In the face of such savagery, so evidently the result of defective education, two opposite and extreme parties in the State, the anti-church Mialls and the pro-church Anthony Denisons, combine to oppose the multiplication of education that teaches decency if it teaches nothing else.

One great step has been made by the Health of Town’s Act, which is about to be applied to some of these coal towns; and railways have rendered the whole district so accessible that no foul spot can long remain unknown or unnoticed.

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Walsall, eight miles from Birmingham, the first town in our way, which may be reached directly by following the South Staffordshire, or by an omnibus, travelling half-a-mile from Bescot Bridge, lies among green fields, out of the bounds of the mining country, although upon the edge of the Warwickshire and Staffordshire coalfield,—­indeed the parliamentary borough includes part of the rough population just described.  It is very clean, without antiquities or picturesque beauties, and contains nothing to attract visitors except its manufactures, of which the best known is cheap saddlery for the American, West Indian, and Australian markets.  They make the leather and wooden parts, as well as stirrups and bridles; also gunlocks, bits, spurs, spades, hinges, screws, files, edge tools, and there is one steel-pen manufactory, besides many articles connected with the Birmingham trade, either finished or unfinished, the number of which is constantly increasing.  Walsall is celebrated for its pig-market, a celebrity which railroads have not destroyed, as was expected, but rather increased.  Special arrangements for comfortably disembarking these, the most interesting strangers who visit Walsall, have been made at the railway station.

The principal church, with a handsome spire, stands upon a hill, and forms a landmark to the surrounding country.  The ascent to it, by a number of steps, has, according to popular prejudice, produced an effect upon the legs of the inhabitants more strengthening than elegant, which has originated the provincial phrase of “Walsall-legged.”  But this is, no doubt, a libel on the understandings of the independent borough.

The houses are chiefly built of brick, but it seems as if some years ago the inhabitants had been seized with an architectural disease, which has left its marks in the shape of an eruption of stucco porticoes, and one or two pretensious mansions, externally resembling jails or infirmaries, internally boasting halls which bear the same proportion to the living rooms as Falstaff’s gallon of sack to his halfpennyworth of bread.  No doubt there are persons whom this style of house exactly suits, the portico represents their pride, the parlour their economy.  What was intended for the Walsall public library consists of a thin closet behind a gigantic Ionic portico, now tottering to its fall; and in like manner a perfectly dungeon-like effect has been given to the principal hotel by another portico, which affords a much better idea of the charges than of the accommodation to be found within.