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like thine, all ways are pleasant. What is a little failure in fishing to thee, kind fellow? There is no such thing as bad luck to a man with a genial, well-wishing spirit such as thine. The lesson was not quite lost on the solitary lady. It occurred to her how happy the young and the old man were, both in the giving and receiving. In time they came again upon the invalid. The attendant who had so nearly been left in the railway carriage was standing by his side when they approached, having brought Horace Wilton his jelly for the noon-day repast, and she seemed to recognise Besley at once, for she exclaimed: "Oh, sir, this is the good man I told you of, who took the ladies from Beachhouse out in his nice big boat-none of your cockleshells."

Wilton nodded. "Your servant, sir. Will you go in an hour? The tide will serve us then ?" It was soon settled; and in an hour from that time the faithful Bridget and Miss Hall, who came to see them put off, and Horace Wilton, and the two Guernsey-clad fishermen, were all on the shore. Bridget certainly had provided rather more wraps than a hot July day in Devonshire rendered absolutely agreeable; but it was all out of love; and Horace had such an objection to altercation, that he suffered them to be thrown into the boat, until Will Besley, with an expressive puff, declared that the sight of such garments was heating, and threw (with Wilton's permission) the greater part of them on the sand.

"Don't put the sails up," said the old servant in a warning tone. After a nod and a smile, the oars began to play, and the boat went off, leaving Bridget and Miss Hall on the shore. Bridget sighed, and Miss Hall sighed too.

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'He looks ill," she remarked.

Yes, ma'm, and he is ill;" and the poor woman burst into tears. 'It is very sad to see a young

man so afflicted."

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Ah! miss, you may well say so; we need take care we don't add to the lump; but we are all too apt, young and old, to think only of self. I know I am; and such as, like me, have no natural ties, as one may say, for I never had brother or sister in my life, and my father and mother died when I was a babe. There's enough of 'em destitute, I am sure; and a poor lone woman like me, getting towards her fiftieth year, should make friends for her own sake, if she wouldn't be miserable."

How innocently Bridget talked! She little

thought that to the lone maiden by her side her words were as gall. But they still were wholesome words, and, like many a bitter herb, they were useful, though not pleasant.

It was droll; but that very evening Miss Hall found out that her landlady, a decayed gentlewo man, was a very pleasant companion; and it was stranger still, that when she found she could help her, her heart opened a little. She had little money to give; but when she saw Mrs. Altham's candle burning one night as she was going to bed, she asked how it was, that, tired as she must be with waiting on her lodgers, she sate up so late, and kept her sickly daughter out of bed too. (Quite censoriously Miss Hall said all this.) The answer was: "6 Ma'am, I furnished this lodging-house on borrowed money, and I shall never feel happy until it is paid. I accordingly work at my needle of a night to add to my little store of money which is laid aside for this loan. Thank God! I never want for work. Many kind friends supply me, and if I could do more I might have it, for every one is so good to me."

The next afternoon Miss Hall brought her thimble and her little box into the Althams' sittingroom. "I used to be a good hand at stitching; let me try," said she; and she stitched the wristbands of the rector's shirts so beautifully, that soon more work came in; and the lonely maiden began to sing less often to the tune of "Alone in the world." She had found friends, and was come out of her gloomy cell of selfishness to give and to receive pleasure.

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What a nice, kind lodger we have, mother!" said Mary Altham. "She has rather odd notions, but I begin quite to like her. I hope she won't leave yet."

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I hope not, Mary; she has been a good friend to us; and as to odd notions, my child, depend on it, there is something odd in every one, and something to like too, if we will but be on the look-out."

To return to the boating party. In spite of Bridget's warnings they did hoist a sail, a harmless little sail, quite innocent of any power or intention of upsetting the big boat, and very plea sant was the splashing sound of the blue waters as the craft cut along-Charley singing at the helm, and the elder boatman watching for an op portunity of cheering the sorrowful-looking gentleman. For some time, however, he did this in vain. He had not forgotten his dredging-net, (which, by-the-by, no sea naturalist ever should forget), and he had just brought up more treasures of the deep than we can count: fuci, corallines,

"Plants of fibres fine as silkworm's thread; Yea, beautiful as mermaid's golden hair.” "You seem very fond of those things, sir," at length ventured Besley.

