feel bound to notice in closing our
article. While going about the premises, we were asked to look to the
top of the tall engine-chimney, where, to our surprise, none but the
faintest whiff of vapour was visible. 'There is no need,' said our
conductor, 'that any chimney in Birmingham should smoke more than
that. I have told the people so over and over again, but to little
use, for they will persist in wasting fuel, and blackening the
atmosphere. This is Beddington's patent, and you shall see the effect
of it.' The fireman was then told to shut off the apparatus from the
flue; immediately a dense black smoke poured from the chimney-top, and
when at the murkiest, the order was given: 'Now turn on again.' In
five seconds, the smoke had vanished, and the almost imperceptible
vapour alone remained. Thus, of the coal consumed daily, not a
particle is wasted, and a considerable portion of the atmosphere is
saved from deterioration. So perfect an example of what can be done
towards the abatement of a nuisance, made us wish to be autocrat for a
week--our reign should be signalised by the extinction of smoke!

THE WORKING-CLASSES IN 'THE GOOD OLD TIMES.'

As it has become fashionable in some quarters to hold that the
working-classes are ever sinking in position, and that they have lost
the comforts, the pleasures, and the freedom of the 'good old times,'
it may serve a useful purpose to put together, from authentic sources,
some notices of their actual condition among our ancestors. To
associate our present working-classes with slavery would seem an
insult; and it would be said, that it is a condition to which they
could not, under any circumstances, be induced to submit. But although
this is true of their present condition, it is equally true, that not
only in the rest of Europe, but even in England and Scotland, those
who of old held the position of the working-classes, were slaves in
the strictest sense of the term. Among our Saxon ancestors, to whose
free institutions our historians so often proudly refer, two-thirds of
the people--that is, in short, the whole of the working-classes--are
computed to have been slaves. Sir Walter Scott, whose descriptions of
life and manners are as faithful as they are picturesque, gives an
admirable sketch of the slave or thrall of the Saxons in the faithful
Gurth, the follower of Ivanhoe. First, we have the account of his
close-fitting tunic, made of skin; after which follows that of