IT that Nature must have had the Blue Devils,' when she formed the country in this neighbourhood. The remark, indeed, seemed highly appropriate to the road between Castleton and Sheffield; than which nothing can be conceived more dreary, rude, and forlorn, for twelve miles out of the sixteen. The little village of Hathersage, dropped in the centre of a broad bottom formed by the mountains rising around it, contrasts agreeably with their barren summits and dark declivities; and offers the first dawnings of the hardware trade to which we were approaching, in a little manufactory of buttons. This scene of life and business is, however, succeeded by a tract of moor in the true style of the Salvator Rosa scenery; the line of the horizon being broken by black rocky crags, which frown over the subjacent waste, and assume the appearance of enormous castellated ruins. But this sterility and desolation only prepare the traveller the better for the rich and fertile picture presently to be presented to his eye, when climbing a hill about five miles from Sheffield, he throws his delighted vision over the southern part of Yorkshire, and takes in an unbounded expanse of country covered with towns, villages, manufactories, and handsome human habitations. Proceeding four miles through this region, which seemed to have burst upon us preternaturally, we reached Sheffield, a large town situated near the borders of Derbyshire, on a gentle rise, at the confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don. This place, you know, has long been famous for the manufac tory of knives, razors, scissars, files, and other articles made from steel; as well as buttons and silver plated goods; a trade, however, which does not appear to be attended with any considerable benefit to those engaged in it, as few individuals in this place amass large fortunes. The town, vast as it is, (containing 22888 males, and 22807 females) is not represented in parliament; its corporation only relates to the manufactory, and is called the Company of Cutlers of Hallamshire, in which it stands. The incorporation took place in 1625, and was extended, and new privileges granted to it, in 1791. Its concerns are regulated by a master, elected every year on the last Thursday in August, two wardens, six searchers, and twenty-four assistThe hardware manufactures appear to have commenced here as early as the thirteenth century, when military weapons were made in great abundance. Less destructive instruments, the implements of industry, became the object of the townsmen in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In ants. the year 1600, we find iron tobacco-boxes and Jews'-harps the chief articles of trade here. Thirty years afterwards the knife-manufactory started up; in 1638, files and razors made their appearance; but it was not till a century afterwards, that a communication being opened between this place and the continent, the trade of Sheffield began to assume any thing like the importance it at present Since then both it and population have been increasing considerably; though not in the same proportion with Birmingham, its rival sister. wears. The knife-manufactory of Messrs. Noel and Kippax gratified us in a very interesting way. Here upwards of ninety people are employed in forming those useful instruments, from the rude bar iron to the beautiful and complicated article which costs seven or eight guineas, and contains twenty-eight different pieces within the handle. Some, indeed, are not of so high a value, as we were shewn specimens of knives, which, having passed through sixty different hands, from the ore to the last polishing, sold afterwards at the rate of twopence halfpenny each. Five hundred different patterns of knives are made at this manufactory, and taken off by the London, East-Indian, and American markets. Almost all the people employed work by the piece, and earn, if industrious, about four shillings per day. The tin-plate manufactory was too curious to be passed over in neglect. Messrs. Goodman, Gainsford, and Co. are proprietors of the most considerable one in Sheffield. Here those beautiful articles are prepared, which vie with silver in lustre and appearance; urns, tureens, salvers, candlesticks, stands, and the thousand other ornaments of the dining and tea-tables, and side-board. The articles themselves are of copper, which being received by the workmen in oblong ingots, a mass of silver exactly fitting it is placed upon each ingot, soldered together with borax and certain other materials, and then passed between two cylindrical rollers of immense power, which reduce the mass to the necessary thickness. The plate is then fit for working, and receives the desired form by the action of a prodigious weight of lead driven down upon it by a machine, which impresses it into a mould beneath of the pattern required. One or more strokes are used, according to the nature of the pattern, whether shallow or deep. If the article be of a complicated form, the different parts are made distinct, and afterwards soldered together. They are then trimmed up, and finely burnished by women, with little instruments headed with flint. and horn. The earnings even of this branch are about fifteen shillings per week, if the ladies be industrious; but those of the other branches much higher. The foreign trade is to the East-Indies, America, Levant, Germany, and France. Crossing the Don, we quitted Sheffield, and rode for six miles through a country which conveyed a |