the small army with which the earl landed at Bourdeaux, contained many men who were raised among his tenantry at Sheffield and the neighbourhood; and that these formed the body-guard of their aged and valiant chief, and were so entirely cut off, that throughout the circuit of Hallamshire there was not a family which had not a private grief originating in the disaster of that fatal day, which filled the Castle of Sheffield with the tones of loud lamentation." Other Talbots succeeded the first great Earl of Shrewsbury,-who walked the usual round of servility in the court, and courage in the camp ;—and their memories would have been left to the local annalist, had not two of them been brought into connexion with personages that fill a large space in the historical canvass. Early in the reign of Henry VIII., George, the fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, built in his Park at Sheffield a splendid mansion, more convenient than his fortified castle. In the year 1530 Cardinal Wolsey was brought there a prisoner, by the Earl of Northumberland, and delivered into the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He remained at the Manor sixteen or eighteen days, bowed to the earth by sickness and bitter disappointment; and when he quitted Sheffield he found his final resting-place, within four days, at the Abbey of Leicester. Cavendish, Wolsey's gentleman of the chamber, has given a minute relation of the conduct of Wolsey during his residence at Sheffield-his protestations of innocence-his terror at the accusations that were impending over him-his pretended confidence in the king, under the secret conviction that he would be sacrificed by his crafty and cruel master. "The fair gallery" where Wolsey and Shrewsbury held their daily conferences "the goodly tower" where the fallen minister was lodged-have long since perished. A few ruins remain to show something of the extent of this edifice. Forty years after Wolsey had gone forth for his last journey, and "waxed so sick that he had almost fallen from his mule," there was brought to Sheffield another prisoner-Mary, Queen of Scots. When Elizabeth, in 1568, pounced upon the unhappy victim of contending factions, she appears to have made up her mind as to the course which she persevered in for more than eighteen years. To George, the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, she addressed herself as a fitting person to undertake the expensive, troublesome, and perilous guardianship of the Queen of Scotland. About Christmas, 1570, Mary was brought to the Castle of Sheffield. She had thirty persons in her train; and the Earl engaged forty of his tenantry, as an extraordinary watch, by day and night. Small indulgence was granted to the poor prisoner. In 1571, the Earl writes to Lord Burghley, "Truly I would be very loth that any liberty or exercise should be granted unto her or any of hers, out of these gates. . . . . . I do suffer her to walk upon the leads here in open air, and in my large dining chamber, and also in this court-yard, so as both I myself, or my wife, be always in her company." In 1573 Shrewsbury wrote to Elizabeth, "I have her sure enough, and shall keep her forthcoming at your Majesty's commandment, either quick or dead." Ten years after she first came to Sheffield, we find Mary still suffering the miseries of close imprisonment. She writes to the French ambassador, that she was without fresh air, not allowed sufficient exercise, and meanly provided with diet. At length, on the 3rd of September, 1584, Mary was removed from Sheffield to Winfield. On the 8th of February, 1587, was enacted the mournful tragedy of Fotheringay. Shrewsbury was amongst those who urged the necessity of Mary's death, and he was a witness of her execution. With Mary of Scotland ends the interest of the Castle and Manor of Sheffield. The Castle was surrendered to the Parliamentary forces in 1644, after an obstinate resistance; and was dismantled four years after. The smithy and the warehouse gradually usurped the place of its towers and court-yards. The Manor-house fell into decay. The timber of the Park was cut down. The grinding-wheel was multiplied on the banks of the Sheaf and the Don, the Rivelin, and the Porter. A great town sprung up on every side of the hills that looked down upon the waters of Sheffield: Beautiful rivers of the desert! ye Bring food for labour from the foodless waste. Pleased stops the wanderer on his way, to see The frequent weir oppose your heedless haste. Where toils the mill, by ancient woods embraced, Hark, how the cold steel screams in hissing fire! There draws the grinder his laborious breath; There, coughing, at his deadly trade he bends. The Village Patriarch. The same powerful painter of his own scenery has, in another poem, given us a view of Sheffield equally striking and true: The mighty arm of mist, that shakes the shore 'Sleam.' ELLIOTT. This is poetry. This is the poetry which Sheffield suggests. We cross the Derbyshire moors on a gloomy morning of the early May. The snow lies on the highest hill-tops. We gradually descend into the valley of smoke which lies beneath us. The whole scene is murky. Thick, black, uprising clouds, by man created, mix with the heaven-descending mists. The streets lour frowningly upon us. Amidst prisonlooking walls we hear the incessant noise of the tiltnow with a quick stroke coming piercingly upon the ear, tapping, as if it were some tiny toy moved by children in sport-now "booming its sullen thunder," like a mighty ram of war battering against some devoted city gates. Row after row of small housesunadorned without, but clean within,-each with its clock and its sofa,—each the sanctuary of some inde pendent workman-are passed; till we are amongst shops and bustle, in the centre of a town with nothing very remarkable in its appearance. Streets tolerably spacious; a few public