-the manufacturer, the middleman, the bagman, the stockinger, the seamer, all are to be found in both counties. Leicestershire, as a whole, slightly takes precedence of Nottinghamshire, in respect to the total number of stocking-frames employed; but the two are not far from a level.

Nottingham, however, eclipses not only Leicester, but every other part of England, in one remarkable and interesting department of industry-lace or bobbin-net. This simple and cheap commodity, bobbin-net, is a great thing for Nottingham. It is a more important element in the prosperity of the town and neighbourhood than most of our readers would imagine. Just conceive for a moment, that even at the marvellously low prices which modern times have witnessed, the production reaches two millions sterling annually (for such, Mr. Felkin states, has often been the case in recent years); just conceive that a bobbin-net machine, in its largest and most perfect form, sometimes costs so much as £800: these facts, and the large number of persons employed in the work, show that this department of industry is one of notable importance.

It would not be necessary to point out to our ladyreaders the difference between hand-made lace and machine-made net but the other sex is less learned in these matters, and must consent to a little enlightenment. Lace, then, is made on a kind of pillow or cushion, which is placed on the lap of the lace-worker. The pattern is sketched upon a piece of paper or parchment, and laid upon the pillow; pins are stuck through the parchment into the pillow, in places marked out by the pattern; bobbins are laden with fine flax thread to form the meshes of the net, and with coarser thread to form the device or ornament; and the lace is formed by twisting these threads round the pins and round each other, so as to form not only the network itself, but the ornament which is to adorn this network. The bobbins serve the office of handles, as well as stores of material. In this slow, threadby-thread, mesh-by-mesh manner, the lace is built up; and we need not marvel that a material so prepared should be rather costly, if estimated per yard.

This, then, is the lace manufacture, properly so called; a manufacture which has given notoriety to Mechlin, to Valenciennes, to Brussels, to Honiton, according to the particular kinds made in each town. But it is in the south-midland counties of England that we find this employment rising to the importance of a manufacture. Go into the villages of Bedford, Buckingham, and Northampton counties, and you will, perhaps, scarcely find one where lace-making is not carried on by the cottager. It is stated that, twenty years ago, there were more than 100,000 females thus employed in England; but the number has since greatly diminished; for Nottingham net is year-by-year driving pillow-lace out of the market.

The rise of this trade at Nottingham was marked by very extraordinary circumstances. It was about seventy years ago, that a stocking-weaver tried whether he could apply his frame or loom to make something

which should imitate lace; and by slow degrees, such imitations became introduced. It was not, however, till thirty years afterwards, that Mr. Heathcoat, in 1809, obtained a patent for a new and highly ingenious lacemaking machine, which, from certain arrangements of its mechanism, obtained the name of a 'bobbin-frame ;' and hence the name 'bobbin-net.' Of the envy and strife which drove Mr. Heathcoat away from Nottingham, and led him to settle in Devonshire, we will say nothing: it is not a creditable feature; but we cannot pass in silence over the year 1823, when, Mr. Heathcoat's patent having expired, all Nottingham went mad. Everybody wished to make bobbin-net. Listen to what Mr. M'Culloch says on this point: "Numerous individuals-clergymen, lawyers, doctors, and others— readily embarked capital in so tempting a speculation. Prices fell in proportion as production increased; but the demand was immense; and the Nottingham laceframe became the organ of general supply, rivalling and supplanting, in plain nets, the most finished productions of France and the Netherlands." Hear, too, Dr. Ure, on the same point: "It was no uncommon thing for an artizan to leave his usual calling, and, betaking himself to a lace-frame, of which he was part proprietor, realize, by working upon it, 20s., 30s.,nay, even 40s. per day. In consequence of such wonderful gains, Nottingham, the birthplace of this new art, with Loughborough, and the adjoining villages, became the scene of an epidemic mania. Many, though nearly devoid of mechanical genius or the constructive talent, tormented themselves night and day with projects of bobbins, pushers, lockers, point-bars, and needles of every various form, till their minds got permanently bewildered. Several lost their senses altogether; and some, after cherishing visions of wealth, as in the old time of alchemy, finding their schemes abortive, sank into despair, and committed suicide."

If the Nottingham lace-makers were now to go mad, it would not be at the golden dreams before them. Competition has had its usual levelling effect; and no more fortunes can be rapidly made in the lace trade. The consumption is immense, but the workers are numerous; and prices, wages, and profits, have all alike become low. Inventions and improvements have been many and varied; and some of the machines employed are among the most beautiful combinations of mechanism anywhere to be seen; but as nearly all the processes are easy to learn and to pursue, the earnings of the workpeople are small-too small, we fear, for their own comfortable subsistence.

