In this street is a large house of a dirty, faded appearance; the cobwebbed windows blocked up; the door with a broken knocker and a sad want of paint.  It is evidently the ci-devant residence of a Birmingham manufacturer of the old school, before the suburbs of Edgbaston and Handsworth sprang up, now turned into a warehouse or receptacle for lumber.  As to apply to the front door would be useless, you turn up a dark passage at the side, and reach another dingy door, which gives way with a rattle at your touch, and closes with a rattle and a bang; passing through you ascend a flight of creaking deal stairs, and reach a suite of low rooms, about as imposing in appearance as a deserted printing-office.  A few juvenile clerks—­the very converse of the snug merchants’ clerks of the City of London—­are distributed about.  A stranger would not give 50 pounds for the furniture, capital, and credit, of the whole concern.

And yet, in this strange place, is conducted a trade of many tens of thousands per annum, with branches in all the principal towns of Germany, Spain, Portugal, South America, and British India!

A rapid idea of the Birmingham hardware trade may be obtained from the extensive show-rooms of Messrs. Herbert, in the Bull-ring.

If we have failed to do justice to any branch of manufacture, we have a very sufficient excuse in the difficulty we experienced in obtaining access to manufactories, or even information as to what was worth examination.

HEALTH AND EDUCATION.

After detailing at such length the material advantages of this interesting and important community, we should not be doing right if we did not present the reverse of the medal in certain drawbacks and deficiencies which seriously interfere with the prosperity and progress of “the hardware village.”

The Birmingham public are so often in the habit of hearing from their favourite orators that they are the most intelligent, moral, and intellectual people in the world,—­that their town is the healthiest, and their opinions the soundest, of any community in England, that it is not extraordinary if they overlook blots which are plain enough to a stranger.  Perhaps they are quite right; perhaps they are more honest, more sensible, more sound politicians, than any other British community.  Perhaps, too, they are cleaner, more sober, and better educated than the towns of A, B, and C; but, without entering into comparisons, which, in such cases, are of no practical benefit, we shall proceed to show that, with all their excellent industrious, intelligent, and ingenious qualities, the people of Birmingham are much more dirty, drunken, and uneducated than they ought to be, considering that the town is in a very healthy situation; that the mass of the population is engaged in skilled employments, and that patriots, bearded and unbearded, are plentiful, who seem to have a great deal of influence, for good or evil.