buildings of some pretension; churches and chapels,—one or two, large and imposing in their architecture, but scarcely to be called nobleothers, the abominations of the tasteless last century— more, exhibiting the jauntiness of the present age, aspiring to do something of imitation of Greek or Gothic, but curtailed, by limited means, of the "fair proportions" of their models; very little that tells of antiquity; bridges, for use and not ornament, over dingy streams that send up volumes of smoke from their banks, this is the Sheffield that was first presented to us under an unfavourable atmosphere. We have nothing for it but to pass a day amidst its manufactures; and well are they worthy of a more protracted visit. During the last ten years the town has extended itself to nearly double its former size, and the manufactories have become much more numerous; consequently, the numbers given of the cutlers, grinderies, &c., cannot be perfectly relied on. The trade of the town never was in a more flourishing condition. In 1801 the population of the town and suburbs of Sheffield was 39,047; in 1841, 74,058; and in 1851, according to the last census, 103,826. Sheffield is in the coal formation, and its beds are particularly rich (more so than others in the country) in fossils of the period of the upper coal formation, ferns, &c. The following is an account of one of the mines in this stratum, copied from Dr. Buckland's "Geology and Mineralogy." "In September, 1834, I saw in one of the mines of Earl Fitzwilliam at Elsecar, near Rotherham, many large trunks of Sigillaria (vulgo, fossil trees) in the side of a gallery by which you walk into the mine-from the outcrop of a bed of coal about six feet in thickness. These stems were inclined in all directions, and some were nearly vertical. The interior or store, whose inclination exceeded 45°, was filled with an indurated mixture of clay and sand; the lower extremities of several rested on the upper surface of the bed of coal;—none had any traces of roots, nor could any of them have grown in their present places." Before entering on an examination of the trade of Sheffield, we may be allowed to notice a few of its more prominent architectural and social features. Of the many churches in Sheffield none are worthy of note excepting St. Peter's, or the parish church, and that not for its architectural beauties, but for some good old monuments of the Shrewsbury family in the chancel, which is called the "Shrewsbury Chapel." There is a fine cemetery belonging to the town, which has a small church. It is situate on the side of an eminence; and looking from it across the valley of the small river Porter to the opposite hills, we see the Collegiate School and Wesleyan College. They are both fine buildings the former in the gothic style: they are admirably conducted, and have sent out many pupils who have obtained scholarships and other university distinctions. On the north-west side of the town is the General Infirmary, the funds raised by voluntary contributions: this was opened for the reception of patients in 1779. The erection is of stone, from the quarries adjoining. Competent judges say much of the excellence of the internal arrangements. They make up 120 beds, and the institution is quoted as a pattern for hospital management. The finest building in or near the town is the Roman Catholic Church, which owes its splendour to the generosities of the late Earl of Shrewsbury. 66 The Government School of Design, in Arundel Street, is now in a most flourishing condition; it is well conducted, and a little eulogy would be well bestowed. See the verdict of the Great Exhibition juries :—“ The jury think it deserving of notice with respect to this branch of industry (iron and hardware), that in all the communications which have been made to them by persons engaged in it, they find observations commendatory of the School of Design in Sheffield, and an expression of the high sense they entertain of the services it has rendered to ornamental art, and in particular to the manufactures of that place." One of the most noteworthy institutions in Sheffield is the People's College. It was established in 1842, by the Rev. R. S. Bayley, an Independent minister, with the design of affording a better education to the working classes than had hitherto been generally attainable. This he proposed to effect-first, by adapting the period of instruction to the opportunities of the students, viz. before and after the hours of labour; and, secondly, by appending to the ordinary branches of a common education, the study of languages, composition, elocution, mathematics, &c. For six years the reverend gentleman laboured in this cause, and was eminently successful. At the end of that time he left the town. When the teacher departed, the scholars began to wax cold in their tasks, and a question arose among them whether it would be possible to continue the institution without the assistance he had hitherto so generously afforded it. A few of the senior students, however, felt that a sort of responsibility attached to them, and they determined at least on a trial. A plan of operations was therefore adopted, which accorded more generally with their notions of what a popular educational institution ought Warned by the fate of most mechanics' institutions, they determined at the onset to adopt two fundamental principles, viz. "self-support" and "selfgovernment." to be. A public meeting was called October 14th, 1848, at which Wilson Overend, Esq., presided. The committee entered into a detailed explanation of their plan. It was proposed to make the uniform fee for attendance and instruction, in any or all the classes, sixpence per week the more elementary classes to be conducted by those students who were best qualified as teachers, and who in their turn were to receive instruction in the languages and the higher branches