The bobbin-net trade presents many more factory usages than that of hosiery. The machines are mostly worked by steam; and this alone necessitates something of the factory-system. Some of the hand-worked machines have cost £200 or £300 each; and a workman is in many cases the owner of the machine on which he works; but where steam-worked machines are used, they are mostly congregated in factories. In some of the factories plain net alone is made; at others, figured net and quillings; at others, silk edgings. A

few years ago, the hand-machines were more numerous than the power-machines; but the latter are gradually overtaking the former. Very frequently there is only one hand-machine in a house, worked by the owner; but in other cases there are two or three machines in one house, one worked by the owner, and the others let by him to other parties. Some of the hand-machines are worked by treddles by the man himself; while others are worked by a wheel, turned by a boy. Before the workman can begin his labours, the numerous cotton-threads have to be adjusted to the machine and to the bobbins placed in it; and this is done by 'winders' and 'threaders,' who are always young people, and who work a large number of hours for very small remuneration.

The processes in the manufacture are numerous: such as making, gassing, bleaching, mending, embroidering, drawing, pearling, hemming, dressing, and finishing. Some of these are machine processes, and others mere work for the fingers. The 'making' is the actual formation of the net: it is a process which, even in a technical work, almost baffles description. Some of the machines will make net five yards in width; and they have as many as three or four thousand delicate little pieces of apparatus, called bobbins and carriages. Some of the machines are fitted to make plain net only; while others impress upon their net a definite pattern with thicker threads, while in the very process of formation. When the net leaves the machines, the threads are covered with little hairy filaments, which it is desirable to remove; and this is done by 'gassing,' in which the net is passed, in an extraordinary way, over a series of gas flames, so as to singe off the filaments, without injuring the net. It will serve to show the extent of the manufacture at Nottingham, that many firms devote their labours wholly to this process. Then, again, a wholly distinct process is the 'bleaching,' by which the brownish colour of the net is exchanged for a snowy whiteness: this is effected at bleach-works, of which there are some on rather an extensive scale in the outskirts of Nottingham; and the process is pretty much the same as that followed in the great bleach-works of Lancashire.

The reader will know only half the secrets of the Nottingham lace-trade, if we stop at this point. A piece of plain net, or a piece of net in which a pattern is worked by the same machine which makes the net itself, passes through but few hands after it is gassed and bleached. A very large quantity of Nottingham lace, however, has the pattern wholly or partly put in by hand, by females working with needles or other small implements; and to see this process, we have to follow the workers to their own humble abodes. Thus we come to the fourth stage in a sort of quadripartite arrangement of Nottingham industry. The husbands, fathers, and brothers are in two great groups-the one working in the stocking-frames, and the other in the net-machines the wives, daughters, and sisters are in two other groups-the one 'seaming' and finishing the hosiery, and the other embroidering' or otherwise

finishing the net. The men do not earn any too much : the women earn far too little. The men have much hard work to do: the women have work to do whose hardness consists in its wearisome and long-continued monotony. The boys follow closely at the heels of the men: the girls at the heels of the women; and adult wages have thus a constant tendency to settle down to the level of children's wages. The men work partly in factories, but mostly in small houses; the women work almost wholly in their own poor dwellings. A sort of 'middleman' system is observable in the lace-trade as well as in the hosiery trade. There are in this occupation persons called 'mistresses,' who have in their employ from six to twenty young women and girls; and these are employed in drawing,' 'mending,' 'running,' 'pearling,' or 'joining' lace. The points of distinction between these several processes we need not stop to inquire; suffice it to say, that they all refer to hand-finishing of machine-made lace. The mistresses go to the lace-warehouses, and receive a certain quantity of lace or net, which is to receive a certain amount of hand-work upon it before it will be ready for the market. A price is agreed on, and the mistress distributes the work among the women and girls assembled at her house. They are of various ages (none so young, perhaps, as before the passing of the Factory Acts), and they work long hours. When we are told that the lace-runners, in bad times, often work sixteen hours a day for a mere sixpence, we can scarcely realize the fact it seems hardly conceivable. Were it not that recent investigations have shown how wretchedly needlework is too often paid for in the metropolis, the state of the Nottingham lace-workers would scarcely be believed: but it is a stern truth, which must be believed, whether it can be remedied or not. It is also a truth, however, (and herein lies the pith of the whole matter) that these employments upon lace are easy to learn; so that a child of six or seven years of age can commence upon that which, after a short time, will enable her to compete with her own mother. In lace-running' (which seems to be another term for embroidery), the lace is stretched across a frame, and the work woman works a pattern upon the lace with a needle and thread; in 'tambouring,' the pattern is wrought with a small hook instead of with a needle; in 'lace-mending,' every defective mesh, whether so produced in the machine, or by subsequent accident, is mended by needle and thread; in lace-pearling,' a lace-edging is sown on to finished articles of net; in 'lace-drawing,' a thread is drawn out which connects the individual breadths in one broad piece of net for the machine, so as to separate the net into the breadths required for use or sale: and as all these employments are attended with slightly varying degrees of difficulty: the tenderest age, the weakest health, the dullest intelligence, has something whereon to exercise itself; so that this lacetrade is always more than adequately supplied with young females, ready to do whatever may have to be done. The result speaks for itself.