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'I am, indeed; I have few other pleasures, you know."

"Well-no-sir, sickness does take a deal of the joy out of one's life, no doubt. Not that ever I was sick myself, thank God, though I scarce know why I should thank him for that neither; for I have heard sick folks-and we see a many of 'em here-declare that God Almighty gives in other things more than he takes away.'

"Yes, they are right; I would not now change the pleasure which the study of these sea things,

for instance, gives me, for all the jollity and merri-
ment, the leaping and the riding, and the party-
going in the world. Flowers, plants, birds, insects,
are my companions-the fittest for a sick man."
"Ah!" said the fisherman," very true, sir; and
I dare say they've all a voice to you such as he
(pointing to the sunburnt, half-sleeping lad at the
helm) would never hear: messages like, from
their Maker to you, in your lonely and suffering
hours. But still they bloom and they die, and
there's an end of 'em. Now, I fancy, let me be
as lonesome as I might-and I have had my lone-
some hours-I never could make a friend of a
thing without a soul; besides, we can do 'em no
good, and that seems to me the great thing in
mortal friendships."

Rather a sharp satire this; for at the moment that Besley spoke, some poor little crabs and rockfish were struggling in the naturalist's dredging net in a manner that clearly indicated that the friendship was all on one side, and that not on the part of the disturbed fishes.

These were new thoughts to Horace Wilton. He had never been like other children, and the loss of his mother when young had driven him, in his sickly childhood, to seek amusement for himself apart from companions of his age; and that which, rightly pursued, would have been a source of innocent joy to the poor youth, had become by selfish indulgence a snare and an evil.

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"We are differently made, my good friend," he said at last; some are socially formed, and, I believe, intended to love society; others, as I think, to dislike it."

"Yes, sir; but you don't mean to say that you think God ever made man to dislike sociable life?" "Yes, I think so."

"Well then, sir, it strikes me-I aint no scholar, certainly, and I may be wrong-that a man with such a mind is not fit to live on earth; and yet, what will he do when he gets to heaven, for he can't be alone there, and we know the good Father of all made nothing in vain; that you learn, sir, in your book of nature, as well as in the best of books. Oh, depend on it, sir, the more friends one makes, and the more good one does 'em, the more one falls in with the intent of the Maker."

Horace scarcely knew what to answer, but he said: "Have you so many friends, then? You've a large family, I suppose?"

My family" and here the grey head shook mournfully-lay, five of 'em, side by side in the churchyard on yon hill. Three-and they were my only boys, the youngest-had no need of graves; they had their last beds made in the deep waters." "Drowned," nodded the boy at the helm, in an explanatory tone.

"And the old woman, bless her! has never smiled since that November morning She is alive bodily, but her heart died when the lads died, and now is in the ocean with her boys. No, I've none to care for of my kith and kin, and when that great sorrow first came, my heart turned against all mankind. Because I could not have my brave boys, so, thinks I, I will have none of the gifts of God; and I went out by myself in the old ricketty boat, and hoped sometimes (God forgive me for the hope!) that the storm would come and bury me with the buried ones in the waters. But

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instead of the storm, sir, came a voice of peace, and taught me, in my musings on the midnight sea, that God will have his own way with his children, and that we are not to choose. Then, as I could not have what I chose, I thought I'd take what he chose, and asked him for work to do. My children were taken, but there were many fatherless ones in the world, even in our little town; and, thank God, I've found children which, maybe, but for Will Besley would never have had a father. Beg your pardon, sir; fishermen and sailors are always fond of spinning long yarns, and self is a tempting subject."

Of what was the young man thinking, as he leaned over the boat side? No longer of the sea foam and the mermaid's caves, but of life and its realities. He saw much of his own heart that day. He began to suspect that the fault lay, not so much in the world around, as in the world within him; and as he left the fisherman's boat, Miss Hall, who happened to be seated on the beach, busily occupied with some benevolent labour for her landlady, her face beaming with a newly-found happiness, looked positively engaging in his eyes.

