men to the last rope and plank of a wrecked ship. These changes must come, but thousands must suffer in the transition. It is probable that all the nails now made by hand in this district will be manufactured by machinery twenty-five years hence. Temporary distress and poverty must attend the change, but it will work well for another generation.
The church of Halesowen is truly a venerable old structure, with five or six centuries chronicled in its outer walls. It is a kind of arch-deaconal cathedral over which Archdeacon Hone presides. The great burial-yard which surrounds it holds an unwritten census of the dead outnumbering the living population of the town. In its low forest of monuments we found a plain slab bearing this simple inscription:
"WIL. S. SHENSTONE,
OB. II FEBRUARY, 1763,
ÆT. 49."
Under this humble stone sleeps the dust of one of England's most favourite and favoured poets. In the church, close to the pulpit, a more elaborate and ornate monument is created to his memory, bearing a poetical tribute to his worth, in which the various qualities of his genius and character are given in rather happy verse for monumental literature. It is rather remarkable that wit in his
