This Cheadle Church, in which Mr. Pugin has had full scope on a small scale for the indulgence of his gorgeous faith and fancies, reminds us that at Oscot College, within sight of the smoke of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, towns where the best locks, clasps, hasps, bolts, and hinges can be made; the doors and windows, in deference to Mr. Pugin’s mediaeval predilections, are of the awkward clumsy construction with which our ancestors were obliged to be content for want of better.  On the same principle the floors ought to have been strewed with rushes, the meat salt, the bread black rye, and manuscript should supersede print.  But it is not so, there is no school in the kingdom where the youth are better fed, or made more comfortable than at Oscot.

Trentham has a delicious situation on the Trent, which forms a lake in the park, inhabited by swans and monstrous pike.  The Hall used to be one of the hideous brick erections of the time of pigtails and laced waistcoats,—­the footman style of dress and architecture.  But the genius of Barry (that great architect whom the people on the twopenny steamboats seem to appreciate more than some grumbling members of the House of Commons) has transformed, without destroying it, into a charming Italian Villa, with gardens, in which the Italian style has been happily adapted to our climate; for instance, round-headed laurels, grown for the purpose, taking the place of orange trees.

This Trentham Hall used to be one of the magical pictures of the coach road, of which the railway robbed us.  For miles before reaching it, we used to look out for the wooded park, with its herds of mottled deer, and the great lake, where the sight of the swans always brought up that story of the big pike, choked like a boa, with a swan’s neck.  A story that seems to belong to every swan-haunted lake.

But what one railway took from us another has restored much improved.  So we say to all friends, at either end of the lines, take advantage of an excursion, or express train, according to your means, and go and see what we cannot at this time describe, and what exceeds all description.  For the hour, you may enjoy Trentham Hall as much as if it were your own, with all the Bridgwater Estates, Mines, Canals, and Railways to boot.  And that is the spirit in which to enjoy travelling.  Admiration without envy, and pity without contempt.

From Trentham you may proceed through the Potteries.  You will find there a church built, and we believe endowed, by a manufacturer, Mr. Herbert Minton.  And then you may have a choice of routes.  But to London the most direct will be by Tamworth and Lichfield, on the Trent Valley line.

To those who look below the surface, who care to know something about the workman as well as the work, such a tour as we have traced could not fail to be of the deepest interest.  It embraces the whole course of the emigration from low wages to higher that is constantly flowing in this country.  New sources of employment daily arising in mines, in ports, in factories, demand labour; to supply that labour recruits are constantly marching from the country lane to the paved city.