Will the reader now kindly take a jump of ten years with us, and transport himself to a house in one of the pleasantest and cheerfulest suburbs in London? Can he recognise that couple, not now young, but with the elasticity of step that marks good health, and the buoyancy of spirit that indicates a cheerful mind, seated so pleasantly in that neat parlour, with its snug curtains and its cosy fire? It is Horace Wilton; but not the invalid that we knew, for his countenance wears the hue of health; and it is Miss Hall, and yet not the Miss Hall either that we knew, for she is changed in more respects than one. Her countenance has no longer the inanimate, languid look that it once bore, but beams with pleasure and animation. We should not have recognised the delicate young lady of the Dawlish beach in the matronly and pleasing person who now bears the name of Mrs. Horace Wilton, and calls herself the pleased mother of two young children, who are just now clustering round their papa's knee.

"Oh! Horace, I have had such a happy, busy day."

"And I too, my love, have been almost worn off my feet with engagements; yet still, somehow, I

don't feel wearied.'

"Old Mrs. Simpson, papa," exclaimed the little girl," has been here to thank mamma for having been so kind to her little girl."

"Yes, Horace, and Mr. Manson has been here, telling me of all the good you have done to our neighbours by that little library and saving fund you have established among them."

"

Well, Bella, (for that had been Miss Hall's maiden name,) and do you know I have had young Horrocks down at my office, with tears of gratitude in his eyes for the situation which I managed last week to get him."

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But enough we must let the curtain drop on that happy family scene. By way of retrospect we may remark, that Horace Wilton and Miss Hall had afterwards met in town, and discovered in the course of their interview much that was mutually attractive and congenial. Both had mastered a difficulty that at one time had nearly wrecked their

happiness in life, and both had learned the secret of that holy, elevating faith, which, working from love to an unseen Benefactor, transforms the heart which it enters, and makes all things new. Thus linked together by so many points of union, a higher and more endearing relation had, with the consent of their friends, been entered upon; and often amidst their active cheerful labours for the good of others, they pause and wonder if they are really the two sentimental and useless individuals who at one time strayed along the beach of Dawlish, and who stood alone in a world which had so many demands on their active sympathies and labours.

CURIOSITIES OF THE HUMAN HAIR.

| From this analysis it would appear that the beautiful golden hair owes its brightness to an excess of sulphur and oxygen with a deficiency of carbon, whilst black hair owes its jetty aspect to an excess of carbon and a deficiency of sulphur and oxygen. Vauquelin traces an oxide of iron in the latter, and also in red hair. The colouring matter, however, forms but one portion of the difference existing between the soft luxuriant tangles of the Saxon girl and the coarse blue-black locks of the North American squaw. The size and quality of each hair, and the manner in which it is planted, tell powerfully in determining the line between the two

races.

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Another eminent German has undergone the enormous labour of counting the number of hairs in heads of four different colours. In a blond one

THE bard of Avon has poetically told us how we he found 140,400 hairs; in a brown, 109,440; in may find

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything;" and a contemporary journal has lately shown how considerable a space even so despised an article as hog's bristles occupy in the world's commercial transactions; but it was reserved for a quarterly reviewer to disclose the pleasantries and philosophies that lie sheltered beneath the luxuriant folds of the human hair, in all its varieties, fashions, and colours. We have always known hair as the "universal vanity," that has captivated painters, inspired the effusions of poets, given employment and fortune to multitudes of artistes, and abstracted for its cultivation and adornment large portions of precious time, ever since the world began. A handsome wig, too, found in the temple of Isis, and now among the treasures of our Museum, as well as the curled heads and beards depicted on the Assyrian sculptures lately exhumed by Mr. Layard, had clearly proved to us that thousands of years ago men were not at all behind the present or any intermediate age in attention to head ornamentation. Still we were scarcely prepared to expect that on such a theme a litterateur would be able to harvest so rich a crop of curious facts as are collected together in the paper in question. We take the liberty of selecting a few of the more instructive passages for the gratification of our readers. And, first, as to the physiology and chemistry of hair.

"A hair," says the reviewer, " is not, as it appears, a smooth cylindrical tube like a quill; on the contrary, it is made up of a vast number of little horny laminæ or our reader might realize its structure to herself by placing a number of thimbles one within the other; and as she adds to this column by supplying fresh thimbles below, she will get a good notion of the manner in which each hair grows, and will see that its oldest portion must be its free extremity.

