Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878 | Page 6

to enter horses, to give prizes, to attend balls; and if politics

are never quite forgotten, especially since the suffrage has been
extended and the number of voters to be conciliated so suddenly
increased, this only adds to the outer bustle and success of these social
"field-days." Coventry has a pretty flourishing watchmaking trade,
besides its staple one of ribbon-weaving; and indeed the whole county,
villages included, is given up to manufacture: the places round
Warwick and Coventry to a great extent share in the silk trade, while
Alcester has a needle manufacture of its own, Atherstone a hat
manufacture, and Amworth, which is partly in Staffordshire, was
famous until lately for calico-printing and making superfine narrow
woollen cloths: it also has flax-mills. The kings of Mercia used to keep
state here, and the Roman road, Watling Street, passed through it, with
which contrast now the iron roads that pass every place of the least
importance, and in this neighborhood lead to the busy centre of the
hardware trade, smoky, wide-awake, turbulent, educated, hard-headed
Birmingham. This, too, is within the "King-maker's" county, and how
oddly it has inherited or picked up his power will be noted by those
familiar with the political and parliamentary history of England within
the last forty years; but, though now an ultra-Radical constituency, it is
no historical upstart, but can trace its name in Domesday Book, where
it appears as Bermengeham, and can find its record as an English
Damascus in the fifteenth century, before which it had been already
famous for leather-tanning. The death, a year ago, of one of the most
gifted though retiring men of the English nobility, the late Lord
Lyttleton, makes it worth mentioning that his house, Hagley, stands
twelve miles from Birmingham, and that both his house and his
forefathers were well known as the home and patrons of literary men:
Thomson, Pope and other poets have described and apostrophized
Hagley. The late owner was a good antiquary and writer, but in society
he was painfully shy.
[Illustration: BABLAKE'S HOSPITAL, COVENTRY.]
The southern part of Warwickshire, adjoining Gloucestershire, or rather
a wedge of that shire advancing into Worcestershire, is the most rich,
agriculturally speaking, and besides its apple-orchards is famous for its
dairy and grazing systems, while the northern part, once a forest, is still

full of heaths, moors and woods. There is not much to say about its
farms, unless technically, nor the appearance of the farm-buildings, the
modern ones being generally of brick and more substantial than
beautiful. Country-seats have a likeness to each other, and a way of
surrounding themselves with the same kind of garden scenery, so that
unless where the whole face of Nature has some strongly-marked
features, such as mountains or moors, the houses of the local gentry do
not impart a special individuality to a neighborhood; but in a mild and
blooming way one may say that Warwickshire has a fair share of pretty
country-houses and attractive parsonages. Still, the beauty of the
southern and midland counties is altogether a beauty of detail and
cultivation, of historical association and architectural contrast; not that
which in the north and east depends much upon the beholder's
sympathy with Nature unadorned--wild stretches of seashore and
pathless moors, mountain-defiles and wooded tarns. Wales and
Cornwall, again, have the stamp of a race whose surroundings have
taught them shrewdness and perseverance, and their scenery is such
that in many places, though the eye misses trees, it hardly regrets them.
In the midland counties, on the other hand, take the trees away and the
landscape would be scarcely beautiful at all, though the land might be
equally rich, undulating and productive. Half the special beauty of
England depends on her greenery, her hedges, her trees and her gardens,
in which the houses and cottages take the place of birds' nests.
LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.

LITTLE BOY BLUE.
Childish shepherd, sleeping Underneath the hay, Oh would that I could
whisper in your dreams, "The sheep astray!"
Couldst thou not in Dreamland, Pretty herdsman, pray, With horn and
crook lead gently to the fold Thy sheep astray?
Alas for soft sweet slumber's Mistland gold and gray, While o'er the
hilltops shimmering spirits lead Our sheep astray!

PAUL PASTNOR.

THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.
II.--GENERAL EXHIBITS.
The exposition under one roof of products of every kind, natural and
cultivated, mechanical and artistic, has a certain impressiveness from
the wonderful extent and variety of the assemblage, but the effect is
confusing and oppressive. The Philadelphia plan of grouping the
exhibits in separate buildings was both more pleasant to the eye and
more useful to the student. There is no place in Paris, however,
affording room for isolated buildings of sufficient aggregate area, and
the Bois de Boulogne, though immediately outside the fortified
enceinte, in