smilingly, to the buxom wench who waited

on us.

“Oh no, thank you, sir," said he, with at once a bitter and a sheepish air- I-I-prefer this!" pointing to a glass of water that made my teeth ache to look at. I am sure that had the poor fellow been alone or had he not been so far committed to us by the disclosure of his opinion-he would in a twinkling have given the go-by to all his fantastical fiddle-faddle about temperance, and toped off a quart of the generous beverage. As it was, he bolted his three quarters of a pint of cold water with a rueful air!

The

When the guard entered to summon us off we both paid ten shillings to ride the remainder of the journey inside. There was only one passenger within beside ourselves- -a respectable gentleman, a West Indian; with whom we gossipped pleasantly enough. How I felt for those outside! night was clear and bright, but, oh, how cold! We got on very comfortably, except that the coachman, at one of the places where we changed horses, put inside an elderly womanapparently a friend of his-who had on her lap a small basket, whence issued an odour like that of a fowl decomposing, and which was so disagreeable as to require opening the

window, cold as it was. Then she would talk! I, who was her vis-à-vis, answered her only in reluctant, ungracious monosyllables, being very sleepy

"Dear! Ah! Yes! - Indeed!" wishing her all the while any where but where she was. At length she kindly ceased, and we all seemed dropping into a nap; I, at least, was fast forgetting the woman opposite and her abominable basket, when a thought suddenly flashed across my mind"Good Heavens!-My wig!" I exclaimed, with a start.

"Eh!-what-what's the matter?" enquired Q, startled out of his doze. "Q., my wig! my wig!"

Our West Indian friend laughed, and said to Q.-" He's dreaming!" "What is the matter?" enquired

Q.

"Alas-I've certainly left my wig behind after all!"

"Your wig-of all things!"
Yes-my wig!"

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"You don't say so!" pointedly exclaimed our West Indian, good-naturedly. He could have had no notion of the nature of my calamity.

"La, sir, excuse me, but you seem to have a good enough wig on now; what's the use of two?" enquired the woman with the stench.

"What shall I do!" I exclaimed with a sigh of vexation.

"How do you know," said Q., "that it is not in your portmanteau?

"Oh, I am sure of it; I now recol. lect where it must be-in a place that would be very unlikely to occur to us in the hurrying of packing up. It is lying on the top of one of the bookshelves in my study! How veryvery provoking! I recollect now seeing my gown lying along the top of the things in the portmanteau-I wonder it did not suggest"

"Oh, now I see what you are, sir; you're a counsellor, sir, ar'n't you?" politely enquired the woman with the stench.

"You are in a fix," quoth the West Indian, with a giggle" that is, if the wisdom's in the wig!" I could not just then exactly relish the joke, or admire the taste of it. What was to be done? Visions came o'er me of the crowds of clients who would besiege my lodgings with armfuls of briefs as soon as my arrival in Liverpool had become known-the court opening on the next morning-and I

wigless! an object of which the judge could not take judicial notice! He could not see or hear me ! And if so, what was to become of the interests of my numerous clients? After we had fully discussed the matter, it was agreed that the best thing I could do would be to get out for a few minutes at Coventry, which was then about eight miles off, and if possible send off a line to town, in time for the mail, which would pass through Coventry about twelve o'clock, on its way to London. If I succeeded in doing so my letter would be delivered on the ensuing morning at ten o'clock; the wig could be despatched by the three o'clock coach, directed to me at Liverpool; and thus I might find it awaiting my arrival. But then, againsuppose my wife should be from home! For I recollected that she had talked of going immediately to spend a day or two with a friend at some distance from town; or suppose she should be unable to find my wig;-or suppose, after all, it should be at that moment in my portmanteau-how could I ascertain this latter fact without losing the opportunity of rectifying the error by the first coach, if it should turn out that my wig was not there? Titillated by these pleasant possibilities I reached Coventry, and, the moment that the coach stopped, jumped out, ran into the booking-office, and scrawled off the following, which, as pleasing evidence of my thoughtfulness, my wife has preserved :

"My wig-Forgotten!!-In the tin box, on the lowest shelf of books in the study. Tie it up securely-direct it distinctly to' on the Northern Circuit, at the Adelphi, Liverpool;' accompany the servant with it, by two o'clock, to the Swan with Two Necks, book it, and pay the full carriage on to Liverpool. Herein fail not, as you love me. Yours, X. Y.