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The pigment cells have been scrutinized by Liebig, who finds a considerable difference in their constitution according to their colour. His results may be thus tabularized :

Fair Hair. Brown Hair, Black Hair.
49.345
50.622
49.935

Carbon Hydrogen

6.576

6.613

6-631

Nitrogen.

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Oxygen and sulphur 26-143

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* Quarterly Review. March, 1853.

a black, 102,962; and in a red one, 88,740. What the red and black heads wanted in number of hairs, was made up, however, in the greater bulk of the hairs individually; and, in all probability, the scalps were pretty equal in weight. It is to the fineness and multiplicity of hairs that blond tresses owe the rich and silk-like character of their flow-a cir cumstance which artists have so loved to dwell upon."

There are probably few of our readers who have not often been struck with the magnificent displays of black, blond, or golden tresses that may be seen adorning the waxen figures that make our hairdressers' windows so attractive, and who have not at the same time wondered how and where such silken trophies were procured. Who is it that consents to part with these ensigns of vanity, for the benefit of those who are anxious to disguise the ravages of age? Such is the natural inquiry that is started in the mind of the spectator. It appears that for most of the hair thus used, England is indebted to the foreigner.

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Among the many curious occupations of the metropolis is that of the human-hair merchant. Of these there are many, and they import between them upwards of five tons annually. Black hair comes mainly from Brittany and the south of France, where it is collected principally by one adventurous virtuoso, who travels from fair to fair, and buys up and shears the crops of the neighbouring damsels. Mr. Francis Trollope, in his 'Summer in Brittany,' gives a lively description of the manner in which the young girls of the country bring this singular commodity to market, as regularly as peas or cabbages. What surprised me more than all,' he says, by the singularity and novelty of the thing, were the operations of the dealers in hair. In various parts of the motley crowd there were three or four different purchasers of this commodity, who travel the country for the purpose of attending the fairs and buying the tresses of the peasant girls. They have particularly fine hair, and frequently in the greatest abundance. I should have thought that female vanity would have effectually prevented such a traffic as this being carried to any extent. But there seemed to be no difficulty in finding possessors of beautiful heads of hair perfectly will ing to sell. We saw several girls sheared, one after the other, like sheep, and as many more standing ready for the shears, with their in caps their hands, and their long hair combed out, and

hanging down to their waists. Some of the opera- | out Plus de Cheveux Gris;' and, indeed, of late we tors were men, and some women. By the side of observe London advertisements beginning with the dealer was placed a large basket, into which No more Grey Hairs.' White hair, however, is every successive crop of hair, tied up into a wisp not necessarily the slow work and certain mark of by itself, was thrown. No doubt the reason of the age. Some persons become grey very young; we indifference to their tresses, on the part of the fair believe that many in the prime vigour of life are Bretonnes, is to be found in the invariable "mode" | suddenly blanched from the effect of terror, or which covers every head, from childhood upwards, some other great mental disturbance. Marie Anwith close caps, which entirely prevents any part toinette's hair, it seems to be allowed, turned grey of the hair from being seen, and of course as totally in the night preceding her execution. A case came conceals the want of it. The money given for the lately under our own observation, in which a soldier, hair is about 20 sous, or else a gaudy cotton hand- in order to escape the service, malingered in a hoskerchief; thus the dealers net immense profits by pital for three months, feigning rheumatism, and their trips through the country.' such was his anxiety to keep up the deception (which was, however, completely penetrated by his medical attendant) that he turned perfectly grey, although quite a young man. In these cases of emotion, it is supposed that the blood sends some fluid among the pigment of the hair, which at once discharges its colour. In some, though very rare instances, persons have been born with patches of white hair; and there is at present in the Museum of Natural History at Paris a portrait of a piebald negro, in which the hair of the head presents very much the parti-coloured appearance of the wigs exposed in the windows, half black and white, as specimens of the power of the various hair-dyes.

