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view from the windows of the college shows that the surrounding country, though flat and undiversified by rivers, is thoroughly open, healthy, and in parts really beautiful. It was good judgment that selected such a site for such a building.

and relics of past days. Some of the redoubtable church-building are for the most part plain and simple. A wardens have cut a brave recumbent knight's head in two, in order to make room for a staircase! The gem of the church is Chantrey's statue of Watt, one of the finest works of that artist's chisel. The exquisite purity of the marble which Chantrey was fortunate enough to obtain, the wonderful expression of steadiness and thought in the countenance of Watt, the ease of the attitude, and the skilful placing of the statue in a small chapel built expressly for its reception, (over Watt's grave,) all combine to make this more than commonly interesting among works of its class. Smaller memorials of Boulton and Murdoch are contained in the same church. This Murdoch was the engineer who first applied gas-lighting with success; and the Soho was the first large building where it was so applied. It is something for a church to contain the remains of Watt, Boulton, and Murdoch!

At a distance of three or four miles beyond Aston and Handsworth is the Roman Catholic college of St. Mary's, Oscott. (Cut, No. 11.) Few positions can be more thoroughly free from the associations of smoky towns and busy streets. Nothing but green fields and country scenes lie between this spot and the northern confines of Birmingham; and were it not for the dim haze that hovers in the south, we should not know that any bustling town is near. The iron and the coal-seams do not reach so far eastward as this spot; so that Oscott is as much free from mines below as from factories above: there is a total absence of both. This was the spot selected about ten years ago, by a body of influential Roman Catholics, as the site for a college; and Mr. Pugin has built a large and beautiful structure, in the midst of an equally beautiful park or enclosure. On applying at the entrance gate, (which, like everything else about the spot, is of the Tudor or late perpendicular style,) we are admitted into the park, which presents some lovely walks and terraces, winding round in picturesque curves, bounded by luxuriant trees, shrubs, and flowers. A quarter of a mile of such walking brings us to the college, a very extensive red brick and stone-dressed building. It has its chapel, refectories, oratories, vestries, studies, dormitories—all the requirements for a college in the Roman Catholic form; and it is difficult, while walking through them, to believe that we are in the nineteenth century, and in the vicinity of a rattling, hammering, stamping, steaming town. Everything speaks of past times: the black letter inscriptions over the doors; the encaustic tiles under the feet; the stained glass in the windows; the combination of plain dark oak with polychrome decorations; the ancient relics carefully stored up and displayed in cases; the black collegiate costume of the quiet, pale, calm students; the order and noiselessness that pervade the whole building-all have a sort of impressiveness about them, even to Non-Catholics. The chapel is a most splendid apartment, glittering with devices and ornaments in gold and in every imaginable colour: indeed the chapel seems to be the special object for display, as the other portions of the

There is a large extent of open heathy country to the south-west of Oscott, which affords abundant scope for all sorts of open-air sports; but, unluckily, it is too far off from Birmingham. Even among the mining districts themselves there are a few pleasant spots; and when we come to Dudley, we reach a park which is not only beautiful, but highly picturesque. A considerable portion of Dudley and its mines belongs to Lord Ward, who is also proprietor of the ruined Castle and the large Park named after it. The Castle we have before alluded to: it is a fine old ruin, with its warder's tower, watch-tower, triple gate, keep, vault and dungeons, sally-port, octagon-tower, justice-hall, dining-hall, chapel, all more or less discernible, but all in dilapidation. The view from the summit of the keep is wide-spreading: Lichfield Cathedral in the north-east; Birmingham in the east; Hagley in the south; the Malvern Hills in the south-west-all are visible, forming a back-ground to the busy environs of Dudley. But when we descend from the keep, and enter the grounds of the Castle, we soon become as much shut out from busy and smoky scenes, and as much surrounded by sylvan objects, as if we were a hundred miles away from any manufacturing town. At some very remote period, these grounds appear to have been quarried for limestone; for there are dells, and caverns, and recesses, whose origin we can hardly explain in any other way; but most of them are now clothed with verdure, or bordered by trees and shrubs; and the eye is easily cheated into the belief that they are all natural formations. Some of the limestone caverns are almost as curious as the caves of Derbyshire; and there is a ravine, about half-a-mile in length, which looks so wild, so ancient, so picturesque, that one is inclined to think it ought to be one of Nature's productions. It is mortifying to be obliged to descend from such a thought, and to dabble with quarrymen's picks and shovels; yet the opinion seems to be that even this ravine is the work of men's hands. We will try, however, until evidence becomes stronger than it has yet been, to believe that the ravine existed when picks and shovels were not; and we will, moreover, advise the reader, if ever he is within a short distance from Dudley, to go and judge for himself: he will not regret his visit.

