cloisters, and an elegantly detached chapel. It has about 300 scholars, 50 of whom are on the foundation, an endowment now producing about £5000 a-year, and 14 valuable exhibitions to the universities. In the year 1827 the head mastership of the School became vacant; and the trustees-a body of twelve country gentlemen and noblemen-selected, to the dismay of all the orthodox, the Rev. Thomas Arnold, late fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He raised and improved the standard of classical learning, in its widest sense, from which the scholars of Rugby gained a high standing at the universities.

From Rugby we proceed to the important city of COVENTRY, the great Warwickshire manufactory and mart of ribands and watches. First is seen the graceful spire of St. Michael's church; then the green pastures of the Lammas, on which for centuries the freemen of Coventry have fed their cattle, appear in sight; and we suddenly enter the venerable city and county of Coventry. A railroad here branches off to Nuneaton, distant ten miles, a sort of manufacturing dependancy of the great city; and on the other, at the same distance, to Leamington, with a station at Kenilworth.

In addition to its manufacturing importance, Coventry affords rich food for the antiquarian, scenes of deep interest to the historical student, a legend for poets, a pageant for melodramatists, and a tableau for amateurs of poses plastiques. Once upon a time kings held their courts and summoned parliaments at Coventry; four hundred years ago the guilds of Coventry recruited, armed, clothed, and sent forth six hundred stout fellows to take part in the Wars of the Roses; at Coventry the lists were pitched for Mary of Lancaster and Philip Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, to decide in single combat their counter-charges before Richard II. At Coventry you will find the effigy of vile Peeping Tom, and can follow the course through which the fair Godiva rode naked, veiled by her modesty and flowing tresses, to save her townsmen from a grievous tax. To be sure, some English Niebuhrs have undertaken to prove the whole story a legend; but mankind are still determined to believe in tradition and Alfred Tennyson's sonnet.

There are three ancient churches in Coventry-of which St. Michael's, built in the reign of Henry I., is the first; the spire rising 303 feet from the ground, the lofty interior ornamented with a roof of oak, curiously carved, and several windows of stained glass. St. Mary's Hall, a large building, now used for corporation council-meetings and festivities, erected in the reign of Henry VI., is one of the richest and most interesting vestiges of the ornamental architecture of England. The principal room has a grotesquely-carved roof of oak, a gallery for minstrels, an armoury, a chair of state, and a great painted window, which need only the filling up of royal and noble personages, their attendants, and the rich burgesses of Coventry, to recall the time when Richard II. held his court in this ancient city, and, with "old John of Gaunt," settled the sentence on Harry of Hereford and Philip of Norfolk. In this chamber is to be seen a beautiful piece of tapestry, executed in 1450, measuring thirty feet by ten, and containing eighty figures.

In the free school, founded by John Moles in the reign of Henry VIII., Sir William Dugdale, the antiquarian and historian of Warwickshire, was educated. The income is about £900 a-year, and the scholars have open to competition two fellowships of St. John's College, Oxon, one at Catherine's Hall, Cambridge, and six exhibitions at either university. Previous to the investigations of the Charity Commissioners, the fine school-room was locked up, and the books of the library torn for waste paper to light fires. At present, under the reformed system, the school is attended by a large number

of scholars.

There are more than a dozen educational and other charities for the benefit of the poor, enjoying a revenue of many thousands a-year.

OUR next station is the important one of BIRMINGHAM, the great focus of manufacturing industry, and the vast centre of railway reticulation. As a railway starting-point, Birmingham has become a wonderful place. In addition to those main lines and branches passed and noted on our journey down, it is also the centre at which meet the railroads to Derby and Sheffield; to Worcester, Cheltenham, Gloucester, and Bristol; to London through Oxford, by the Broad Gauge Great Western; to Shrewsbury and Chester through Wolverhampton; beside the little South Staffordshire lines, which form an omnibus route between Birmingham, Walsall, Dudley, and Lichfield, and other iron nets.

The old railway station of Birmingham stands at the foot of one of the hills on which the Hardware Village is built; but the new station lands the passengers behind the Grammar School, in New Street, the principal, and indeed the only handsome street of any length in Birmingham.

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW.

BIRMINGHAM.

Oldbury, a distance by coach-road of about eight miles. we pass out of Warwickshire into Staffordshire, thence into Shropshire, thence again into Staffordshire, thence into Worcestershire, and a third time into Staffordshire; for although Dudley Town is in Worcestershire, Dudley Castle and grounds are in Staffordshire.

