Gillott's Manufactory is a kind of central celebrity in Birmingham to visiters from America and other countries. Independent of the associations we have noticed, it is well worth a visit for its quiet order, neatness, comfort, and even elegance as a manufacturing establishment. The show-room is really a museum of the art, filled and embellished by an infinite variety of specimens of the utmost perfection. There are pens so large that they seem to be made for giants, or for common men to hold in both hands when writing, as one holds a hoe handle. Then there are others so minute, that it requires a magnifying glass to see the slit and point. Between the two extremes range gradations in size and varieties in form which may be counted by the hundreds. Shields, stars, flowers, and various pictures are exquisitely formed out of these varieties, in which nearly all the tints of the rainbow have their place and play. Then the process of manufacture at every stage is represented. First is the strip of plain sheet-steel as it comes from Sheffield. Then you have the pen when it has passed through the entire "freedom of the press." The first operation cuts out the form, another slits, another tubes it, and another passes it on to a fifth process. Thus at a glance your eye follows it through these processes, from the riddled sheet of steel to the tempering furnace, thence
