A New Grammar School—­first founded in 1552 by the Rev. Sir William Sheafield, and since endowed by several other persons—­is lodged in a building of ample size, with residence for the head master, and enjoys an income of 2000 pounds a-year; and there are four Exhibitions of 70 pounds a-year to Magdalen College, Cambridge, tenable till degree of M.A. has been taken; one Exhibition of 100 pounds a-year, tenable for five years, at Queen’s College, Oxford, open to a candidate from Leeds school; and four of 50 pounds each, at Oxford or Cambridge, for four years.  There were 174 scholars in 1850.  It is open to the sons of all residents in Leeds, without any fee to the masters, who are liberally paid.  The elements of mathematics are taught.  The Charity Commissioners reported it to be satisfactorily and ably conducted.

The Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, the Leeds Literary Institution, and the Leeds Mechanics Institute, are all respectable in their class.  The Mechanics Institute forms the centre of a union of Yorkshire associations of the same kind.

Three newspapers are published in Leeds, of large circulation, representing three shades of political opinion.

The Leeds Mercury—­which has, we believe, the largest circulation of any provincial paper—­was founded, and carried on for a long life, by the late Mr. Edward Baines, who represented his native town in the first reformed parliament, and for some years afterwards—­a very extraordinary man, who, from a humble station, by his own talents made his way to wealth and influence.  He was the author of the standard work on the cotton trade, as well as several valuable local histories.  The Mercury is still carried on by his family.  One son is the proprietor of a Liverpool paper, and another, the Right Honourable Matthew Talbot Baines, represents Hull, and is President of the Poor-Law Board.

Among the celebrated natives of Leeds, were Sir Thomas Denison, whose life began like Whittington’s; John Smeaton, the engineer of Eddystone Lighthouse, the first who placed civil engineering in the rank of a science; the two Reverend Milners (Joseph, and Isaac, Dean of Carlisle), great polemical giants in their day, authors of “The History of the Church of Christ;” Dr. Priestly, inventor of the pneumatic apparatus still used by chemists, and discoverer of oxygen and several other gases; David Hartley, the metaphysician whom Coleridge so much admired that he called his son after him; and Edward Fairfax, the translator of Tasso.  Nor must we forget Ralph Thoresby, author of “Ducatus Leodiensis, or the Topography of the Town and Parish of Leeds”—­a valuable and curious book, published in 1715; and of “Vicaria Leodiensis, a History of the Church of Leeds,” published in 1724.

Wool Growing, and Woollen Manufactures.—­Yorkshire is the ancient seat of a great woollen manufacture, founded on the coarse wools of its native hills; but coal and cheap conveyance, with the stimulus mechanical inventions have applied in the neighbouring counties to cotton, have given Yorkshire such advantages over many ancient seats of manufacture, that it has transplanted and increased a considerable portion of the fine cloth trade formerly carried on in the west of England alone, besides engrafting and erecting a variety of other and new kinds of textiles, in which wool or hair have some very slight part.