South of Dudley there is a very pleasant part of Worcestershire and Shropshire, which can be reached by an hour or two's ride from Birmingham. The Leasowes and Hagley-the one associated with Shenstone, and the other with the Lyttletons-here lie enticingly open to a ramble of inspection. On the south of the road from Birmingham to Halesowen, in the midst of a very delightful country, a plain white house peeps between the trees. It is a house which, per se,

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deserves scarcely a word of praise; but it was once inhabited by Shenstone, and it is surrounded by a lovely park-lovely once through the care bestowed in giving it loveliness, and lovely still though neglected. It is unpleasant, nevertheless, to be obliged to hear that Shenstone spent on this spot the means which might have been appropriated better. Somewhat above a century ago, he came into possession of the place; from which time, as Dr. Johnson says, he began "to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful : a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers." But what was the consequence? He devoted so much of his means to external embellishment that the house continued to be a dilapidated sort of place, unfit, as he acknowledges, to receive polite friends.' His beautiful park did not give him adequate pleasure; for he became, from various causes, disappointed, querulous, and dejected, in his declining years. Of the Poems, Prose Essays, and Letters of Shenstone, a large portion of the latter relate wholly to the Leasowes, and his Schoolmistress,' the best and most celebrated of his productions, is an embodiment of his thoughts relating to a primitive dame-school at which he received his early education, near Halesowen. The ground on which the Leasowes stands is very undulating, and these undulations have been so managed as to give the spot a much larger apparent area than it really possesses. Some parts are wild and rugged; some so thickly planted that the light of the sun is almost hidden; some soft and graceful; little streams wander hither and thither, and little bridges cross them in unexpected spots. In bygone times, the last-century taste of statues, and vases, and urns was displayed in decking the grounds; but these have disappeared: these, indeed, we might spare, but there are other indications of neglect which are less welcome. Eightyfive years have elapsed since Shenstone's death; and perhaps it is hardly to be expected that those who have since possessed the estate should in all cases have been imbued with the feeling necessary for its

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Four miles south-westward of the Leasowes stands Hagley Park, the seat of Lord Lyttleton. Hagley itself is a village, but not a manufacturing one; it contains the private residences of many manufacturers and merchants, whose places of business are elsewhere; so that it presents much more of a holiday aspect than other villages whose names we have mentioned. Sir Thomas Lyttleton, father of Lyttleton the poet, lived here in the early part of the last century; but its celebrity began with the next possessor, who was created Lord Lyttleton in the early part of George the Third's reign. This Lord Lyttleton's Monody on his Wife's Death;' 'Prologue to the Tragedy of Coriolanus,' and other poetical pieces, attracted a good deal of notice in the last century; but he is perhaps best known to later readers by his History of the Reign

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of Henry the Second.' In his 'Monody,' he speaks of the 'well-known ground' the 'fountain's side,' the waters gliding along the valley,' the wide-stretched prospect,' the playful fawns,' the verdant lawns' -all of which referred to Hagley; and we find all these at Hagley at the present day. As this estate, unlike the Leasowes, has remained the family seat of the founder's successors, it has been well kept up and cared for. The mansion is far larger than Shenstone's, and of more architectural pretensions. Within, it has a fine collection of pictures, and all the adornments of an English noble's house. Without, it has a park of great beauty, with lawns, shrubberies, gardens, woods, walks, pastures, avenues, artificial basins, and all the similar concomitants. The neat little village church, too, is so situated as to seem to form part of the domain. On the opposite side of the high road is a lofty obelisk, erected to the memory of Lord Lyttleton; and near it is one of those little prettinesses, mock temples, which are always in danger of slipping down from the sublime to the ridiculous-a proverbially short journey. It is a miniature Parthenon, perched up among the trees on a hill, which serves as the Acropolis; and so long as no other building is within immediate view, all goes on tolerably well; but, as seen from a portion of the park, there is a provoking cottage gable comes into comparison, and the poor temple loses a good deal of its dignity immediately. We doubt whether the Leasowes, even in its comparative decay, is not a finer bit of landscape, a more delightful place to lose one's-self in, than even its larger and better preserved neighbour.

The country lying southward of Birmingham does not begin to be particularly attractive until we arrive at a considerable distance from that town: but when this distance has been traversed, the charms of the locality are so numerous and so varied, and appeal to such a crowd of associations, that we get almost into a new world. Stratford, and its undying celebrities, Warwick, and its fine old castle,-one of the few real old English castles still kept up and inhabited,—Kenilworth, and all that it suggests to us of the Elizabethan days, Guy's Cliff, and Piers Gaveston's monument, and Stoneleigh Abbey,-all these come upon the sight one by one. But it is only by a stretch of courtesy that we can be permitted to include such a district in the environs of Birmingham; and all attempts to describe these scenes in the present sheet would be out of place. Coventry, too, situated about as far as Warwick from Birmingham, is a host in itself; with its ribbons and ribbon-weavers, its fine old churches and crosses and halls, its pageants of former days, and its Shaksperean associations. But though it does not fall within our present object to describe all these fine things, and to 'lionize' the reader through the beauties of North Warwickshire, it is quite permissible for us to congratulate the good folks of Birmingham on the practical nearness of all these scenes. We say 'practical nearness,' because distance is, in our day, better measured by minutes than by miles. A railway run of

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