Besides this, which we may term the High School, there are four schools supported out of King Edward VI.’s foundation, where reading, writing, and arithmetic, are taught.

The funds on which these magnificent ecclesiastical establishments are supported, arise from lands in the neighbourhood which originally produced only 21 pounds a year, and were part of the estates of the Guild of the “Holy Cross.”  After being occupied first as fields and then as gardens, the rise of manufactures and extension of the town of Birmingham, converted a great portion into building land.  The present revenue amounts to about 11,000 pounds per annum, and are likely to be still further increased.

Twenty years ago, school lands which are now leased for terms of years, and covered with buildings, were occupied as suburban gardens at trifling rents.  Eventually the Birmingham Free School will enjoy an income equal to the wants of a university as well as a school.  Meagre accounts of the income and expenditure of this noble foundation are published annually, under the regulations of an Act of Parliament passed in 1828; but no report of the number of scholars, or the sort of education communicated, is attached to this balance sheet.  It would be very useful; and we hope that the self-elected corporation, who have the management, will see the propriety of supplying it.

Birmingham also possesses a chartered college, “Queen’s College,” similar to that at Durham; first established as a medical school by the exertions of the present dean, Mr. Sands Cox, since liberally endowed by the Rev. Dr. Warneford to the extent of many thousand pounds, and placed in a position to afford the courses in law, physic, and divinity, required for taking a degree at the University of London.  Also a Blue Coat School, and School for the Blind.

In a picturesque point of view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—­and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers.  What neatness—­cleanliness—­can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot-pavements are, for the most part flagged, although some of the round pebble corn-creating footways still remain in the back streets.  One suburb, Edgbaston, is the property of Lord Calthorpe, and has been let out on building leases which entirely exclude all manufactories and inferior classes of houses.  The result has been a crop of snug villas, either stucco or polished red brick; many of them surrounded by gardens and shrubberies, and a few of considerable pretension.  Of this suburb the Birmingham people think a great deal; but, as it is built upon a dead flat in long straight lines, its effect is more pleasing to the citizen after a hard day’s work, than to the artist, architect, landscape gardener, or lover of the picturesque.