the small army with which the earl landed at Bourdeaux, contained many men who were raised among his tenantry at Sheffield and the neighbourhood; and that these formed the body-guard of their aged and valiant chief, and were so entirely cut off, that throughout the circuit of Hallamshire there was not a family which had not a private grief originating in the disaster of that fatal day, which filled the Castle of Sheffield with the tones of loud lamentation." Other Talbots succeeded the first great Earl of Shrewsbury,-who walked the usual round of servility in the court, and courage in the camp ;—and their memories would have been left to the local annalist, had not two of them been brought into connexion with personages that fill a large space in the historical canvass. Early in the reign of Henry VIII., George, the fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, built in his Park at Sheffield a splendid mansion, more convenient than his fortified castle. In the year 1530 Cardinal Wolsey was brought there a prisoner, by the Earl of Northumberland, and delivered into the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He remained at the Manor sixteen or eighteen days, bowed to the earth by sickness and bitter disappointment; and when he quitted Sheffield he found his final resting-place, within four days, at the Abbey of Leicester. Cavendish, Wolsey's gentleman of the chamber, has given a minute relation of the conduct of Wolsey during his residence at Sheffield-his protestations of innocence-his terror at the accusations that were impending over him-his pretended confidence in the king, under the secret conviction that he would be sacrificed by his crafty and cruel master. "The fair gallery" where Wolsey and Shrewsbury held their daily conferences "the goodly tower" where the fallen minister was lodged-have long since perished. A few ruins remain to show something of the extent of this edifice. Forty years after Wolsey had gone forth for his last journey, and "waxed so sick that he had almost fallen from his mule," there was brought to Sheffield another prisoner-Mary, Queen of Scots. When Elizabeth, in 1568, pounced upon the unhappy victim of contending factions, she appears to have made up her mind as to the course which she persevered in for more than eighteen years. To George, the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, she addressed herself as a fitting person to undertake the expensive, troublesome, and perilous guardianship of the Queen of Scotland. About Christmas, 1570, Mary was brought to the Castle of Sheffield. She had thirty persons in her train; and the Earl engaged forty of his tenantry, as an extraordinary watch, by day and night. Small indulgence was granted to the poor prisoner. In 1571, the Earl writes to Lord Burghley, "Truly I would be very loth that any liberty or exercise should be granted unto her or any of hers, out of these gates. ..... I do suffer her to walk upon the leads here in open air, and in my large dining chamber, and also in this court-yard, so as both I myself, or my wife, be always in her company." In 1573 Shrewsbury wrote to Elizabeth, "I have her

sure enough, and shall keep her forthcoming at your Majesty's commandment, either quick or dead." Ten years after she first came to Sheffield, we find Mary still suffering the miseries of close imprisonment. She writes to the French ambassador, that she was without fresh air, not allowed sufficient exercise, and meanly provided with diet. At length, on the 3rd of September, 1584, Mary was removed from Sheffield to Winfield. On the 8th of February, 1587, was enacted the mournful tragedy of Fotheringay. Shrewsbury was amongst those who urged the necessity of Mary's death, and he was a witness of her execution.

With Mary of Scotland ends the interest of the Castle and Manor of Sheffield. The Castle was surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in 1644, after an obstinate resistance; and was dismantled four years after. The smithy and the warehouse gradually usurped the place of its towers and court-yards. The Manor-house fell into decay. The timber of the Park was cut down. Park was cut down. The grinding-wheel was multiplied on the banks of the Sheaf and the Don, the Rivelin, and the Porter. A great town sprung up on every side of the hills that looked down upon the waters of Sheffield:

Beautiful rivers of the desert! ye

Bring food for labour from the foodless waste. Pleased stops the wanderer on his way, to see The frequent weir oppose your heedless haste. Where toils the mill, by ancient woods embraced, Hark, how the cold steel screams in hissing fire! There draws the grinder his laborious breath; There, coughing, at his deadly trade he bends.

The Village Patriarch.