"This hair is the finest and most silken black hair that can be procured. Light hair all comes from Germany, where it is collected by a company of Dutch farmers, who come over for orders once a year. It would appear that either the fashion or the necessity of England has, within a recent period, completely altered the relative demands from the two countries. Forty years ago, according to one of the first men in the trade, the light German hair alone was called for. This treasured article he sold at 8s. an ounce nearly double the price of silver. Now all this has passed away, and the dark shades of brown from France are chiefly called for. Our informant, venturing boldly into a subject where- "Women are quite as often grey as men, but from with ethnologists fear to tackle, delivers it as his baldness they are almost entirely exempt. This is opinion that the colour of the hair of English owing in a great measure to the larger deposit of people has changed within the last half-century, fat in the female scalp, which allows of a freer cirand that the great intercourse since the war with culation in the capillaries of the skin. The scalp southern nations has deepened by many tints the of a bald man is singularly smooth and ivory-like predominating Saxon blond of our forefathers. The in texture; a fact which Chaucer noticed in the same intelligent prompter assured us that any one Friar- His crown it shon like any glass.' This accustomed to deal in hair could tell by smell alone denseness of texture in the skin is owing to the the difference between German and French hair-destruction of the bulbs of the hair and the closure nay, that he himself 'when his nose was in' could discriminate between Irish, Scotch, Welsh, and English hair!"

The subject of grey hairs and premature baldness is one that is at all times exciting the anxious attention of a large number of persons, who are just turning the meridian of life, and are engaged in a daily and senseless conflict with the heralds of decay and age-a war against nature, in which quackery gathers some of its richest spoils, and converts the failing covering of the heads of its dupes into a veritable "golden fleece." The reviewer has some excellent and suggestive remarks upon this branch of the topic, which may be quoted with advantage.

The grey hair of age and debility," he remarks, "in the human subject, results, it is supposed, from a withdrawal of the pigment cells. We feel that we are now touching upon a part of our subject that becomes personal to not a few of our most respected readers. Many a viveur who has taken no note of time is suddenly startled by the discovery, as he shaves, of a few grey hairs-pursuivants of Death-and he eradicates the tell-tales with anything but an agreeable sensation. Our Parisian friends, who seem to be profoundly afflicted at the appearance of the first snows of age, have organised a diligent army of young girls to war against decay, and to wrest from Time the fatal ensigns he plants upon our brow. The Salons Epilatoires, where youth pays this little attention to age for an inconceivably small sum, usually hang

of the follicles; any attempt to reproduce the natural covering of the head on such surfaces will prove quite hopeless. From some cause or other, baldness seems to befall much younger men now than it did thirty or forty years ago. A very observant hatter informed us, a short time since, that he imagined much of it was owing to the common use of silk hats, which, from their impermeability to the air, keep the head at a much higher temperature than the old beaver structures; which, he also informed us, went out principally because we had used up all the beavers in the Hudson's Bay Company's territories. The adoption of silk hats has, however, given them time, it seems, to replenish the breed. This fact affords a singular instance of the influence of fashion upon the animals of a remote continent. It would be more singular still if the silk-hat theory of baldness has any truth in it, as it would then turn out that we were sacrificing our own natural nap in order that the beaver might recover his. Without endorsing the speculative opinion of our hatter, we may, we believe, state it as a well-ascertained circumstance, that soldiers in helmeted regiments are oftener bald than any other of our heroic defenders."

Closely connected with the loss of hair, are the arts for its restoration. Among these, "bear'sgrease" has an honourable place, and the following anecdotes are curious.

Tonching upon the subject of applications for nourishing the hair, we must not omit the most important and imposing, though some people ima

A VISIT TO THE STAFFORDSHIRE
POTTERIES.

L. THE BOROUGH OF STOKE-UPON-TRENT.

gine perfectly apocryphal, contributors-BEARS. We know Bruin has of late been declared a humbug, and there is but too prevalent an opinion abroad that he does not let his genuine grease flow for the benefit of mankind as freely as barbers would have us believe, from the announcement we so often seen in back streets of another bear to be killed.' After full inquiry, however, we find that Bruin still bleeds, without murmuring, for an un-earthenware dishes, china tea-cups, etc., etc. There grateful public. During the winter months upwards of fifty bears yield up their life in this metropolis alone, and they are, we find, very regular passengers between the ports of St. Petersburg and London. The destiny of these creatures affords a singular instance of the manner in which extremes meet the shaggy denizen of a Russian forest having at last the honour of yielding up his precious fat to make glossy and smooth the ringlets of an irresistible Puseyite. If Ursa Major could only know his distinguished future!

