more than a million rifles to the United States, two-thirds of which were from the latter town. Africa takes a huge number of guns annually, and we may be sure that when the warriors of Oko Jumbo, Ja-Ja, and other dusky potentates meet, Birmingham supplies the fire-arms. It has long been averred that the inferior quality of the guns sent to Africa was once defended by the exporter on the ground that it did not matter which black man was killed, he at whom the gun was aimed, or he in whose hands the barrel burst, but this jokelet has the air of being part of the regular case urged against "Brummagem" work in general, probably due to the make of vermeil plated ware introduced into Birmingham by no less a person than Matthew Boulton, the clever and witty partner

of James Watt, who, when the Czar Peter asked what they sold at the Soho Works, replied "Power." Vermeil, the old-fashioned plated ware, made by applying silver to copper, is never mentioned contemptuously by French writers or in French catalogues or inventories. It has a dignified name to itself, and was never scoffed at as plated ware was once in ignorant old England, caring nothing for design or workmanship, but grimly insisting on solidity and intrinsic value on the sideboard while it wore paste diamond buttons on its coat and paste buckles in its shoes.

Wealthy England chose however to regard plated ware as a sham and then applied "Brummagem" as a term of vituperation. Curiously, although this is by no means a singular instance in the history of nomencla

ture, our forefathers blundered as to locality, as they did when they gave the turkey its name. Plated ware of great excellence had been made for years in Sheffield before its manufacture was introduced at Soho, where it was also done in the grand manner, the handles and the ornamental mountings being of actual silver. The plating or sheet of silver applied to the copper backing was moreover so thick that the use of forty years would hardly make them "bleed " as it was technically called when the copper began to grin through the silver covering as it did once on some Prussian coinage, an accident which provoked the remark that "the king's cheeks were blushing for the quality of his silbergroschen." Matthew Boulton, who seems to have been altogether of the princely order of mankind, always sent a file with his goods to the end that the scoffing and incredulous might test the quality of his ware and its mountings. As this first manufacturer of plated goods at Birmingham was established in 1764 it was probably not until the art of rolling very pure silver very thinly on the copper came into vogue that "Brummagem" became a word of opprobrium, to disappear again when the resources of chemistry enabled the Messrs. Elkington to produce a revolution by the introduction of electro-plate, the artistic application of which is too generally appreciated to need more than a passing word of reference. The economy in the use of silver by the chemical method is very great as compared with the old process; for old-fashioned plate or vermeil from less than one ounce to eight ounces of silver were used to plate one side of a bar of copper weighing nine pounds, the union being effected by striking, annealing, and rolling. The quantity of silver employed in electro-plating is much less, and an additional advantage is gained by all the artistic work of the German silver body being completed before the chemical deposit of silver is made upon it.

Without inquiring deeply into the reason of the variety of callings pursued in Birmingham, and especially the manufacture of the small articles which with some confusion of a technical term, induced Edmund Burke to call the already flourishing and important town "the toy-shop of Europe," the opinion may be hazarded that there is a certain flexibility in the minds of the inhabitants which induces them to forsake worn-out industries and take up new ones instead of fanatically clinging to the ways of the past. It would be quite beyond the scope of this article to attempt to grasp the great subject of buttons. The soul of Birmingham has not been "above

buttons" at any time, and the Manchester expression of indifference, "I don't care a button top," would be queerly out of place in the hardware town. Originally famous for iron work, it acquired a specialty for brass buttons, and plated and gilt buttons, when those means of fastening had grown, or degenerated, as the reader pleases, into an ornamental part of attire. Gold lace disappeared from the riding dresses of women and the ordinary attire of men, but what they lost in lace they made up in buttons. The last century and the beginning of the present may be called the great gilt-button period; but when this once important industry shrivelled up in consequence of fashion harking back to the covered cloth or silk buttons of an earlier period, Birmingham adapted herself to altered circumstances and an immense manufacture sprung up of silk, lasting-cloth, twist and braid buttons. All kinds of materials had previously been applied to button-making. Matthew Boulton himself made the steel buttons with cut facets worn on court suits at the Soho Works and sold them at 140

Dur

guineas the gross. Clay, the inventor of papier-mâché, applied this material to button-making an application revived in recent times and made slate buttons. ing the last few years the stained vegetable ivory button has been very largely produced in deference to the demand for a "hard button for multi-coloured suits. Besides vast quantities of corozo nut or vegetable ivory, Birmingham consumes tons upon tons of shells for buttons. Mother-of-pearl, as it is called, comes from a great variety of places, from the summer seas of Macassar, from Manilla, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and beautiful as well as inferior shells come from the Pacific.