DERBY AND ITS ARBORETUM.

Let us now imagine that the railway rattles us along to Derby-a journey of some thirty or forty minutes. In bygone days it was a coach-ride of about fifteen miles, through Lenton, Bramcote, Stapleford, and Risley; but now the railway takes a south-western direction from Nottingham to Long-Eaton, where four lines of railway meet, one of which takes us to Derby. Derby is the meeting-point of those three railways -the North Midland, the Midland Counties, and the Birmingham and Derby-which, by amalgamation, form the huge and wide-spreading Midland Railway. The station is a large one, and (as matters stand at the present day) is the first object to which a tourist's attention is necessarily drawn. Were it not for the enormous extension recently made at the Euston Station, the Derby Station might well nigh claim to be ranked as the largest in the kingdom. The length of buildings and covered platform considerably exceeds a thousand feet; while the engine-establishment, the carriage and store-departments, the booking-offices and refreshmentrooms, are all on a scale of great magnitude.

It is not quite correct, however, to claim the first | attention of the railway-traveller to the station, for the steeples of Derby appeal to his eye long before he reaches the town. The approach from Nottingham is a pleasant one. The pretty river Derwent flows through a portion of the town from north-west to south-east, on its way from the Derbyshire hills, above Matlock, to its termination in the Trent; and this river separates the railway from the main portion of the town, the churches of which stand out in bold relief as seen from the east. There is another and smaller stream which enters the Derwent at Derby. There are several bridges over this stream, the Markeaton Brook; and there is a larger and finer stone bridge over the Derwent itself.

Derby is much more simple in its construction than Nottingham or Leicester. It consists mainly of one high street, running through the whole town from north to south; all the others being much subordinate to it. In this high street, or rather in an open area contiguous to it, on the east, is the market-place, containing a covered market and a spacious assembly-room. The town-hall and the county-hall, the grammar-school and the other schools, the hospitals and almshouses, the infirmary, the union-house, the lunatic asylum, the gaols-all bespeak the same kind of arrangements, and present the same general features as similar buildings

The churches, however, are somewhat remarkable. The chief architectural ornament of Derby is All Saints' Church (Cut, No. 7), in the High Street. Prior to the dissolution of the monasteries, it was a collegiate church. The tower is now the chief ornament, as it is a particularly rich specimen of the latest period of the perpendicular style; it consists of three stages, the lowest of which has a western doorway, and a niche on the east side; while the others have ornamented windows, and the whole is crowned with battlements and crocketted pinnacles. The tower has been lately. restored; it contains a peal of ten bells, and there is a tradition in Derby, said to be borne out by the vestiges of an inscription, that it was erected at the expense of "young men and young maids." It is, however, only the steeple which thus claims notice as a monument of middle-age architecture; the body of the church is a Roman Doric edifice by Gibbs, built in 1725; but the interior is very light and elegant; there are rich monuments to the memory of one of the Earls of Devonshire, and the celebrated Countess of Shrewsbury; and there is a beautiful screen of open iron-work which is said to have cost £500. This church was formerly (and is still popularly) called Allhallows; at the time when it was collegiate, it had a master and seven prebendaries, and there is a house adjoining the church called the college, which was probably the residence of the collegians. St. Werburgh's Church is an old structure, situated near the Markeaton brook; it consists of a nave, chancel, and aisles in the Tuscan style, with a Gothic tower. St. Peter's is an ancient Gothic church, with a nave, chancel, aisles, and square embattled and pinnacled tower. St. Michael's is also an old Gothic structure, with similar general features to those of St. Peter's. St. Alkmund's Church was rebuilt in 1846; it is a fine structure, in the decorated style, with a beautiful spire rising to a height of 200 feet. St. John's Church, Trinity Church, and Christ Church, are modern structures. The Roman Catholic Church of St. Marie, erected about ten years ago, is one of the largest and finest places of worship in Derby. Besides the above, there are several Episcopal and Dissenting Chapels; and in the Nottingham-road there has recently been erected a Convent for the Sisters of Charity, with schools attached. St. Alkmund's, St. Marie's, and the remains of St. Mary's Chapel, appear in Cut, No. 8.

Derby, though not such a scene of intense and continued work as Nottingham, is yet a busy town, and its branches of employment are more numerous and more varied. The Trent is too far from Nottingham to be immediately available as a source of water-power for machinery; but the Derwent runs so conveniently through Derby, that it is an object of much commercial value to the townsmen, though not well fitted for navigation. The relation which Derby bears to the silk trade will merit a little attention presently, in which we shall see how much the Derwent had to do with the working of the first silk-mill erected in England.