both in blades and handles, and sold at 6 s. per gross, or a
halfpenny each! These low articles are exported in vast quantities in
casks to all parts of the world.

"Snuffers and trays are also articles of extensive production, and the
latter are ornamented with landscapes, etched by a Sheffield artist, on
a resinous varnish, and finished by being dipped in diluted nitric acid
for a few seconds or minutes.

"Messrs. Rodgers also introduced me to an extensive range of workshops
for the manufacture of plated and silver ware, in which are produced the
most superb breakfast and dinner services. The method of making the
silver plate here and at Birmingham merits special notice, because the
ancient method was by dissolving mercury in nitrous acid, dipping the
copper, and depending on the affinity of the metals, by which a very
slight article was produced. But at Sheffield and Birmingham, all plate
is now produced by rolling ingots of copper and silver together. About
the eighth of an inch in thickness of silver is united by heat to an
inch of copper in ingots about the size of a brick. It is then flattened
by steel rollers worked by an eighty horse power. The greater
malleability of the silver occasions it to spread equally with the
copper into a sheet of any required thickness, according to the nature
of the article for which it is wanted. I saw some pieces of plated
metal, the eighth of an inch thick, rolled by hand into ten times their
surface, the silver spreading equally; and I was told that the plating
would be perfect if the rolling had reduced it to the thinness of silver
paper! This mode of plating secures to modern plate a durability not
possessed by any plate silvered by immersion. Hence plated goods are now
sought all over the world, and, if fairly used, are nearly as durable as
silver itself. Of this material, dinner and dessert services have been
manufactured from 50 to 300 guineas, and breakfast sets from 10 to 200
guineas, as sold on the spot.

"At Sheffield are actually cast and finished, most, if not all, the
parts of grates sold as their own make by the London furnishing
ironmongers. Their names are placed on them, but, in truth, they merely
put the parts together. I saw in Messrs. Picklay's rooms superior
castings for backs of grates, little inferior in delicacy to plaster of
Paris; and for grates connected with one of these patterns, I was told
100 guineas each was lately paid by a northern squire. Grat