The same powerful painter of his own scenery has, in another poem, given us a view of Sheffield equally striking and true:

The mighty arm of mist, that shakes the shore
Along the throng'd canal in ceaseless roar,
Urging the heavy forge, the clanking mill,
The rapid tilt, and screaming sparkling stone;
Is this the spot where stoop'd the ash-crown'd hill
To meet the vale, when bee-loved banks, o'ergrown
With broom and woodbine, heard the cushat lone
Coo for her absent love? Oh, ne'er again
Will Andrew pluck the freckled foxglove here!
How like a monster, with a league-long mane,
Or Titan's rocket, in its high career
Towers the dense smoke! The falcon, wheeling near,
Turns, and the angry crow seeks purer skies.

'Steam.' ELLIOTT.

This is poetry. This is the poetry which Sheffield suggests. We cross the Derbyshire moors on a gloomy morning of the early May. The snow lies on the highest hill-tops. We gradually descend into the valley of smoke which lies beneath us. The whole scene is murky. Thick, black, uprising clouds, by man created, mix with the heaven-descending mists. The streets lour frowningly upon us. Amidst prisonlooking walls we hear the incessant noise of the tiltnow with a quick stroke coming piercingly upon the ear, tapping, as if it were some tiny toy moved by children in sport-now "booming its sullen thunder," like a mighty ram of war battering against some devoted city gates. Row after row of small houses—— unadorned without, but clean within, each with its clock and its sofa,-each the sanctuary of some inde

shops and bustle, in the centre of a town with nothing very remarkable in its appearance. Streets tolerably spacious; a few public buildings of some pretension; churches and chapels,-one or two, large and imposing in their architecture, but scarcely to be called nobleothers, the abominations of the tasteless last century more, exhibiting the jauntiness of the present age, aspiring to do something of imitation of Greek or Gothic, but curtailed, by limited means, of the "fair proportions" of their models; very little that tells of antiquity; bridges, for use and not ornament, over dingy streams that send up volumes of smoke from their banks, this is the Sheffield that was first presented to us under an unfavourable atmosphere. We have nothing for it but to pass a day amidst its manufactures ;-and well are they worthy of a more protracted visit.

Sheffield has been truly called, "the metropolis of steel." It has coal in its very heart; its streams are busy agents of production; but the greater part of the iron whose form and quality is being incessantly changed in its furnaces and forges, is the produce of Northern Europe. The mine of Dannemora, in Sweden, produces the most esteemed iron for the purposes of the steel manufacture. To the port of Hull is the whole quantity annually produced in this mine consigned; and the greater portion of this quantity, about four thousand tons in a year, is converted into the products of Sheffield. Native iron is, no doubt, used in some descriptions of manufacture; but all the finest steel-and it is the boast of Sheffield to produce the finest is made from iron brought over the seas. It is in the change of this iron into steel, by a due admixture of carbon-by hammering, by casting, by rolling-that the natural powers of Sheffield, the water and the coal, are incessantly at work. Then succeeds the nicer labour of the artificer, who fashions this carefully-prepared steel, by hammering and grinding and polishing, into every instrument that the art of man can demand, from the scythe of the mower to the lancet of the surgeon. Sheffield is a "metropolis" of steel, because the whole district is aliye with this peculiar industry. Wherever there is a stream with a fall, there is the grinding-wheel at work—be it under sunny hills or in deep ravines; and where the ivy-covered rock shelters the little mill, a knot of workmen are labouring to

"Draw forth the welded steel-bright, blue, and sound." The subdivision of manufactures at Sheffield is very remarkable. There are establishments which are solely occupied in the first process of converting steel in furnaces; there are others, technically called tilts, where the ponderous hammer moved by steam or water, is incessantly beating the bars into a harder and finer quality; there are others, again, where the operation of casting the steel into ingots is carried on; and others, finally, where new forms and new qualities are imparted by milling and rolling. In some large establishments all these operations are united. Numerous, indeed,

change into every variety of tool, whether knife, razor, or scissor-file, chisel, saw, axe, or scythe. In some, every article is made; in others, the file-an amazing branch of industry-has the predominance. In many an humble cottage, some three or four miles from Sheffield, will a contented artificer, who also cultivates a patch of land, have his little forge, where he incessantly manufactures one sort of knife for one market, which he disposes of weekly to the Sheffield merchant. Several villages are wholly occupied by cutlers, and fork-makers, and file-cutters. Then, again, Sheffield is the great seat of the manufacture of plate, celebrated