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dark, and when you have been travelling the whole day? For a while I fixed my eyes on the lantern nearest me, shedding its dusky circumscribed light over the empty high-road, which alone it rendered visible, and nothing was audible but the monotonous clattering tramp of the horses and dull rumbling of the coach wheels; I became gradually less and less sensible both of the one and the other-and at length-saw, and heard, and thought of nothing at all.

I was roused from sleep some time afterwards by hearing the voices of persons shouting and swearing violently. I found that the coach was standing opposite a public-house, where we changed horses; and Q. informed me of what was going on. We had been waiting there upwards of a quarter of an hour; for, as the two leaders were standing ready to be harnessed to the coach, one of them took it into his head to bolt off towards Birmingham at his top-speed. The other, as soon as he saw the ostler pelting after his companion, turned round-the droll brute!-and scampered off, similarly attended, in an opposite direction: as if it had been a trick concerted between them! You should have seen the fat old owner of the public-house at the time when this happened! He was standing, said Q., against the door-post, leaning on a sort of crutch, having apparently the gout-and shook his canestick, and cursed and swore after the horses" errant" in ludicrous and impotent rage. In about five minutes' time the first horse was brought back; and the already-winded ostler, after securing it, had to start off again in search of the other! He was gone so long, without any signs of returning, that a third was ordered to mount the first fugitive and ride after the second! This was the state of things when I awoke. The first words which I heard the old man utter, after stretching his head and straining his ear in the direction taken by the last-mentioned horse, were, "I can't hear 'em! D-d, if I don't think the brute's got up into a tree, and hid hi'self! Lord, I only wish I had 'em here!" said he, shaking his stick with direful significancy.

At length, however, the horse was brought back again, having been, it seemed, a most infernal way up the road; and, after waiting for upwards of twenty-five minutes, we again set

off on our journey, Q. and I consoling ourselves with the reflection, that this sort of thing, at all events, could not happen on the railway. We reached Birmingham about half-past eleven; and, as the coach put up at the Swan, and the hour was so late, and our stay in the town so short, we did the same -though we had purposed going to the Hen and Chickens. We were soon seated in an excellent coffeeroom beside a roaring fire: and Q. and I, together with our West Indian companion-the only tenants of the room-having partaken, with infinite relish, of coffee, toast, and collared tongue, and chatted together for about half an hour about snakes, slaves, and sugar, retired to our respective rooms. I slept like a top till nine o'clock the next morning, and rose refreshed. On returning to the coffee-room, I found it almost filled with anxious mercantilelooking people, in travelling costume, hurriedly swallowing breakfast, in preparation for resuming their journey to Liverpool or to London, from one or other of which places they had just arrived, most of them having the jaded squalid aspect of night-travellers. As all the tables were filled, I had to wait some time before one was vacant for Q. and me-one comfort of putting up at a commercial inn. We had brought with us, as I before intimated, a letter of introduction to a banker in the town, and despatched it to him while we were at breakfast; the object of which, next to the pleasure of seeing him, was our being put into the way of seeing some of the sights in Birmingham. He very politely called upon us, accompanied by a relative, in about half an hour's time-a compliment we felt, from men in important business; and one or other of them accompanied us, during the greater portion of the day, to various places of interest-especially manufactories; giving us an invitation to dinner in the evening. The first place we saw was the Town-hall, a fine large building, with an imposing exterior, standing out well and gracefully from amidst the somewhat mean shops and houses which surrounded it. The interior is striking, but the windows are far too numerous, and greatly detract from the general effect; the ceiling and walls being, also in equal bad taste, as I conceive, painted white, or very nearly so, and the pipes of the most enormous organ I ever saw being

VOL, XLIV. NO. CCLXXIII.

of a colour conformable. We were very anxious to hear the voice of the monster; but he would not, as he was being got ready for a large musical party on the morrow, when Braham and a few others of his class werevain mimicry!-to strain their tiny pipes before him. He weighed I forget how many tons, though we were told; and his largest pipe was Z in three flats, or something of that sort. When we got outside it was coming down a drizzling rain, and nothing could be more dreary than the aspect of things. A great manufacturing town, with high chimneys smoking in all directions--the houses and shops, great and small, being of a dirty reddish hue, and seeming only subordinate and auxiliary to the manufactories-but few people to be seen in the streets, which were bad and dirty; add to all this, the thick, hazy, smoke-laden atmosphere, and the small searching rain coming down unintermittingly-and you may suppose that there was nothing particularly calculated to elate our spirits. We were, however, exceedingly interested in the several manufactories which we visited. The first was a glass-house-how dark and hot it was!

