Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/138

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Walks in the Black Country

the production of these various and splendid articles, but comprising a kind of normal school for the training of teachers in the arts embraced in the manufacture.

In ascending to the show-room, one passes between two files of bronze statues drawn up on either side, which represent the perfection of bronze work, which makes an important department of the productions exhibited. Here stand crusading knights in their armour, statesmen, and many of the great masters of their day and generation. The most liberal and generous rule is adopted in making this show-room and the whole establishment accessible to all who wish to visit it. Such persons are conducted through the gorgeous hall and shown all they wish to see with an affable attention and courtesy which all will remember who have shared them. This policy pays well in sales as well as in the satisfaction it gives to all parties. On counting the names entered in the visiters' book, about one-fourth of the whole will be found to be American. Many persons on that side of the Atlantic, who may read these pages, will bear testimony to these characteristics of the establishment.

Another speciality of Birmingham manufactures is the Iron Bedstead. The invention of this article is attributed to Dr. Church, and was one of several he elaborated, like hundreds of other inventors, to his own impoverishment and to the enriching of