Instances of the flexibility of the Birmingham mind almost as striking as the button trade itself are to be found in the recent development of the brass and stained-glass industries to be studied at this moment at the works of Messrs. John Hardman & Co., of Newhall Hill, and Messrs. R. W. Winfield & Co., of the Cambridge Street Works and the Smethwick Works. The work carried on by these eminent firms is peculiarly characteristic of the age as being a direct outgrowth of the more correct ecclesiological taste developed by Pugin and encouraged by the observance of ecclesiastical ceremonies with more strictness than of old. Cardinal Newman, whose name, oratory, and residence are among the glories of Birmingham, can hardly fail to have been gratified with the revolution in church decorations in the

Anglican Church, and the artistic skill and taste displayed by the houses in question. The brass work of Birmingham has long been one of its specialties. It has been said that what Manchester is in cotton, and Sheffield in steel, that is Birmingham in brass. Perhaps these comparisons hardly do justice to many-sided Birmingham. But undoubtedly brass founding and brass making in all its departments is one of its most peculiar industries. Before attempting to describe the picturesque process of "strip casting" and rolling. brass into various shapes, it may be well to settle precisely what brass is. Either modern ignorance or ancient inaccuracy has led to some confusion in ordinary minds between the com

position of brass and bronze, the difference being simply that bronze is mainly an alloy of copper and tin, and brass an alloy of copper and spelter-that is

to say the raw metal of which zinc is the manufactured product. Of old the cementation, as it was called, of copper and zinc, or spelter in the crude form of calamine stone, was esteemed a weighty business, and engaged the particular attention of the ubiquitous Matthew Boulton, who had a horror

every-day articles of brass, the odds and ends of domestic use and fittings of every description may be passed over with the remark that the quantity made is enormous. Brass bedsteads form a very important item of manufacture, and gas-fittings go from Birmingham all over the globe.

More peculiarly interesting is the revival, already alluded to, of the older method of working in metals due to the influence of Pugin, and carried out with great spirit by the firms of Hardman and of Winfield

of the interference of shareholders in the working of a company projected for making brass at Birmingham. "If," he wrote, "the works are erected at Birmingham, the work will be constantly deranged by the interference of a hundred blockheads." But the "blockheads" proved too strong, and brass making was begun on a large scale, with the ultimate effect that the trade disappeared, for every brass founder became his own brass maker, as brass manufacturers like Messrs. Winfield & Co. make their own lacquer. What may be called the

beauty and coherence had entirely vanished before a clumsy idea of utility and comfort. The art of the blacksmith had vanished so completely that the production of such a pair of iron gates as those recently completed by Messrs. Hardman would have been beyond the scope of the wildest dreamer. The blacksmith was a mechanic; the press, with its punch and bed had replaced the beautiful process of saw piercing; the stamp and die had superseded the embosser, chasing had degenerated into a poor kind of diaper work, engraving had sunk to meaningless scrolls,

66

ON THE CANAL AT BIRMINGHAM.

From a Drawing by A. MORROW

and enamelling was of the simplest and commonest kind. What was not stamped or punched was cast. The caster had thoroughly degraded ironwork, and people stared ignorantly at the work of Quintin Matsys, of Antwerp, and Peter Visscher, of Nuremberg. Dipping" and bronzing had also had much to do with the confusion of popular taste. An old art had been lost. An old art had been lost. It was the work of Pugin and his disciple Hardman to restore it. How well it has been restored can be seen by the work now made in Birmingham. Ironwork, which had sunk so low in the hands of mere casters, has been restored to its place among the arts by such superb productions as the gates previously mentioned as being nearly finished by Messrs. Hardman. These are entirely of wrought iron hammered out and bent up into a variety of elegant designs, well sustaining comparison with the fine

German work of the Renaissance. The execution is excellent, but more remarkable yet is the originality and freshness of the design. What is sought in the revival of a lost art is its spirit and method, not a slavish imitation of the forms by which it most frequently found expression. It is this propensity for servile imitation which has proved the greatest stumbling-block in the way of creating a living art of metal-working. What is desired is that the skill of the artificer having been recovered, he should originate designs like his mediæval predecessor rather than congeal his modern mind into mediæval forms. In the working of glass, brass, and iron, this end has been steadily kept in view by those who caught the spirit of Pugin and applied it with patient thought and a discreet sense of fitness. In these hammered iron gates the fancy of the designer has been restrained in some measure, as it should be, by the nature of the material to be dealt with, and although great elegance has been attained, there is an absence of any tendency to overleap that severity of treatment on which the success of iron work greatly depends. Thus the larger panels of the gates are decorated mainly with conventionalised roses and lilies-the Japan lily being very skilfully and tastefully employed while in the smaller spaces the decoration assumes greater freedom. In the narrow panels care has been taken to avoid the always beautiful but atrociously hackneyed vine, with its bunches, charmingly varied leaves and tendrils, the latter of which offer an almost irresistible seduction to the blacksmith. In the place of the vine the blackberry has been freely introduced, and with holly and mistletoe affords delightful variety. There are scores of plants besides the vine and the convolvulus which