as

'Sheffield plate' all over the world. If the huge factories of the cotton and woollen and flax districtsthe mighty creations of Manchester and Leeds and Bradford-fill us with wonder at their surpassing grandeur of mechanical combinations, assuredly the skill which is called into action at Sheffield, in the production of the most useful and the most beautiful of man's

inventions, may demand more than a hasty glance, and afford subjects for permanent admiration. That skill, and the vast accumulation of mechanical forces and arrangements by which it is called into profitable action, have been the slow growth of centuries.

It is not our purpose to describe the manufactures of Sheffield with any technical precision. Our readers will find this admirably done in the British Manufactures' of Mr. Dodd, originally published in 'The Penny Magazine' as 'Days at the Factories.' Our space, and our limited scientific knowledge, will only allow a rapid glance at some of the more striking combinations of Sheffield industry. Without intending to pass over any establishment that may probably have as just claims to notice as the few we mention, we request our readers to accompany us through three or four large works, in which the great branches of Sheffield manufacture may be advantageously seen. Let us begin with the Sheaf Works of William Greaves and Sons:

"A poor man's boy

Constructed these grand works! Lo, like the sun,
Shines knowledge now on all."

The Sheaf rolls by their steam-chimneys and warehouses. The new railway from Lincoln bestrides them. We enter the 'converting furnaces.' The mouth of one is sealed. A fierce fire of Sheffield coal is burning beneath the oven, which has been filled for many days with alternate layers of iron bars and charcoal. The bars will come out, finally, 'blistered steel,' having, in their state of white heat, absorbed a portion of the carbon into their very heart. There lie a heap of bars by the mouth of another furnace, which have gone through this process. Surely something moves within that dark cavity, which was lately so fiery hot! It is a man, naked from his waist upwards, preparing the furnace for another heating. The intensity of the heat, and its duration, are proportioned to the quality of the steel to be produced. The experience of the workman stands in the place of exact chemical science.

We pass on to the tilt-houses,' or 'shear-houses.' We behold a range of enormous hammers acting by mechanical movement upon correspondent anvils. The bars which have come from the 'converting furnace' have here to be 'sheared,' as the first process of heating and hammering them is termed. The hammers are surrounded by forges, in which portions of blistered bars, about a foot in length, are brought to a white heat. The great hammer, fixed at the end of a solid mass of wood bound with iron hoops, soon trebles the length of the bar. Six of these elongated bars are then fixed together, and again heated, with much exactness. Under the shear-hammer are these pieces beaten on every side, till they become thoroughly welded-one mass, indeed, perfectly compact, and free from all flaws and blisters. The tilt-hammers' have a more rapid movement, and their continued action closes every pore that the heavy hammers may have left open. By these the bars are brought to the exact sizes that may be required for their ultimate uses.

But the best steel is 'cast' as well as hammered. The process is a very curious one. We first see the preparation of the crucibles, or melting-pots. Stourbridge clay, mixed with water and well kneaded, is spread out in a thin layer on the floor of a room. Human feet must tread this mass into proper consistency. When we see two men, with naked feet, trampling upon this soft adhesive mass, with a continuous motion up and down and from side to side,—when we observe the muscular development of their lower extremities,—when we learn that this exercise proceeds hour after hour and day after day, for a life-long time, we ask ourselves, why man should be doomed to such monotonous and apparently low employment.? We are informed that no machine can accomplish what the human foot thus does-that great care is essential in the work—that it is skilled labour-that the labourers are well paid. The clay thus prepared is moulded into crucibles, which are dried and stored for use. A constant succession of these melting-pots is necessary; for two or three castings destroy them. With this previous knowledge we proceed to the casting-room. We feel a considerable heat, but we see nothing except some circles of glowing light level with the floor and beside one of the walls. The workmen remove a lid. Instantly ascends from below a stream of heat. One of the men, whose legs are covered with wet sacking, hovers over the hole while he removes the coke, and then boldly lifts out a crucible full of melted steel, which he has grasped with long pincers. The whitehot mass weighs sixty pounds. The eye shrinks from the dazzling glare of the fiery lump. An ingot-mould stands ready; the crucible is lifted up to its mouth; the stream of white fire flows in; a shower of sparks, of a pale green, shoot up; the whole scene is beautiful amidst its apparent danger. In a short time the ingot