of learning by competent and paid teachers. They proposed also that the literary, scientific, and other gentlemen in the town and neighbourhood, should lecture gratuitously to them. The meeting approved of the plans, and on the following day the institution opened. At first the committee made themselves personally responsible for the monies necessary in order to procure the proper furniture and educational apparatus, but they had every confidence that the students would be true to their own institution, and the result has proved that they were right in their nticipations. At the end of three years the primary expenses were liquidated, and the People's College stood possessed of rooms well and thoroughly furnished for the comfort and convenience of the students. are the works in which the steel receives its fina change into every variety of tool, whether knife, razor, or scissor-file, chisel, saw, axe, or scythe. In some, every article is made; in others, the file-an amazing branch of industry-has the predominance. In many an humble cottage, some three or four miles from Sheffield, will a contented artificer, who also cultivates a patch of land, have his little forge, where he incessantly manufactures one sort of knife for one market, which he disposes of weekly to the Sheffield merchant. Several villages are wholly occupied by cutlers, and fork-makers, and file-cutters. Then, again, Sheffield is the great seat of the manufacture of plate, celebrated as Sheffield plate' all over the world. If the huge factories of the cotton and woollen and flax districtsthe mighty creations of Manchester and Leeds and Bradford-fill us with wonder at their surpassing grandeur of mechanical combinations, assuredly the skill which is called into action at Sheffield, in the production of the most useful and the most beautiful of man's inventions, may demand more than a hasty glance, and afford subjects for permanent admiration. That skill, and the vast accumulation of mechanical forces and arrangements by which it is called into profitable action, have been the slow growth of centuries. It is not our purpose to describe the manufactures of Sheffield with any technical precision. Our readers will find this admirably done in the British Manufactures' of Mr. Dodd, originally published in 'The Penny Magazine' as 'Days at the Factories.' Our space, and our limited scientific knowledge, will only allow a rapid glance at some of the more striking combinations of Sheffield industry. Without intending to pass over any establishment that may probably have as just claims to notice as the few we mention, we request our readers to accompany us through three or four large works, in which the great branches of Sheffield manufacture may be advantageously seen. Let us begin with the Sheaf Works of William. Greaves and Sons: Sheffield has been truly called, "the metropolis of steel." It has coal in its very heart; its streams are busy agents of production; but the greater part of the iron whose form and quality is being incessantly changed in its furnaces and forges, is the produce of Northern Europe. The mine of Dannemora, in Sweden, produces the most esteemed iron for the purposes of the steel manufacture. To the port of Hull is the whole quantity annually produced in this mine consigned; and the greater portion of this quantity, about four thousand tons in a year, is converted into the products of Sheffield. Native iron is, no doubt, used in some descriptions of manufacture; but all the finest steel-and it is the boast of Sheffield to produce the finest is made from iron brought over the seas. It is in the change of this iron into steel, by a due admixture of carbon-by hammering, by casting, by rolling-that the natural powers of Sheffield, the water and the coal, are incessantly at work. Then succeeds the nicer labour of the artificer, who fashions this care. fully-prepared steel, by hammering and grinding and polishing, into every instrument that the art of man can demand, from the scythe of the mower to the lancet of the surgeon. Sheffield is a "metropolis" of steel, because the whole district is alive with this peculiar industry. Wherever there is a stream with a fall, there is the grinding-wheel at work—be it under sunny hills or in deep ravines; and where the ivy-covered rock shelters the little mill, a knot of workmen are labour-mouth of one is sealed. A fierce fire of Sheffield coal ing to "Draw forth the welded steel-bright, blue, and sound." "A poor man's boy Constructed these grand works! Lo, like the sun, The Sheaf rolls by their steam-chimneys and ware- is burning beneath the oven, which has been filled for many days with alternate layers of iron bars and charThe subdivision of manufactures at Sheffield is coal. The bars will come out, finally, 'blistered steel,' very remarkable. There are establishments which are having, in their state of white heat, absorbed a portion solely occupied in the first process of converting steel of the carbon into their very heart. There lie a heap in furnaces; there are others, technically called tilts, of bars by the mouth of another furnace, which have where the ponderous hammer moved by steam or water, gone through this process. Surely something moves is incessantly beating the bars into a harder and finer within that dark cavity, which was lately so fiery hot! quality; there are others, again, where the operation It is a man, naked from his waist upwards, preparing of casting the steel into ingots is carried on; and others, the furnace for another heating. The intensity of the finally, where new forms and new qualities are imparted heat, and its duration, are proportioned to the quality by milling and rolling. In some large establishments of the steel to be produced. The experience of the all these operations are united. Numerous, indeed, | workman stands in the place of exact chemical science. |