afford ample scope to the iron worker, without giving him the trouble of going farther than the nearest brook or hedgerow. The vine, the fig, the mulberry, and the orange have been employed somewhat frequently in the adornment of our homes, and so have the lily, the ox-eye, the daffodil, the aster, the chrysanthemum, and the plum blossom called hawthorn when it appears upon blue and white china. But a walk from Goring to Pangbourne by the side of the Thames would supply an average mind with models, which, if not quite so easy to deal with, would at least have the merit of freshness. One of Lord Beaconsfield's characters complains that the English language is sadly in need of a new set of images. This is abundantly true, but not more so than that the art of England and other countries is equally in need of something beyond that variety of what heralds call "chequy," known as the Greek fret and other patterns good in themselves, but, like a delicious melody ground too often on a barrel-organ, grown wearisome by perpetual vulgarisation. There is doubtless suggestion enough and to spare in the burdock, the loose-strife, and the meadow-sweet, without counting the forget-me-not and other water plants, not forgetting the tall bulrush and the flowering reed. Kentish hop-gardens and the ferny combes of Devonshire alike supply hints and models to the artificer who can make as excellent use of dog-rose or blackberry as he can of mistletoe or holly, oak or ivy, vine or fig-tree.

From Messrs. Hardman's beautiful iron gates seen the other day at their works at Newhall Hill, it only needs the ascent of a few flights of steps to see in perfect working order the section of the establishment devoted to the making of stained and painted glass windows. This kind of work, marvellously improved during the last few years, depends, as the visitor soon discovers, upon a great variety of conditions besides the colour and quality of the glass itself. The glass for stained windows is made on purpose, and is not plate but blown. It arrives at the workshop where it is to be made up into windows in the form of cylinders which are subsequently annealed and cut open, and in their next form appear as irregularly formed sheets of various colours, each of which also varies in parts in depth of hue. It is then ready for the cutter, who works with the cartoon in front of him, and carefully selects the glass according to the directions written upon it, aiding these with his own knowledge of effect and skill in selecting

pieces of glass in which the accidental variation of hue can be turned to advantage. On the cartoon itself the success of the picture primarily depends, for it must be prepared with perfect knowledge of the kind. of work to be done. It must from the first be conceived in the spirit of a working drawing and not as a work of art alone, with no special application. Neglect of these elementary principles long militated against the revival of stained glass. A vigorous attempt to establish glass painting at Birmingham was made nearly a hundred years ago by Francis Eginton who began to paint glass at Soho, and unfortunately produced an immense quantity of work, distributed, to the sorrow of posterity, throughout a large number of important buildings, including cathedrals, churches, colleges, and castles. In 1794 Beckford gave him an order amounting to 12,000l. for Fonthill, and he executed moreover very large commissions for the Continent. The productions of Eginton were in the main ghastly; one being ably described by Mr. J. Hardman Powell as presenting to the spectator "a sea of bistre, with a few finger points of light and streaks of colour. It is not till the eye has become accustomed to the sombre tone, that masses of huge brown limbs are discoverable, then a horse's head, then a herculean St. Paul daringly displayed across the centre light." In addition to extreme dinginess only relieved by small patches of colour, the mass of the glass painting done before the revival inspired by Pugin and carried out by Hardman was marred by two fundamental errors. daining to take lessons from medieval artists in glass, the designers strove to reproduce the effect of oil paintings, selecting the brownest of the old masters for imitation, without the slightest regard for their adaptability to the purpose in hand. The second blunder was in the choice of smooth glass instead of that of uneven surface-blown glass with a few bubbles in it and of varying hue and thickness. Besides these two fatal errors, several others were made. Not only were the principles of ancient art ignored, but systematically set at defiance. The designs, stretching over the whole light, without borderings, were divided into squares by an iron frame which gave them the appearance of a landscape seen through old-fashioned small-paned windows. They were made out entirely by enamel colourbrown shade and yellow stain on a white base with little or no outline and few leads. Taken altogether the effect of the work was that of a feeble pictorial transparency. As

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