If we follow the steel ingots or the steel bars to the 'rolling-mill,' we shall see the last process of the preparation of the material for its various applications. Again heated, it is passed through roller after roller, till it becomes either a circular or a flat rod,—a thick or a thin sheet. The most curious example of this process is the rolling of the thin steel required for the making of steel pens, which forms a most important article of business.

At the Sheaf-works the manufacture of steel articles is carried forward into many of its subdivisions, of tools (such as axes for the American market), files, and razors. A very curious and extensive branch has been also recently introduced-the manufacture of springs for railway-carriages.

File-making occupies a considerable portion of Sheffield skilled labour. This branch is carried on, upon the most extensive scale, at the Fitz-Alan Steel - works of Messrs. Marriott and Atkinson. But before we proceed to describe this very curious manufacture, which embodies as much manual skill as can be found in any business, we may vary our paper by a general view of the great divisions of handicraft employment at Sheffield. We derive the materials for this view from various passages and tables in an admirable book, written by a very able and benevolent physician, G. Calvert Holland, Esq., M.D., who in his "Vital Statistics of Sheffield has investigated the various complicated questions which belong to the health of such a population, with the accuracy of a man of science and the good feeling of a real philanthropist. Dr. Holland's work was published in 1843.

There are four different branches in the File-tradeforgers, grinders, cutlers, and hardeners. The forgers and cutlers exhibit the peculiar character of the manu facture; the grinders and hardeners work in the same way that other grinders and hardeners work. There are engaged in the File-trade 520 forgers and strikers, 900 cutlers, 700 boys, and 100 women. The workmen are employed entirely by the piece.

In the Edge-tool trade there are three branchesthe forgers, the grinders, and the hardeners. The number of forgers and strikers is about 400, and of boys 50. The work is done entirely by the piece. The occupation demands great physical power, but little ingenuity. Few of the workmen are educated; too many are of irregular habits. Dr. Holland, with reference to this fact, sensibly remarks, "Nature will not allow, to any great extent, an expenditure of energy in two different directions. The vigorous muscular exercise of the body must always be at the expense of the intellectual faculties.”

The Saw-manufacture is divided into saw-making, saw-handle making, and saw-grinding. The sawmakers comprise about 200 men, 130 boys, and 30 women; the boys can all read and write; nineteen

out of twenty men belong to sick-clubs. The sawhandle makers are about 120 men and 100 boys; they work by the piece. The saw-grinders amount to 120 men, with 90 apprentices. This branch of business is generally healthy; the labour not too severe. The saw-grinders are a fine athletic class: "The wheels in which they work," says Dr. Holland, "are mostly propelled by water, being placed upon the streams, in the exquisitely beautiful situations within a few miles of the town; consequently the artizans are liable to numerous interruptions, either from too much or too little water. The frequency of these interruptions has led many of them to add to this employment the cultivation of the soil." They are, however, peculiarly liable to accidents from the breaking of the grindingstones, and from becoming entangled in the machinery. The Spring-Knife manufacturers form the largest class of Sheffield artizans. They are divided into springknife hafters, about 1400; scale and spring forgers, 150; blade-forgers, 300; pocket-blade-grinders, 100; penblade-grinders, 300; which divisions, with 150 various workmen, and 600 apprentices, make up a total of 3000. Not more than half the adults, and three-fifths of the boys can read. They marry very early. Except in the finer branches, the wages are low. The supply of labour is superabundant; and the trade becomes overstocked, from the ease with which men can manufacture on their own account,—a few pounds enabling the cutler to commence operations. In times of commercial depression they are the first to suffer. The stream of poor and uneducated workmen is constantly kept full by the facilities offered by the nature of the trade for the too early employment of children.

