of the poor, enjoying a revenue of many thousands a-year.

There are also several curious specimens of domestic architecture of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to be found in Coventry. It is, however,
on the whole, a dark, dirty, inconvenient city. The surrounding belt of
Lammas lands on which the freemen have the right of pasturing their horses
and cows, has prevented any increase in the limits of the city.

In the middle ages Coventry was celebrated for its "mysteries and pageants,"
of which an account has been published by Mr. Reader, a local bookseller.

The chief manufactures are of ribands and of watches, both transplantations
from the Continent. The electors of Coventry distinguished themselves by
their consistency during the Free-trade agitation. They exacted a pledge
from their members in favour of Free-trade, except in watches and ribands.
More recently these same Coventry men have had the good sense to prefer a
successful man of business, the architect of his own fortunes, to a Right
Honourable Barrister and ex-Railway Commissioner.

[THE SHERBORNE VIADUCT, NEAR COVENTRY: ill12.jpg]

One thing needful to preserve the manufacturing position of Coventry is, a
first-rate School of Design--labour, and coal, and ample means of conveyance
they have, east and west, and north and south; and now the manufacturers only
need the cultivation of true principles of taste among the whole riband-
weaving population. For taste is a rare article, and many draughts of small
fry must be made before one leviathan salmon can be caught. Great advances
have been made recently in the production of the best kinds of ribands. A
specimen produced by subscription for the Hyde Park Exhibition of 1851,
proved that Coventry was quite able to rival the choicest work of France in
the class of machine-made ribands. The application of steam power to this
class of manufactures is of but recent date. Coventry surveyed, and this may
be done in a few hours, unless the traveller is able and willing to examine
its rich manufactories, it is difficult to resist the invitation of the
railway porter, bawling, to Kenilworth, Leamington, and Warwick, names
calling up a crowd of romantic associations, from Shakspeare to Scott and
Bulwer; but for the present we must keep steadily on to Birmingham, where
steam finds the chief raw materials of poetry and fashioner of beauty.

BIRMINGHAM.

A run of nineteen miles brings us to what th