are justly proud "a bargain."

The interior is disappointing, and wants the expenditure of some more
thousand pounds in sculptures and decorative details, to bring it into
harmony with its noble external effect. The great room, 145 feet in length,
by 65 feet in width and height, will contain upwards of 8,000 persons.

Musical meetings are held here periodically, for the benefit of certain
charities; but the sight best worth seeing, is the Hall at the period of an
election, or of political excitement, crowded with a feverish army of
workmen, cheering, groaning, swaying to and fro, under the speeches of their
favourite orators. Then in this Pagan temple may be seen a living specimen
of a Brummagem Jupiter, with a cross of Vulcan, lion-faced, hairy, bearded,
deep-mouthed swaggering, fluent in frank nonsense and bullying clap-trap,
loved by the mob for his strength, and by the middle classes for his money.
The lofty roof re-echoes with applause.

The temple, the man, and the multitude, all together, are well worth a
journey to Birmingham to see.

There is also the Free School of King Edward VI., in New Street, a stately
pile, built by Barry, before he had become so famous as he is now; which
supplies first-rate instruction in classics, mathematics, modern languages,
and all branches of a useful English education, after the plan introduced
into our public schools by Dr. Arnold, to the sons of all residents, at an
extremely cheap, almost a nominal rate. Ten exhibitions of 50 pounds each
for four years at Oxford or Cambridge are open to the competition of the
scholars.

The salary of the Head Master is 400 pounds a-year, with a residence, and the
privilege of boarding eighteen pupils. Of the Second Master, 300 pounds.
Beside Under Masters.

These liberal appointments have secured a succession of competent masters,
and cannot fail to produce a permanent and favourable change in the character
of young Birmingham. The diffusion of sound classical learning was much
needed to mitigate the coxcombical pretensions of the half-educated, and the
vulgar coarseness of the uneducated. The inhabitants of manufacturing towns
are apt to grow petty Plutocracies, in which after wealth, ignorance and
assumption are the principal qualifications. Brass turns up its nose at
iron, and both look down upon tin, although half an hour in the world's fire
make all so black as to be undistinguishable.

Besides this, which we may term the Hig