order
to prove that any railway was unnecessary. The proprietors, under the
influence of their officials, a snug family party, shut their eyes and spent
their money in opposing the inevitable progress of locomotive power to the
last possible moment. Even when the first London and Birmingham railway was
nearly open, a scheme for a new canal was industriously hawked round the
county; and, although there were not enough subscribers found to execute the
work, a small percentage was sufficient to furnish a surveyor's new house
very handsomely. Still, there is no probability of the canal ever ceasing to
be an important aid to the coal trade in heavy freights.

* * * * *

WEDNESBURY, {130} pronounced Wedgebury, and spelt Wednesberie in Domesday
Book, stands in the very heart of the coal and iron district, and is as like
Tipton, Darlaston, Bilston, and other towns where the inhabitants are
similarly employed, as one sweep is like another. Birmingham factors depend
largely on Wedgebury for various kinds of ironwork and "heavy steel toys."
The coal pits in the neighbourhood are of great value, and there is no better
place in the kingdom to buy a thoroughbred bull dog that will "kill or die on
it," but never turn tail. The name is supposed to incorporate that of the
Saxon god Woden, whose worship consisted in getting drunk and fighting, and,
to this day, that is the only kind of relaxation in which many of the
inhabitants ever indulge. The church stands upon a hill, where Ethelfleda,
Lady of Mercia, built a castle to resist the Danes, A.D. 914, about the time
that she erected similar bulwarks at Tamworth and other towns in the Midland
counties, but there are no antiquities worth the trouble of visiting.

Parties who take an interest in the progress of education in this kingdom
among those classes where it is most needed, that is to say, masses of miners
and mechanics residing in districts from which all the higher and most of the
middle classes have removed; where the clergy are few, hard worked, and ill
paid; where the virtues of a thinly peopled agricultural district have been
exchanged for the vices, without the refinements, of a crowded town
population, should traverse this part of Staffordshire on foot. They will
own that, in spite of the praiseworthy labours of both Church and Dissent,--in
spite of the progress of Temperance Societies and Savings' Banks,--a crowd of
children are daily growing up in a state of ignoran