century and a half ago, - another James Hillhouse in good taste and public spirit. Battlefield Church, on the spot where Falstaff fought his hour by Shrewsbury clock, is about four miles distant; I did not visit it, but am told that it stands desolate and neglected, the roof having tumbled in, and the nave being open to rain and weather. But one tower of the ancient wall of Shrewsbury yet remains, though the elevated site of the town and its long line of old-fashioned buildings and steeples, still show picturesquely from the river.1 At Wolverhampton, on the London and Holyhead road, where one passes into Staffordshire, the scenery suddenly changes its character; it is as if an invisible line were drawn between Paradise and Purgatory. Instead of the sweet clear sky, one rushes into an atmosphere like an oven's mouth; and in the place of green and daisy-dropt fields, the ground becomes herbless and black, gloomy enough for Doré's pencil. Blast furnaces are vomiting smoke and flame; the streams run darkness; the sun glares raylessly and luridly through the simmering gaseous air; men and women look begrimed, 1 I never could see the Severn, whether here in its modest youth, or near its mouth in its Amazonian greatness, without thinking of that old quatrain: "The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea: And Wickliff's dust shall spread abroad Wide as the waters be." In 1425, Wickliff's body was exhumed by the order of the Bishop of Lincoln, burned, and the ashes thrown into the Swift, a little stream which empties into the Avon. and smutchy-faced children play hide-and-seek through old burst engine-boilers; and the whole country around is strewn with heaps of shag, scoria, and the refuse matter of the blast furnaces. This represents a narrow streak of country across which the road passes, running from the neighborhood of Newport down to Worcester; and there is also a much broader coal region that lies between Lichfield and Kidderminster. But in this "Black Country," notwithstanding its Tartarean aspect, the power of Old England couches herself like a dragon breathing flame and smoke, — the dragon that St. George of England (George Stephenson) has manfully subdued and hitched to the car of progress. The railway into Birmingham, in Warwick County, runs above the tops of an immense assemblage of low, dingy brick houses with red-tiled roofs; block after block, street after street, undistinguished by any architectural superiority the one over the other, are passed over; the fragments of machinery strew the work-yards; long factories are glided by; sign-boards that seem to stretch the length of a train are spelled out word by word; and at length one comes to a stand-still in the heart of the workshop of England, where John Bull has his sleeves rolled up, and a square paper-cap on his head. All things have an opportunity to prove themselves in Birmingham; and from the last invention in machinery to Dr. Newman's Catholic Convent, there is free and kindly soil for the theorist. Here John Angell James, like another aged "John," 'made this work-a-day world of Birmingham sacred with his apostolic presence. He was of that type of practical Christian men who force respect from all classes. His power lay in his moral energy; but above all, there shone in his life that spirit of Christian love, that takes the world into its embrace. I spoke of Dr. Newman. I had noticed a small portrait of him in a shop window, which I mistook for the likeness of Ralph Waldo Emerson; and this awakened my curiosity to see his religious establishment; so taking a seat in an Edgbaston omnibus, I was soon at Dr. Newman's conventual house, an unsightly brick building not far out of the city, with a shabby little chapel attached to it, -any thing but the imposing ecclesiastical structure one would have expected from a man of taste and a scholar. Inside of the chapel door was pasted this notice: "Plenary Indulgence to all the faithful who after confession and communion shall visit the chapel and pray for the intention of the Pope." There was certainly nothing to attract the faithful into this door; the whole affair was common, flimsy, dirty, and cheap, with some faded pretensions to paint and splendor, and with a crude image of the Virgin that would have hardly satisfied a third-rate Italian village church. If this be the chief instrumentality to convert England to the Catholic faith, it will probably fail; but in saying this, I would say nothing against the amiable per sonal character of Dr. Newman, and that spell of genius and power, with which he is said to attract all who come within the sphere of his personal influence. I noticed in Birmingham, what I also noticed more especially in Liverpool and Manchester, and in some other cities whose greatness is of modern growth, that notwithstanding this fact, the city looks perfectly finished. Every thing is as complete and solid as if this life were to last forever. There is nothing more to be done. There is no gap to be filled, no pulling down and building up, as with us. We may be sure that the English would not be apt to pull down an old house like "the Hancock House," to make way for a modern building, though something of this sort has been done of late in London by the pressure of necessity. An old sign-board, half undecipherable, would be very likely to be left hanging for the sake of its past respectability. Whatever has stood the trial of time, has acquired in England preëmption from change. Whatever is established, is concluded to be right, beautiful, and good. In the midst of the earnest life of this hard-working city, at the exciting hour of high noon, when the busy human tide was greatest in the streets, I saw our lively little friend "Punch," in vigorous discussion with his worthy helpmate. An English institution this! The contracted brow was relaxed; the quick step was arrested; and the English love of fun and fighting broke out. High and low gathered around the small booth; men with bars of iron upon their shoulders, carmen sitting sideways on their elephantine horses, clerks with their papers in their hands, all for the moment forgot work, and even bank hours, and as they gazed roars of hearty laughter followed the fierce piping denunciations, and the determined thwacks of Mr. Punch. Although, going out from Leamington Spa as a centre, I visited Warwick, Kenilworth, and other well-known places, I cannot bring myself to speak of but one or two more of these places on the road to London. I have no intention to rhapsodize at the tomb of Shakspeare. When I visited it, there happened to be a great gathering of people in the church upon the occasion of instituting "The Bard of Avon Lodge of Free Masons; " and it appeared to me to be a strange enough ceremony to occur in such a place as this. The Masonic Brotherhood, distinguished by their dress and decorations, filled the body of the church. A young clergyman preached from the fifth chapter of Ezra, about rebuilding the old temple of true worship and of Christian brotherhood in these godless and degenerate days. Though not one of the initiated, I joined in singing a hymn beginning thus: "Great Architect of earth and heaven, By time nor space confined, Enlarge our love to comprehend |