Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, who was at once the plague and the delight of the great Duke’s life, every stone and every tree must be viewed with interest.  We should advise you, before passing a day at Blenheim, to refresh your memory with the correspondence of the age of Queen Anne and her successors, including Swift, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Walpole; not forgetting the letters of Duchess Sarah herself, and Disraeli’s “Curiosities of Literature,” for the history of the building of Blenheim, and how the Duchess worried the unfortunate architect, Vanbrugh.

Blenheim contains a large number of first class paintings, including an altar-piece by Raffaelle, several good Titians, a very fine collection of Rubens, choice specimens of Vandyke and Sir Joshua Reynolds.  After returning to Bletchley our next halt is at Wolverton station.

WOLVERTON STATION.

Wolverton, the first specimen of a railway town built on a plan to order, is the central manufacturing and repairing shop for the locomotives north of Birmingham.

The population entirely consists of men employed in the Company’s service, as mechanics, guards, enginemen, stokers, porters, labourers, their wives and children, their superintendents, a clergyman, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, the ladies engaged on the refreshment establishment, and the tradesmen attracted to Wolverton by the demand of the population.

This railway colony is well worth the attention of those who devote themselves to an investigation of the social condition of the labouring classes.

We have here a body of mechanics of intelligence above average, regularly employed for ten and a-half hours during five days, and for eight hours during the sixth day of the week, well paid, well housed, with schools for their children, a reading-room and mechanics’ institution at their disposal, gardens for their leisure hours, and a church and clergyman exclusively devoted to them.  When work is ended, Wolverton is a pure republic—­equality reigns.  There are no rich men or men of station:  all are gentlemen.  In theory it is the paradise of Louis Blanc, only that, instead of the State, it is a Company which pays and employs the army of workmen.  It is true, that during work hours a despotism rules, but it is a mild rule, tempered by customs and privileges.  And what are the results of this colony, in which there are none idle, none poor, and few uneducated?  Why, in many respects gratifying, in some respects disappointing.  The practical reformer will learn more than one useful lesson from a patient investigation of the social state of this great village.

[The Wolverton viaduct:  ill8.jpg]

Those who have not been in the habit of mixing with the superior class of English skilled mechanics will be agreeably surprised by the intelligence, information, and educational acquirements of a great number of the workmen here.  They will find men labouring for daily wages capable of taking a creditable part in political, literary, and scientific discussion; but at the same time the followers of George Sand, and French preachers of proletarian perfection will not find their notions of the ennobling effects of manual labour realised.