nce the house was
cannonaded by the Puritans and its owners fined. The grounds, covering
about forty-two acres, are now a park, and a picturesque little church
has been built near the mansion. Some of the factories of this
metropolis of hardware are fine structures, but when their product is
spoken of, "Brummagem" is sometimes quoted as synonymous for showy sham.
Here they are said to make gods for the heathen and antiquities of the
Pharaoh age for Egypt, with all sorts of relics for all kinds of
battlefields. But Birmingham nevertheless has a reputation for more
solid wares. Its people are the true descendants of Tubal Cain, for one
of its historians attractively says that the Arab eats with a Birmingham
spoon; the Egyptian takes his bowl of sherbet from a Birmingham tray;
the American Indian shoots a Birmingham rifle; the Hindoo dines on
Birmingham plate and sees by the light of a Birmingham lamp; the South
American horsemen wear Birmingham spurs and gaudily deck their jackets
with Birmingham buttons; the West Indian cuts down the sugar-cane with
Birmingham hatchets and presses the juice into Birmingham vats and
coolers; the German lights his pipe on a Birmingham tinder-box; the
emigrant cooks his dinner in a Birmingham saucepan over a Birmingham
stove; and so on _ad infinitum_. A century ago this famous town was
known as the "toy-shop of Europe." Its glass-workers stand at the head
of their profession, and here are made the great lighthouse lenses and
the finest stained glass to be found in English windows. The Messrs.
Elkington, whose reputation is worldwide, here invented the process of
electro-plating. It is a great place for jewelry and the champion
emporium for buttons. It is also the great English workshop for swords,
guns, and other small-arms, and here are turned out by the million
Gillott's steel pens. Over all these industries presides the magnificent
Town Hall, a Grecian temple standing upon an arcade basement, and built
of hard limestone brought from the island of Anglesea. The interior is
chiefly a vast assembly-room, where concerts are given and political
meetings held, the latter usually being the more exciting, for we are
told that when party feeling runs high some of the Birmingham folk "are
a little too fond of preferring force to argument." But, although famed
for its Radical politics and the introduction of the "caucus" into
England, Birmingham will always be chiefly known by its manufactures,
and