especially when contrasted with the cold and wet without. Of course you and many of your readers must have seen a glass-house; I shall not, therefore, trouble you with a description of it. I know, however, and you can guess, what the intense and blasting furnace, which, out of small apertures, shot its lurid rays through the gloom, reminded one of-but will not mention it to "ears polite." It is curious to see a swart fellow poke a long hollow rod into the furnace, attach to the end of it a small quantity of the pliant mass, all red and glowing-blow it out, roll it about a little-and lo, in a twinkling, a saltcellar, a tumbler, a wine-glass, a decanter! In another part of the works a great number of women were grinding glass for lamps, &c. &c., an operation which seemed to me to require both care and dexterity. A third department was that of the glass-cutters, most of whom were little boys, who sat at their respective machines working as gravely, silently, and methodically as their fathers. This also is an interesting process. room was an outer one, on the door of which might have been inscribed,"Gather up the fragments, that no

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thing be lost," for in it two elderly women were busily engaged sorting and most carefully washing all the broken glass of the establishment, for the purpose of its being used up again. Practice, of course, makes perfect, but I shuddered to see the haste and recklessness with which they handled the sharp fragments-thrusting their hands into great baskets-full as carelessly as a child into the heaps of pebbles on the sea-shore. One of them informed me that she had not cut her hand, nor hardly scratched it, for a twelvemonth.

The next place which we visited I hardly know how to describe. It consisted of extensive premises, principally occupied by a very large steamengine, at full work when we entered, whose powers were chiefly applied to the rolling of brass, iron, and copper into rods, bars, and plates, even of the greatest tenuity. They rolled a pennypiece-save us from the Attorney-General!-into a thin slip of copper, some third of an inch in width, and I don't know how many yards in length. Q. has it still by him. I shuddered as I stood in the midst of the machineryimmense wheels and cylinders all in full action, the former whirling round sixty times a minute, and keeping in rapid motion a vast number of smaller ones, which again communicated motion to numerous other portions of the machinery, some of them very remote, and belonging to various persons in different trades, who rented the use of the steam-engine of the proprietor of it-all working at the same moment. Whilst I was gazing in silent apprehension at the tremendous fly-wheel making its fearfully rapid revolutions, a shrill whistle was heard, and within a moment or two every thing was at an absolute stand-still. Notice had been given that some small matter required rectifying. So easily is this huge agent controlled! I always feel great nervousness when amidst steammachinery a horror of being suddenly entangled and crushed to death, as I heard, on this occasion, of one or two frightful instances; and, gathering the tails of my surtout closely around me, I "walked circumspectly," and with some trepidation, close past the enormous fly-wheel already mentioned, and whose motions it made one dizzy to look at. The process of rolling out the metal was the most striking of those I witnessed. Fancy two

solid cylinders, of polished steel or iron, placed parallel horizontally, roll ing round, say one set within three inches of one another, the next an inch, &c. Between them is pushed a solid bar of copper or iron, which, in passing through, of course suffers a certain degree of attenuation, and comes out proportionally flattened and elongated. Thus it would be passed between cylinders closer and closer together, till, if required, it might be reduced to the tenuity of tinfoil! As I stood watching the men who, with such an indifferent and apparently careless air, thrust the metal between these rapidly revolving cylinders, I could not help a frequent shudder at the possibility of their fingers going a little too far, as had several times been the case. In one of the rooms attached to the central one, in which the engine stood, were a number of boys and women, sitting each at their machine, making iron heels for boots and shoes. How easily and rapidly it was done! The little straight bars of iron seemed like wax in the hands of a mere boy or girl, who moulded them into the proper shape, and punched the nail-holes in, and polished the rim, with surprising rapidity.

The next place which we visited was a screw-manufactory. The process was very curious and interesting to witness, but difficult to describe. I had no idea that screws were made in

the way I saw. Here again women, chiefly young ones, were the principal performers, and did their work with the utmost ease, rapidity, and effect.

By this time it was nearly three o'clock. The rain still came down steadily, and therefore we thought it best to return to our hotel, especially as we had letters to write. My wig had been bobbing before "my mind's eye" fifty times during the day. Would it arrive in time, and safely? Suppose the man at Coventry, though fee'd for his trouble, had neglected or forgotten to put my letter into the post -or suppose my wife to have gone from home, and the servants to be unable to find the wig, or to take proper means for sending it on, as directedor suppose-but it was useless to bother one's self about it any further. I wrote off a long letter home, and then we dressed and set off to dine with our friends, as we did right pleasantly. I found that we had omitted to see one or two leading sights-the gun-barrel

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