An industrial map of England might be made a very instructive addition to the library of a general reader. In it he might read, by a glance of the eye, the contemporary history of English productive wealth. The Sanitary Commissioners, in some of their reports, have given health maps of England and of particular districts; in which, by the adoption of a peculiar mode of engraving, the relative health of particular spots at a given time is indicated-the darkness of the tint being associated with unfavourable health results. A geological map may be regarded as a mining map; for it indicates those spots where, by the prevalence of particular strata or veins, mining industry naturally locates itself. In the Report of the Irish Census Commissioners,' published in 1843, four maps of Ireland are given, illustrating respectively the population, the house-accommodation, the education, and the farming live-stock of Ireland, in the year 1841: the lightness or depth of the shading in each map being made to indicate the relative quantities of the items under consideration.

If such a map were formed for England, in relation to manufacturing and commercial features, we should find certain groupings, associated more especially with particular geological strata, but also in part with the courses of large rivers. We should see how it arises that the districts around the rivers Tyne, Wear, and Tees, and in many other parts of England, point to collieries as the main source of their wealth; that South Staffordshire is so dotted over with iron furnaces, and Cornwall with tin-works; that the Thames, the Severn, the Mersey, and the Humber, give life to London, Bristol, Liverpool, and Hull; and that Lincolnshire and Norfolk are little other than food-factories. If, in some cases, there seems to be no obvious connection between a particular branch of industry and the physical features of the district where it is mainly located, there are yet some points which a deeper inquiry would develope. For instance, if we take the settlement of the hosiery manufacture in some of the Midland counties, there is no very strong association between this employment and the natural features of the district; still, if we bear in mind that worsted hosiery was almost universally worn in England before the use of cotton, and that the long wool of the Leicestershire sheep is especially suited for this purpose, we see a sufficient reason for that department of industry having settled itself in and around Leicester.

Without, however, undertaking to account philosophically for all that meets the eye, we invite the reader to accompany us through that remarkable part of England, where the inhabitants mainly support themselves by making "stockings for the million." The technical detail of all the matters that pertain to such a manufacture would be beyond our present purpose; yet it

XXIV.-VOL. III.

Although Leicester may, perhaps, be deemed the birthplace of this department of industry, yet various circumstances have extended to Nottingham and Derby, and the counties to which they belong, a share in its advantages. From the time when Sir Thomas Lombe established the silk-manufacture at Derby, facilities have been afforded for making silk hosiery in that town, such as have not existed in the other two; and from that later date, when circumstances (connected. with the bobbin-manufacture) led to the consumption of a large amount of spun cotton at Nottingham, cotton hosiery has found in that county its chief manufacturing centre. We therefore find that there is a triangle of towns-Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham-each of which is the chief seat of a particular branch of one general manufacture; and we moreover find that each town is the centre of a district, extending for miles on all sides of it, and partaking generally of the industrial features of the town itself. The three towns lie at distances from fifteen to twenty-five miles asunder; but Derby is much less associated with the department of industry under notice than the other two towns; and Leicestershire, as a county, has its industry diffused among a larger number of places than Nottinghamshire; but if, taking Loughborough as a centre, we draw a circle which shall include the south of Derbyshire, the south of Nottinghamshire, and nearly the whole of Leicestershire, we have here marked out a district within which, and in most parts of which, the clack of the stocking-loom can be heard from morning till night. This may, significantly and truthfully, be designated the HOSIERY DISTRICT: a district in which the fortunes that are made, the poverty that is borne, the buildings that are constructed, the ingenuity that is displayed, the outward appearances that are presented, the social usages that prevail - all are very intimately dependent on this one of the numerous clothing arts: combined, in part, with the lace-net trade, which is associated with it not so much by a parity of products as by a similar origin of the machines employed.

Leicester has more to recommend it than simply its position as a nucleus of one particular kind of trade: it is associated with many events in the past history of the country; and it is in the heart of an agricultural district, whose peculiar feature is that one notable part of the agricultural produce (wool) is brought to the county town for sale, and wrought up into finished goods within the county. It is also, as matters have

R

now arranged themselves in the railway world, a central county of communication between north and south, and, in a minor degree, in other directions.

Leicester has been said to be situated on a saucer of loam;" by which we are to understand a stratum of loam lying beneath the town, somewhat saucershaped. The brim of the saucer is formed by a range of shelving hillocks, and broken only to the east, in which quarter the town is completely exposed. In every other direction it is bounded or enveloped, more or less nearly, by the Dane, Forest, and Spinney hills. This Forest means Charnwood Forest, which lies half a dozen miles or so westward of the town, and presents an elevation of seven or eight hundred feet. The town itself is very flat; there being only a gentle ridge running through it from north to south-east, which gives an easy slope to the streets running thence down to the river Soar.