The Table-Knife manufacturers are not so large a class as the preceding. They are divided into tableblade forgers, table-blade strikers, table-blade grinders, and table-blade cutlers, (those who finish the work). We have no accurate return of their numbers, but it appears, from a return of classes receiving parochial relief at a period of great difficulty, to be about onehalf of the spring-knife manufacturers.

The Fork-makers comprise amongst their comparatively small numbers a class marked out for unhappiness. The fork-grinders are what are technically called dry-grinders. There are dry-grinders in other branches; but the fork-grinders, especially, are dedicated to the suffering and premature death of this most unwholesome of employments. The wetgrinders work on the larger articles-such as scythes, saws, and edge-tools: the dry-grinders upon the smaller articles of cutlery; to some of which, however, the wetstone is applied. The dry-stone grinds more rapidly than the wet; and thus, in the majority of wares the dry-stone is first used after the blade comes from the forger. The wet-stone is subsequently used to a great extent in the finish of these articles. But the forkgrinder always works upon a dry stone. Eight or ten men and boys work in the same room; the dust of the stone and metal rises in clouds; it is inhaled by the unfortunate victims; and a permanent disease of the

lungs is produced, which wastes the animal frame, and terminates life before half the natural years of the man are run out. Dr. Holland's statistics of fork-grinding are most appalling. Between 20 and 29 years of age the proportion of 1000 deaths, in the kingdom generally, is 160; among the fork-grinders it is 475. Between the ages of 30 and 39, in the kingdom generally, the proportion of deaths in 1000, is 136; of the forkgrinders the proportion is 410. All the dry-grinders have much shorter lives than the other artizans of Sheffield; and the evil has been increased of late years by the tendency to carry on all manufactures upon economical principles. The superior power of steam, as compared with water, has packed the grinders in large buildings within the town, divided into many rooms. The more expeditious process has superseded the wet-grinding to a considerable extent. Surely some remedy is at hand for the correction of this frightful evil. The magnetic mouth-piece, invented by the late Mr. Abraham, is scarcely used, and, indeed, is not thoroughly efficient. Dr. Holland, in another valuable work, "The Diseases of the Lungs from Mechanical Causes," has described an apparatus which is partially in use, and which fectly efficient in removing all gritty and metallic particles from the rooms in which dry-grinding is carried on. A few of the more intelligent grinders, he says, have put up an imperfect apparatus of the same kind; but he adds, "the plan, however, will never be generally adopted, or in any degree steadily maintained, unless enforced by special legislative enactments."

is per

The remaining branches of Sheffield cutlery are the razor-makers and the scissor-makers. These are numerous. Fender-makers and comb-makers also form a large class of mechanics. The plate manufacture, which we shall presently have briefly to describe, employs about 400 workmen, all of whom are, more or less, skilled artizans.

Let us return to the establishment of Messrs. Marriott and Atkinson, for the purpose of noticing one or two of the peculiarities of file-making. First, there is the forging process. Upon steel anvils is the bar of steel hammered into the form of a file. Whether flat or triangular, or with a round side and a flat side, large or small, the general shape of the instrument is given by the hammer, with the aid of anvils of various shapes and curvatures. Secondly, there is the annealing process, by which the steel is softened in a furnace, so as to be cut with facility. Then succeeds the most curious manipulation in the whole circle of our arts. In a long room we see a number of file-cutters ranged under the windows, each having a bench before him. He has a sharp tool in his left hand, and a hammer in his right. The hammers are peculiarly shaped, so that, in making the blow upon the piece of steel, the indentation becomes an undercut tooth-a sort of triangular groove. By an imperceptible motion of his tool, another notch is cut, and another and another, till the whole surface is covered, with the most wonderful precision, with notches, frequently as numerous as a hundred to an

