formidable affairs are separately forged, as
their finer companions once were. The
flattening, and guttering, and filing of the
heads, is done on grooved anvils; and so is
the hammering of the lower half into a three-
sided surface. The pointing is done by one
at a time being held to a revolving cylinder
of a grit-stone brought from Bristol; and
then there is another rubbing against a
"buff,"—a cylinder covered with leather
dressed with emery. The eyes are punched
separately, and by repeated strokes; and
pains are given to the finishing of the head,
by flattening its sides, and filing all smooth.
The process is nearly the same with packing-
needles; but, as we know, their pointed ends
are considerably flattened and bent.

We must deny ourselves the pleasure of
describing the other manufacture which goes
on in the same place,—that of fish-hooks.
The pattern-books of the concern show
specimens of all sorts, from the strong cod-
hook, for the Newfoundland Banks, and the
salmon-hook for the Norway cataracts, to
the most delicate little barb that can be
hidden under a streak of feather, to dance in
the insidious character of a fly on the surface
of an English rivulet. We find here sail-
hooks, too,—like very large button-hooks.
Without these the sailmaker could not hold
together the edges of the uncommonly heavy
fabric he has to sew.

The women and girls in this establishment
are rather more numerous than the men and
boys. Their employer accounts for the
superiority of all in health, understanding,
and morals, to the last generation, by citing
the results of the Sunday schools of Redditch,
and the good free-school there. He may be
quite right: but there is something in the
tone of the intercourse between himself and
everybody on his premises, which convinces a
stranger that there is also somebody else to
thank for the improvement, which drives out
all the stranger's preconceptions of the
wretchedness of needle-makers. For our
own part, we must say that a load has been
removed from our mind—a burden of sorrow
and commiseration—by our visit to the
Victoria Needle-works at Redditch.

GABLE COLLEGE.

WE do not exactly hold with Parson
Adams's enthusiasm on the subject of the
pedagogical art, inasmuch as we do not
esteem a schoolmaster the greatest of characters,
nor ourselves the greatest of
schoolmasters. But we have a sufficiently high
standard of praise, by which to appreciate
the efforts of good and practical men
in this most difficult and most important
vocation.

With all our love for the home education,
received at a mother's hands in early life,
with all our preference—even despite the
improbability of our ever arriving at an
Etonian impeccability on the subject of false
quantities—for the quiet perseverance and
patient reprimands of a private tutor, to the
off-hand discipline of a public school; still
we love the dashing emulation which a school
always inspires. But this emulation is swayed
by directors as various as are the motives by
which it is impelled. The passions and feelings
of youth are entrusted to men as
remotely different in character as are the
characters that make up the anomalous
population of that little world in miniature,
a school.

When the golden reign of the Busby
school swayed the dreaded sceptre beneath
which the hands and backs of juvenile
delinquents daily and hourly quailed, Latin
and Greek, Euclid and hexameters, flourished
at the expense of self-respect and boyish
dignity. The remembrance of a flogging
might suggest the precise quantity of a, e, i,
o, u, under certain circumstances; but the
scholar seldom became a poet on the strength
of such inspiration. The birch and the bay-
tree were by no means friendly, and the
operation of being " horsed " seldom led the
sufferer to a sure seat on the back of Pegasus.
Quick boys got on without the cane; and
stupid boys not only became more stupid,
but grew doggedly indifferent. Caning is
very like other violent stimulants, and loses
its effect by being taken too often, if it do
not quite ruin the mental constitution of
the patient.

And the heroes of the Busby school were
men of inveterate obstinacy, who resented
the kicks and cuffs of their school days, by
kicking and cuffing in turn when they grew
older. Discipline had hardened into the
mere scholar, what might have been the
scholarlike man. Fathers sent their sons to
school to enjoy the canings they had
experienced in their own time; and their
sons, in turn, bequeathed the same inheritance
to their successors. Who knows how
many a cruel judge, callous bishop, or selfish
dean and chapter, do not trace their absence
of human feelings to their birch-fostered
studies in literis humanioribus?

Nor were morals bettered by the reign of
terror. Boys only sinned with more secrecy,
and told falsehoods with more consistency
than they would have done, had their
consciences been appealed to rather than their
backs. There is nothing attractive in a
caning; and what poor human nature will
often do to obtain a place under government,
or a piece of church preferment, it will, in
earlier years, and with better extenuation,
do to defend its tender skin from the
lash of the pedant. It is dangerous to
punish a boy for telling a falsehood, when
you terrify him from speaking the truth.
The ancient test of horseponding witches
shows nearly as enlightened views of human
nature.