expanded to a large business, but several other manufactures have been recently introduced, such as cotton frilling, bead-goods, and various kinds of trimming. We have already noticed some specimens of ornamental iron-work in Lichfield Cathedral produced here. Thus Coventry is in a fair way to provide itself with all those diversified strings of industry which are so necessary to the steady well-being and progress of a manufacturing town.
But Coventry seen from the railway presents as conspicuous individuality in its physical aspect, as it does from the high road of history as a municipal community. When I first caught a glimpse of it, at a few miles distance, a sudden simile came to my thoughts which did it great injustice, and gave my mind some compunction for admitting it for a moment. Lo, suggested the fancy, a fallen town still trying to cling to heaven with its three fingers! Would it not be fairer to say, responded a better thought, a Christian town trying to climb to heaven by its three fingers? Indeed, no city in England that the eye can cover, as sharpshooters say, at a glance, shows to the traveller three such church spires as tower up over Coventry. And these spires play off remarkable evolutions before his eyes as he approaches or leaves the town on the railway. At a certain distance one advances to the front and forms the