It is a pleasant thing to be able to say, in times when sanitary matters are so forcibly impressed upon us, that Leicester occupies a large area in respect to its population, and that the largeness of the area is mainly owing to the numerous gardens contained within the town-almost to the very heart. Every considerable tenement has a large attached garden. Besides this, the principal streets are wider than the average of those in our manufacturing towns. It is also remarkable (and traceable, perhaps, to the saucershaped strata on which the town is built) that almost every large house has its own well; while the smaller tenements have a well to several of them in common. Besides the spring-water thus derived, there are in the town a large number of underground tanks, for the reception of rain-water from the roofs; and a group of small tenements has generally such a rain-water tank to the same number of houses as are supplied with spring-water from one well. An Act of Parliament was obtained in 1847, for bringing a supply of water to Leicester from a place called Lockey Bridge, about ten miles from the town; two streams, called Thornton Brook and Carr Brook, join at this point; and near the point of junction there will be a reservoir of about fifty acres, capable of holding 200,000,000 of gallons; the water will pass through filtering tanks, and will thence flow through iron pipes to the town. But even without this new supply, Leicester, with its wells and tanks, is better circumstanced than most other towns of similar size.

Leicester, we have said, has a goodly array of wide streets and open places. The Market-place, with the Exchange, are shown in Cut, No. 1. Nevertheless, the small streets, the courts, the alleys, the culs de sac, are far too numerous, and (as in most other towns) far too little attended to in respect to health and cleanliness. The principal street runs nearly from north to south, and two other main streets cross it at right angles the other streets are of a humbler character. These minor streets are characterized by having houses so small, that one operative family frequently occupies the whole of a house.

Leicester has undergone a good deal of modernizing within the last few years. The time-honoured timber houses are going or gone, and the old red brick houses are, one by one, going likewise, to be succeeded by others decked in the garb of the nineteenth century. One could wish that the old memorials, however, might be maintained: those buildings which serve as indexspots to persons and events long gone by. Such an index was the Old Blue Boar,' at Leicester, where Richard III. slept on the night preceding his decisive struggle with the Earl of Richmond at Bosworth Field. Hutton, in his account of the battle, thus describes the old inn: "In the Northgate Street yet stands a large handsome half-timber house, with one story projecting over the other, formerly an inn, the Blue Boar; hence an adjoining street derived its name, now corrupted into Blubber Lane. In one of the apartments Richard rested that night. The room seems to have been once elegant, though now in disuse. He brought his own bedstead, of wood, large, and in some places gilt. It continued there two hundred years after he left the place, and its remains are now in the possession of Alderman Drake. It had a wooden bottom, and under that a false one, of the same material, like a floor and its under-ceiling. Between these two bottoms was concealed a quantity of gold coin, worth about £300 of our present money, but then worth many times that sum. Thus he personally watched his treasure, and slept on his military chest."

Some few of our towns can boast of a pleasant, shady, tree-planted walk, belonging to the Corporation, and purposely kept free from houses. A very small number, indeed, have such a splendid avenue of this description as the Dane John Avenue, at Canterbury; yet, be they humble or extensive, they are an everwelcome adjunct to a town. Leicester has one such, called the New Walk; it extends south-east of the town, to the length of a mile, and is planted with a double row of trees. By the side of this walk a series of baths has been constructed within the last few years; the water being obtained by a well from a depth of about 90 feet. The public buildings within and around the town, such as court-houses, asylums, hospitals, gaols, assembly-rooms, &c., present nothing of a very notable or distinguishing kind; if we except, perhaps, the Elizabethan town-hall or Guildhall, and the Ionic front of the news-room and library.

But the churches of Leicester make ample amends for any apparent scarcity of other public buildings. The towers of these churches form conspicuous objects as seen from a distance; while a nearer view developes their merits as examples of past ages in ecclesiastical architecture. The largest of these churches is that of St. Martin; it is a cruciform structure, with a fine tower and lofty spire; part of it is in early English, and part in the perpendicular style; the lower part of the tower is Norman, while the rest of the tower and the spire are of much later date. a splendid organ, by Snetzler. more to do with secular or civil

The interior contains This church has had matters than falls to

the lot of most churches; for it was used as a barrack by the Parliamentarians during the civil war; while in modern times the archdeacon holds his court here, and public meetings have also been frequently held in the church. St. Mary's, (Cut, No. 2,) another of this

3. THE NORMAN DOORWAY.

fine old group of churches, is partly of Norman and partly of early English architecture, with a few insertions of later date; it has a western tower, surmounted by a lofty and elegant spire, rebuilt in the last century. The Norman doorway is sketched in Cut, No. 3. The whole building is regarded as a very beautiful example of the various styles in which it is executed: on the south side of the chancel are three fine Norman stalls, with double shafts and rich mouldings; the roof of the church is elaborately carved in oak. The most ancient, but not the most beautiful, of the churches, is that of St. Nicholas, which is partly built of the bricks from an adjacent Roman wall, of which a fragment, called the Jewry Wall, remains. There is a resemblance between the church-arches and the wall-arches, which has led to an opinion that some portions of the same edifice to which the Jewry Wall belonged, or of an edifice of about the same date, have been built into the church. The church itself, which consists of a nave, chancel, and south aisle, has a square western tower between the nave and chancel, and is chiefly of Norman architecture. The antiquaries have made. many a search among the fragments of the Jewry Wall here spoken of; and some have broached the theory (partly induced by the discovery of a large number of bones of oxen dug up in the vicinity) that these ruins belonged to the temple of the Roman god Janus. Leicester, at any rate, was an important military station of the Romans. St. Margaret's, which has a lofty tower, presents many excellent features in the early English.