Elihu Burritt

“ Then, standing on a gently-rounded eminence, commanding all this lovely scenery, is the great hall with its turrets, terraces, stables, and outbuildings. It has been turned into a museum; so that, when tired of walks or sports in the park, young and old may season their recreations with a little useful knowledge. In a word, no other town in the kingdom has such a baronial estate for the free use of its people. ”

“ For it is not only a public building, but a public institution in itself. It is a great educational agency for the enlightenment of the masses. It has played a great part in forming the public spirit and character of Birmingham. Here the population have met, almost en masse, from year to year, and been moved and moulded by eloquent orators who seemed to draw new power from the platform on which they stood. Indeed, if any man has any eloquence in his soul, the scene presented on some of these occasions must draw it forth. ”

“ Once in three years this vast harp of 4,000 strings plays for the benefit of the General Hospital, blending its grand melodies with the best human voices that can be found in the United Kingdom. This Musical Festival or banquet lasts four days, and the great hall is filled with as highly a cultivated and elegant audience as the town and surrounding country can produce. A large number of the nobility and gentry are present from all the midland counties; and all being in full dress, an assembly may be witnessed presenting a remarkable contrast with one of the political meetings we have noticed. ”

“ On some of these occasions seven or eight thousand men are massed before and around the speaker; and when he puts them under the mesmeric spell of his eloquence in some powerful passage or peroration, the sight is worth a long journey to witness; and he who witnesses it with attentive faculties must see what a power in itself is such a hall for shaping the mind of a town on the great questions of the day. ”

“ The Birmingham men were the last in the kingdom to content themselves with such a source of mental refreshment, even if one had been opened to them as large and luxurious as the Astor Library in New York. They did what no community in America has yet done; and in the doing of it they have taken a step in advance of anything we have accomplished in this department of popular education. We have taxed every man, whether he has children or not, to open and support free schools; but we have never gone so far as to levy a rate upon the population of a town to establish a Free Library. ”

“ The lofty circular hall represents the sphere of knowledge it embraces. The Philosopher, the Historian, Theologian, Lawyer, Inventor, and Scientific Mechanic may each find here an almost boundless mine from which he may draw, as cheaply as water, the most valuable deposits of thought, observation, and fact. ”

“ It is a matter of common occurrence to hear of the opening of a chapel and school room, as if they were part and parcel of the same denominational establishment. Although an earnest educationalist may feel as St. Paul did with regard to the preaching of the gospel, and say he cares not for any amount of contention in the education of children so they be instructed, still this contention or competition may oppose a serious difficulty to what we in America called a Common School System, and which a vast number of enlightened men in England wish to see established in the United Kingdom. ”

“ The public distribution of the prizes is an occasion of great interest. I have been present at the two last anniversaries, and have witnessed the proceedings with lively satisfaction. The cheering of the boys that fills the hall as the successful competitors ascend to the platform and receive the prize books from the hands of the head master, surrounded by the whole corps of teachers and examiners, and the audible or visible sympathy of the elder portion of the audience, are enough to animate a casual spectator with the spirit of the scene. ”

“ The church has no gorgeous east window of coloured glass pictured over with olden saints in fantastic robes of mediæval conception; but Nature, from some tall over-shadowing trees, has hung a curtain of leaves just outside the plain, untinted panes, and thus substituted her cheap and pleasant artistry for the more costly and lifeless pictures done by the painter in oil. ”

“ The Free Grammar School, on New Street, is a large and well-proportioned Gothic building, with less space sacrificed to acute angles than is generally the case with that order of architecture. It is an edifice that will correspond with the most elegant improvements that the enterprising and ambitious town may make for half a century to come, and looks well beside the largest and most ornate structure lately erected—the Birmingham Exchange. ”

“ In a word, it is doubtful if any town of equal population in Great Britain or America has opened a larger or cheaper provision of books for its population, and no English town can show a larger muster-roll of readers per thousand of its inhabitants. Thus a large and broad basis has been laid on which to erect the structure of public opinion in Birmingham, and to increase its force and effect upon the country and its government. ”

“ It runs up and down the horizon like summer lightning, crimsoning the edges of the clouds, and the patches of sky between. This light is the halo around the brow of swart and patient Labour—that knows no rest while wealth is dreaming in its sleep. ”

“ It is to the instruction of the people in scientific and artistic industries what the Town Hall is to the culture and development of public sentiment and opinion. Here artisans, miners, and men of every mechanical business are taught the science and economy of their occupations, not as a theory merely, but as applied practically and technically to their trades and professions. ”

“ Few towns of equal population equal Birmingham in ample and varied provision for the sick, poor, and afflicted. The charitable institutions represent every form of sympathy with suffering; and are too numerous to notice singly or in detail. Two, however, deserve a fuller description than these pages will allow. The General Hospital is truly a noble institution, and ranks among the first in the country for its capacity and liberality of accommodation. But there is a unique feature distinguishing it from other establishments of the same character. ”