"In order to combat the growing scepticism as to 'hairdressers' bears,' a worthy son of the craft in the neighbourhood of St. Giles's Church was long in the habit, when he slaughtered a Muscovite, of hanging him by chains out of the second-floor window, with an inscription to the effect that customers bringing their own gallipots might cut the fat out for themselves."

After these curious facts, and a passage deprecating the indiscriminate use of hair oils, pomades, and dyes, we are treated to a most humorous history of hair architecture and peruke manufacture down to the period of their fall, which happened simultaneously with the fall of the French monarchy. Pigtails and powder, however, did not go out until the year 1808. Deprived of the privilege of elaborating their head-dresses, Englishmen seem next to have turned their attention to the cultivation of their whiskers, and, more recently, in affectation of continental fashions, their mous taches.

The reviewer winds up with the following hints, which may appropriately be recommended to many young men :

"So well do people understand the character as expressed by the hair and its management, that it is used as a kind of index. Commercial ideas are very exact respecting it. What chance would a gentleman with a moustache have of getting a situation in a bank? Even too much whisker is looked upon with suspicion. A clean shave is usually, as the world goes, expected in persons aspiring to any post of serious trust."

He has entered into some speculations also as to the mode in which ladies may arrange their locks to most advantage; but, without countenancing anything like the neglect of care and neatness, may we be suffered to remind our female readers, whose eye may be glancing over this paper, of the advice given on this subject eighteen hundred years ago, at a time when the cultivation of hair formed among Roman ladies no small object of interest? It is briefly this: "Your adorning, let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel, but. . that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price."

To the generality of readers the term "The Potteries" conveys but a very indefinite and uncertain idea-an idea connected, perhaps, in some undefinable way, with pots and pitchers, pipkins and is nothing very grand or striking in the term itself, or in the associations-though they are, doubtless, agreeable in the main-which it suggests to the mind; and we may safely affirm, that the notions current among strangers to this peculiar district, with regard to its general characteristics, are very far from the correct ones. Having taken a jour ney to the north of Staffordshire for the express purpose of spending a few days in the Potteries, and of gathering from ocular evidence such facts as might come in our way, we shall proceed to lay them simply and briefly before our readers, not without the hope that they may derive both information and amusement from the reports we have to make.

The Potteries consist of a number of small towns lying pretty closely together, and mostly, if not entirely, comprised within the borough of Stoke-upon-Trent. Stoke itself stands about twenty-five miles north of Stafford, and something like double that distance south of Manchester. It is rather centrally situated with respect to the neighbouring towns and hamlets which make up the borough, the principal of which are, Burslem, Etruria, Fenton, Hanley and Shelton, Longton, or Lane End, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Tunstall, and a few minor hamlets and villages. We have catalogued them alphabetically, from ignorance of the precedence to which they may be severally entitled; but they all lie within a space of ground not larger in area than that covered by the city and suburbs of London.

Stoke is a place of considerable antiquity, and is indirectly noticed in Domesday-book. The old church, which in 1829 was taken down, a new one having been erected upon a neighbouring site, was supposed to have existed, at least some portions of it, at a date prior to the Conquest-a corbel head of stone being found at its demolition embedded in a wall, and bearing the date, in Roman numerals, DCCCI. With the destruction of the old church, however, the antiquities of the place appear to have departed altogether; and no vestige that we could discern of anything like a hoar antiquity now remains to attract the curious eye of the archæo logist. The new church, which was commenced in 1826, and finished three years after, is a handsome and substantial erection in the English style of the thirteenth century, and is the greatest architectural ornament which the town can boast. Viewed from the entrance to the town, it has an imposing aspect, while the interior is elegant and simple; and the magnificent oriel window, the gift of a late rector, may challenge comparison with most specimens of the kind. Among the monuments is one to the celebrated Josiah Wedg wood, of whom we shall have to make honourable mention by and by, who died in 1795. There is an excellent organ, and an harmonious peal of bells, which compelled us, by the way, to keep our eyes

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