All the above towns, then, belong to the mining and manufacturing district, known by the general name of South Staffordshire. We shall have a little to say about most of them in a future page; but it will be well to take up the proposition just expressed, that " Geology makes the district what it is," and to show what is the nature of the mineral wealth that lies beneath the surface. The district forms what is called by geologists a coal-field: it has layers of coal running, so far as is

THERE is a castle-keep, not far from the centre of the kingdom, from whence can be obtained one of the most remarkable views anywhere presented to the artist or the tourist. It is not a view of hill and dale, of mountain and water-fall, of craggy rock and dizzy precipice; it is not a sweep of country, spotted over with the ruins of cathedrals, abbeys, castles, baronial mansions, and other erections that tell of past days; it is not a commingling of lake scenery with land scenery, nor any of those picturesque groupings which distinguish a sea-coast. DUDLEY CASTLE is the point of sight here selected; and the landscape viewed from it is the coal and iron district of South Staffordshire. On whichever side the view is taken, but especially towards the north and | known, beneath the whole surface. This coal-field the east, the evidences of mining industry are truly remarkable. The grass of the fields shows no disinclination to grow, nor are there wanting many pleasant undulations of country; but the crust of the earth has been pierced in a hundred places; and wherever these perforations have occurred, there do we see red buildings and black smoke. These buildings and this smoke increase year after year-age after age; and if purchasers for the mining produce become as numerous as the sellers could wish, the buildings and the smoke will still further increase, and the green fields will be still further encroached upon

Although the name of South Staffordshire is here mentioned, a visitor to the district must be prepared to find himself repeatedly in the wrong as to the county in which he happens to be located at a particular moment. Geology has very little to do with counties. Geology makes the district what it is counties are man's divisions. Taking Dudley Castle as a centre, we have to the north of us Tipton, Gornal, Sedgley, Bilston, Wolverhampton, Willenhall, and Wednesfield -all in Staffordshire, all within a distance of eight or nine miles, and all marked by the perforations into the "world underground," the red brick houses, and the black smoke. Taking next a more eastern direction, we find Great Bridge, Toll End, Darlaston, Wednesbury, Christchurch, West Bromwich, and Swan Village, all coming under the same description as the former group. But when the view bends round farther to the south, we find that the iron towns (for so they may well be termed) are fewer, and wider apart, and that they lie in four counties which are very much entangled together. For instance, Birmingham-the giant of the district is in Warwickshire; Smethwick, Rowley Regis, Brierley Hill, Wordesley, and Kingswinford, are in Staffordshire; Oldbury and Halesowen are in Shropshire; while Dudley, Dudley Port, and Stourbridge, are in Worcestershire. So numerous are the outlying fragments of counties in this neighbourhood, that in going from Birmingham to Dudley Castle by way of

forms an irregular oblong, extending nearly from Rugeley in the north, to Halesowen in the south: but the northern half of this district is much less rich in coal and iron than the southern; insomuch that we may take Wednesfield and Halesowen as the north and south limits of the effective coal-field. The western limit approaches to Wolverhampton, and the eastern nearly to Birmingham. Taking the extreme limit up to Rugeley, the district measures about twenty miles long by six or seven broad. This coal-field is encircled on all sides by the new red sandstone formation. The transition from one to the other of these geological formations is very distinct, not only in the appearance of the surface, but in the existing state of vegetation, the extinct species of fossil animals and vegetables, the industrial employments, and even the moral and physical characteristics of the people. Within the district, almost every one is employed in raising coal, in raising iron ore, or in bringing that ore into the forms of smelted and manufactured iron; beyond the district the surface is wholly agricultural, and marked by the same natural and industrial features as agricultural regions generally; but at the margin of the district, where the change occurs, the soil is of a mixed character; and the population, lower in moral character than either of the others, are mostly employed in nail-making.

Wolverhampton is at the extreme north-west extremity of this coal-field, while Birmingham is at the extreme south-east: indeed the latter is, in strictness, wholly beyond the limits of the mining district, for there are no mines or collieries under Birmingham. How, then, it may be asked, has it arisen, that Birmingham, exterior to the coal and iron district, is a more important manufacturing town than any within the district? The following has been suggested as a mode of explaining this point. The iron of the district has been longer known and wrought than the coal; and, indeed, if this had not been the case, still it was formerly the practice to smelt all iron with wood-charcoal, rather than with coal: hence all iron-works used to be situated near