“ Birmingham, like many large and growing towns both in England and America, had filled a great area with long and intersecting streets of houses, shops, and factories, before it thought of leaving a goodly breathing and recreating space for the people. ”

“ Although the sky is slightly dashed with smoke in the best days. The Black Country reveals itself only at night, and then in its own aurora borealis. As the sun descends in the west it hangs the horizon with curtains of its own crimsoning. ”

“ Curzon Hall, another building of large and good dimensions, was erected and opened in 1866, and may be called, in close resemblance to a celebrated Venetian edifice, the Dogs' Palace. Although a circus occasionally performs within its walls, it is really devoted to the greatest provincial parliament of dogs in Great Britain. Hundreds of every lineage, use, name, size, stripe, and language, arc here assembled about Christmas time, and discuss questions of canine and social economy with a gravity and earnestness which few human conventions frequently imitate. ”

“ Here a poor but earnest learner may explore a volume which cost more than a small farm in Illinois, and transfer the whole harvest of its wisdom into his own stock of knowledge. Here an inventive mind may run through the whole forest of Patents, Improvements, and Mechanical Suggestions which a century of the world's best genius has produced. As an illustration of the richness of this special department, so valuable to this great mechanical community, the fact may suffice, that it contains 2,030 Specifications of Patents. The whole number of volumes in the Reference Library is 18,225. ”

“ The present income is about £12,000, and at the end of the century it must amount to £50,000 per annum from the leases that will drop in by that time. It has been creditable to the people of Birmingham, and a proof of their public spirit, that they have watched with jealous vigilance over this institution, and have stoutly resisted every insidious effort or tendency to make it "a close borough," or a fat living for a few luxurious and idle selfs, as many great and noble charities have been perverted. ”

“ Indeed, excepting a few brick-and-timber buildings of the Elizabethan period, or houses that show their bones flush with their flesh, the town looks almost as American as Chicago. It has only one building that may be called a speciality in the way of architecture—that is the Town Hall. ”

“ The number of churches and chapels that have opened day schools as an integral part of their establishments, seems to be increasing to an extent which may interpose an obstacle to a national system. In many cases, the school house is a part or continuation of the church or chapel building, and frequently numbers several hundred children. ”

“ The education provided at the Grammar School is of high order, embracing classics, mathematics, and other branches of college studies, together with that practical and varied instruction necessary for commercial life. ”

“ It has founded a home School of Design and produced home artists who are already competing with those brought from France and Italy in drawing and modelling patterns of exquisite taste for gold and silver ware, papier-machè, furniture, and other elegant manufactures. Any young man may here fit himself to fill the first position in his trade that science, taste, and skill can make, and this, too, at cheap and easy terms as to time and money. ”

“ A company was formed to buy up this estate, which failing to effect the purchase, the corporation, assisted by private subscriptions of £7,000, came to the aid of the enterprise, and secured the valuable property for the use of the people. The park contains forty-two acres, affording sufficient space for recreation, while it is so situated as to appear only the central point of view to a park of a dozen miles in extent, picturesquely wooded and dashed with gleams of water pleasantly interspersed with the green and gold of the variegated landscape. ”

“ No expense is spared in securing the services of first-rate masters, two of whom have become bishops. The number of pupils in all departments is about 600, taught by upwards of twenty masters, who are generously paid for their services. Indeed, the head master receives a salary equal to that of the Secretary of State at Washington; and the aggregate received all the masters of the institution is about £6,000 per annum; being equal to £10 per head of the pupils for tuition.
There is a feature of this admirable institution which an American must admire ”

“ This is a noble and generous stimulus and help for a young man who has the mind but not the means to acquire a university education and the status and capacity it confers. Thus £500 per annum are paid out of the income of the institution for these ten scholarships. Then in addition to all this encouragement and aid which it extends to the pupils, there are several annual prizes founded by friends of the school. ”

“ Bingley Hall is another building of great capacity and utility, especially for annual exhibitions of cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, and poultry, which have attained a first-class rank for the quality and number of agricultural implements and productions, as well as of animals presented. ”

“ In the same department is the News Room, in which is spread out to all who would read nearly all the leading journals and periodicals of the kingdom. As it was intended, the working men of the town constitute perhaps the largest number of callers. An interesting fact will show how eagerly they use and enjoy the privilege. They are allowed an hour for dinner, and a large number employed within an accessible distance from the Library spend in it half the time allotted to the meal ”

“ In the first place, there are ten scholarships awarded every year to pupils that have reached a certain standard of excelling, and who receive each £50 per annum for four years, or for the whole period of his college course should he go to Oxford or Cambridge. ”

“ Others have founded smaller prizes to stimulate and reward study in different departments of useful learning.
The annual examinations are always conducted by eminent scholars from the universities, and give additional value to the awards. ”

“ Robed thus by nature in the best vestment she could weave for a sanctuary, it seems to have a more sacred consecration to the worship of God than an archbishop could give to it. One might well feel that Nature joined in the prayers and psalms and spiritual songs within ”