At present, for more than ten miles round Dudley Castle, iron works of one kind or another are constantly at work; no remains of mighty woodland are to be found.  The value of the ten yard coal is fully appreciated, but the available quantity is far from having been worked out.  The untouched mineral wealth of Lord Ward in this district was valued, ten years ago, at a million sterling.  The small coal is no longer wasted, but carefully raised from the pits and conveyed by the numerous canals, tram-roads, and railroads, to iron works, glass works, and chemical works.  But still heaps of waste, moistened by rain, do smoke by day, and flaming by night in conjunction with hundreds of fiery furnaces and natural gases blazing, do produce, on a night’s journey from Dudley to Wolverhampton, not the effect of one AEtna or Hecla, but of a broad “inferno,” from which even Dante might have gathered some burning notions.

The political croakers who are constantly predicting that the last inevitable change, whether it be a Municipal Corporation Reform, a Tithe Commutation, or a Corn Tax Repeal, will prove the ruin of England, should study the geographical march of our manufactures, and mark how, on the whole population, the rise of a new staple in one district, or the invention of a new art, constantly creates a new demand for labour.  The exhaustion of our forests, instead of destroying, founded one great element of our world-wide commercial influence.

We make no apology for this digression, knowing that, to many minds, facts connected with the rise of the iron trade will have as much interest as notes on the scene of a battle or the birthplace of a second-rate poet, besides, as we omit to say what we do not know, it is necessary we should say what we do.

Besides mining and smelting iron ore, a considerable population in and around Dudley is engaged in the manufacture of glass and of nails; the latter being a domestic manufacture, at which men, women, and children all work at home.

The castle dates from a Saxon prince, Dodo, A.D. 700; but, like the bird of the same name, the original building is extinct.  But very interesting ruins of a Norman gateway, tower, and keep, are in existence; and form, with the caves, a show-place leased by the South Staffordshire as an attraction to their excursion trains.  The caves are lighted up on special occasions, and were honoured by a visit from the geologists of the British Association when last they met at Birmingham.  A fossil, called the Dudley locust, is found in great quantities and varieties in the limestone quarries, which form part of the mineral wealth of the neighbourhood.

The broad gauge line through Birmingham and Oxford will shortly afford Dudley a direct and rapid communication with London.  To passengers this will be a great convenience, but a mode of conveyance so unwieldy, clumsy, and costly, is singularly ill fitted for a mineral district, as experience among the narrow tram-ways of the north has amply proved.