a great extent
share in the silk trade, while Alcester has a needle manufacture of its
own, Atherstone a hat manufacture, and Amworth, which is partly in
Staffordshire, was famous until lately for calico-printing and making
superfine narrow woollen cloths: it also has flax-mills. The kings of
Mercia used to keep state here, and the Roman road, Watling Street, passed
through it, with which contrast now the iron roads that pass every place
of the least importance, and in this neighborhood lead to the busy centre
of the hardware trade, smoky, wide-awake, turbulent, educated, hard-headed
Birmingham. This, too, is within the "King-maker's" county, and how oddly
it has inherited or picked up his power will be noted by those familiar
with the political and parliamentary history of England within the last
forty years; but, though now an ultra-Radical constituency, it is no
historical upstart, but can trace its name in Domesday Book, where it
appears as _Bermengeham_, and can find its record as an English Damascus
in the fifteenth century, before which it had been already famous for
leather-tanning. The death, a year ago, of one of the most gifted though
retiring men of the English nobility, the late Lord Lyttleton, makes it
worth mentioning that his house, Hagley, stands twelve miles from
Birmingham, and that both his house and his forefathers were well known as
the home and patrons of literary men: Thomson, Pope and other poets have
described and apostrophized Hagley. The late owner was a good antiquary
and writer, but in society he was painfully shy.

[Illustration: BABLAKE'S HOSPITAL, COVENTRY.]

The southern part of Warwickshire, adjoining Gloucestershire, or rather a
wedge of that shire advancing into Worcestershire, is the most rich,
agriculturally speaking, and besides its apple-orchards is famous for its
dairy and grazing systems, while the northern part, once a forest, is
still full of heaths, moors and woods. There is not much to say about its
farms, unless technically, nor the appearance of the farm-buildings, the
modern ones being generally of brick and more substantial than beautiful.
Country-seats have a likeness to each other, and a way of surrounding
themselves with the same kind of garden scenery, so that unless where the
whole face of Nature has some strongly-marked features, such as mountains
or moors, the houses of the local gentry do not impart a special
individuality to a neighborhood; but in a mild and b