"Five rivers, like the fingers of a hand,

For the numerous manipulations connected with the finer branches of Sheffield cutlery, the establishment of Messrs. Rodgers and Sons presents a wonderful variety. In their splendid warerooms may be seen the beautiful toys of cutlery-such as knives with two hundred blades, and scissors with which Queen Mab might cut the cobweb traces of her chariot. In their workshops may be viewed the progress of a penknife, from the forging of its tiny blade, to the studding of its ivory handle with silver-headed rivets. Every laboursaving contrivance is here called into action; and when it is observed how constantly one workman is employed in one operation, and how rapidly, with his wheels and circular saws, and lathes, he fashions the rude material into some well-shaped portion of a cutting instrumentand how, by a succession of labours, the several parts are fitted, and made finally to take a form of finished usefulness and beauty,—we learn what is the chief cause of the cheapness of English cutlery, and why it maintains a superiority in every market of the world. The Sheffield Plate manufactory of Mr. Wilkinson furnishes an interesting combination of the various processes by which this long-celebrated branch of the arts has attained its present perfection. It is nearly a century ago since an ingenious mechanic of Sheffield conceived the plan of uniting silver and copper by plating; and the idea was carried further by a Sheffield manufacturer, in its application to candlesticks, teapots, waiters, and other articles that were previously made wholly of silver. The French method of silvering, by leaves laid on hot metal, was thus superseded. Upon an ingot of mixed metal is laid a silver sheet, about one-fortieth part of the whole thickness; they are firmly soldered together; rolled out into thin sheets; and brought into a variety of beautiful forms by stamping, punching, hammering, and turning. Sheffield also invented the "silver edges," which have added so much to the durability of its plated goods. It is evident that much artistic skill is required in some departments of this branch of industry; and that the designers, modellers, die-sinkers, and chasers, must go forward with that general improvement of taste which has been slowly making its way into English manufactures, and which ought to be their distinguishing characteristic.

Let us now leave the smoky town, and finish our imperfect view of the manufactures of Sheffield, by a glance at the grinding-wheels of the neighbouring valleys,

Flung from black mountains, mingle, and are one Where sweetest valleys quit the wild and grand." The low buildings are let off to different grinders, each of whom has a trough, as it is called, where a grindingstone is fixed: or he rents several troughs, and employs apprentices. He is a small independent master. The buildings are most picturesque in their forms, and in their surrounding scenery. One of these wheels is the scene of some passages in a very interesting little book for young persons, written by an old inhabitant of Sheffield, distinguished in many ways, but, above all, for his indefatigable exertions in the endeavour to better the condition of his humbler townsmen. We venture to quote a long passage from Mr. Roberts's "Tom and Charles; or, the Two Grinders," because we know that our hasty view of a mountain-stream grinding-wheel would necessarily lead to a very inferior description of its peculiarities :

66

"The stream on which this wheel was situated is called the Rivelin,-a beautiful, clear, trout stream falling rapidly down a deep rocky channel, which winds through a narrow, retired, well-wooded vale. The steep sides of this glen are in summer finely diversified with light verdant foliage, grotesque rocks, and bleak uncultivated open ground, thickly clothed with the purple heath, the yellow furze, and green fern, among which lie scattered many rude-shapen mossgrown stones; the alder, the weeping birch, and the graceful ash often unite their branches from the opposite banks of the stream, forming a light natural arch, of delicate trellis-work, through which the rays of the vertical sun sparkle on the clear rippling waters beneath. Within the distance of a few hundred yards of each other, all down the stream, are situated many of the wheels before described. Attached to each of them, and almost on a level with their roofs, are the dams, the irregular shape of whose bush, furze, and rush-grown banks gives them the appearance, when viewed from above, of small natural lakes; these pellucid sheltered waters, rarely ruffled by the breeze, reflect, with soft and harmonized tints, the opposite woods and mountains. The wheels themselves, as well as their accompanying figures, are highly picturesque. The ground about them is generally rugged and richly variegated; the yellow tint, which is always spread in a greater or lesser degree over every object around, harmonizes and warms the whole-forming, at the same time, a beautiful contrast with the varied green foliage on either side. The mountains, up the stream, continue to increase in height and rude sterility, till they look down westward upon the towering Tor of the Peak of Derbyshire. The perpetual sound of the rushing waters, as they flow from the revolving wheels, dash down the falls from the dams, with the faintly heard monotonous hum and noise of the works and workmen within, producing a lulling and pleasing