Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/177

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
and its Green Border-Land.
163

most skilful artisans and eminent manufacturers contributed their best specimens to this exposition. The Earl was a distinguished exhibitor in both of his capacities—as one of the largest iron manufacturers in the district and also as one of the wealthiest noblemen of the realm, in possession of the choicest and rarest works of art. He sent from his London and country mansions paintings of the old masters almost beyond a valuation in money. It was generous and confiding in him to hang up these delicate and precious treasures to the view of all the bank-men, pit-men, furnacemen, and forgemen, and nail-makers of the district, believing that not the roughest of them all would lift a soiling finger against the face of a Vandyke, Holbein, or Correggio. These acts and dispositions have very favourably impressed the people of the town and vicinity, while the whole nation was pleasantly affected by his munificent hospitality to the Viceroy of Egypt, when that prince visited London at a time when there was no royal palace vacant or in trim to give him suitable lodging and entertainment.

I have thus given several pages to a notice of the present Lord Dudley and his family, chiefly because he may be considered the Iron Earl of England, and because he manufactures the iron of the best edge-tools in the United States. I have thought that many who use and some who