tools. Suffice it, that here everything is put
together, and made ready for the finishing.
In the middle of one room is a counter, where
is fixed the machine for twisting the chains—
with its cog-wheels, and its nippers, whereby
it holds one end of a portion of chain, while
another is twisted, as the door-handle fixes the
schoolboy's twine, while he knots or loops his
pattern, or twists his cord. Here, a little girl
stands, and winds a plain gold chain, into this or
that pattern, which depends upon the twisting.

These ornaments of precious metal do not
look very ornamental at present; being of the
colour of dirty soap-suds, and tossed together
in heaps on the counters. We are now to see
the hue and brightness of the gold brought
out. We take up a chain, rather massive,
and reminding us of some ornament we
have somewhere seen; but it is so rough!
and its flakes do not appear to fit upon
each other. A man lays it along the
length of his left hand, and files it briskly;
as he works, the soapy white disappears,
the polish comes out, the parts fit together,
and it is, presently, one of those flexible, scaly,
smooth, glittering chains that we have seen
all our lives. Of course, the filings are
dropped carefully into a box, to go to the
refinery. There is, here, a home-invented
and home-made apparatus for polishing and
cutting topazes, amethysts, blood-stones and
the like, into shield shapes, for seals, watch-
keys, and ornaments of various kinds. The
strongest man's arm must tire; but steam
and steel need no consideration—so there go
the wheels and the emery, smoothing and
polishing infallibly; with a workman to apply
the article, and a boy to drop oil when screw
or socket begins to scream. This polishing
and filing was such severe work, in the
lapidary department, in former days, that the
nervous energy of a man's arm was destroyed
—a serious grief to both worker and employer.
At this day, it is understood that the lapidary
is past work at forty, from the contraction
of the sinews of the wrist, consequent on
the nature of his labour. The period of
disablement depends much on the
habits of the men; but, sooner or later, it is
looked for as a matter of course. Here, the
wear and tear is deputed to that which has
no nerve. As the proprietor observes, it
requires no sympathy.

It may be asked how there comes to be
any lapidary department here? Do we
never see gold chains the links whereof are
studded with turquoises, or garnets, or little
specks of emerald? Are there no ruby drops
to ladies' necklaces?—no jewelled toys hanging
from gentlemen's watch-guards? We see
many of these pretty things here; besides
cameos for setting.

After the delicate little filings (which must
be done by hand) are all finished, the articles
must be well washed, dried in box-wood
sawdust, and finally hand-polished with rouge.
The people in one apartment look grotesque
enough—two women powdered over with
rouge, and men of various dirty hues, all
dressed alike, in an over-all garment of
brown holland. A washerwoman is
maintained on the establishment expressly to
wash these dresses on the spot—her soap-
suds being preserved, like all the other
washes, for the sake of the gold-dust
contained in them. Her wash-tubs are emptied,
like everything else, into the refinery.

In the final burnishing room, we observe a
row of chemists' globes—glass vases filled
with water, ranged on a shelf. A stranger
might guess long before he would find out
what these are for. They are to reflect a
concentrated blaze from the gas-lights in the
evening, to point out specks and dimnesses, to
the eyes and fingers of the burnishers. What
curious finger-ends they have—those women
who chafe the precious metals into their last
degree of polish! They are broad—the joint
so flexible that it is bent considerably
backwards when in use; and the skin has a
peculiar smoothness: more mechanical, we
fancy, than vital. However that may be,
the burnish they produce is strikingly
superior to any hitherto achieved by friction
with any other substance.

In departing, the sense of contrast comes
over us once more. We have just seen all
manner of elegancies in ornament, from the
classical and dignified to the minute, fanciful,
and grotesque; in going out, we give a look
to the unfinished engine-house, and the smiths'
shop. All this hard work; all these many
dwellings thrown into one establishment; all
these scores of men, and women, and
children, busy from year's end to year's end; all
those diggers far away in California; all
those lapidaries in Germany; all those
engineers in their studies; all those ironmasters
in their markets; all those miners in the
bowels of the earth—all are enlisted in making
gold chains; and some of us have no more
knowledge and no more thought than to call
the product "Brummagem shams"! Well!
the price charged for them in London shops,
where they are as good as French, is
something real; and it is a real comfort to think
how swingingly some fine folks pay, though
the bulk of the profit comes, not to the
manufacturer, but to the middlemen. Of these
middlemen there are always two;—the factor
and the shopkeeper—often more. Their
intervention is very useful, of course, or they
would not exist; but somebody or other
makes a prodigious profit of Birmingham
jewellery, after it has left the manufacturer's
hands. It was only yesterday that we saw,
among a rich heap of wonderful things, a
pair of elegant bracelets—foreign pebbles,
beautifully set. We were told the wholesale
price they were to be sold for; which was half
the shop price. The transference to the London
shop was to cost as much as the whole of the
previous processes: from the digging of the
silver and the collecting of the pebbles,