The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-06 00:00:00

A PICTURE OF THE BLACK COUNTRY.

Mr. Elihu Burritt, United States Consul at Birmingham,
England, has described the appearance of South Stafford-
shire and East Worcestershire—commonly called the Black
Country —as seen from the ruins of Dudley Castle at night.
He says—" The theme would well befit the laureate of
England at the best moments of his inspiration. In
figures beyond my prosaic conception, ho would describe
a scene which cannot be paralleled on the globe. For an
unpootical man like myself, it is difficult to get hold of
similes which would enable the reader to picture the
scene in his mind. A writer of a military turn of fancy
might say that it was the sublimest battle scene ever en-
acted on earth ; that ten thousand Titans were essaying
to breach heaven with a thousand mortars, each charged
with a small red-hot bill. It might look like that, not only
t 9 General Grant or Sherman, but oven to men who never
wore a sword. There was an amphitheatre of twenty
miles span, ridged to the purple clouds. Planted
at artillery intervals on this encircling, ridge and
at musket shot spaces in the da"k valley be-
tween , a thousand batteries, mounted with large
ordnance, white at the mouth with the fury of their bom-
bardment, were pouring their cross fires of shot and shell
into the cloud works of the lower heavens. Wolverhamp-
ton, on the extreme left, stood by her black mortars, which
shot their red volleys into the night. Coseley, and Bil-
ston, and Wednesbury replied bomb for bomb, and set the
clouds on fire above with their lighted matches. Dudley,
Oldbury, Albion, and Smethwick, on the right, plied their

heavy breachers at the iron-works on the other side of the
valley; whilst West Bromwich and distant Walsall showed
that their men were standing as bravely to their guns, and
that their guns were charged t:3 the muzzle with the grape
and canister of the mine. The canals twisting and cross-
ing through the field of battle showed by patches in ihe
light like bleeding veins. There were no clouds except
of smoke over the scene ; but there were large strips of
darkness floating with crimson fringes into the red sea
on which the white moon rode like the or:nined angel of
..peace.

"For all that glowing empire was peace. Peace has
her battle-fields as well as war, and this was her Water-
loo. Hero she had mustered fifty regiments of her swart
veterans, armed with all the weapons of her exhaustless
arsenal—with Minie picks and Schneider hammers, and
file-edged swords that cut at their sides. Those great
mouthed mortars, belching forth globes of fire, were her
huge muzzle-loaders. And all this was the thick of one
of her great battles by night —only one of the three
hundred a year she fights in that dark valley with the
elements. What are all the mines and countermines of
war compared with the hundreds her sappers had dug fifty
fathoms below the visible surface of this battle scene
Where or when did war ever dig such deep trenches,
or fill them with such battalions, or bring its land
and sea forcesi into action with such united and concen-
trated power? There were 10,000 pickmon sending up
from holes 500 feet deep cartridges for loading the cupola
cannon that were reddening the night with their blaze.
Here were the deck or surface brigades standing to their
batteries, and making each look like the old picture of
Gibraltar. There were the Brade Works at the right
centre of the line, discharging a thousand spades, hoes,
trowels, and pruning-hooks an hour. Further down,
towards Birmingham, there was a well-mounted battery,
that poured forth a shower of bolts and nuts ; and Chance's
great fortress was all ablaze, with its hot fountains sand-
ing out acres of glass, to be parceled into panes of every
size. To the right of us. to the left and front of us, the
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for Brazil and harpoons for Behring's Straits, and, for all
the countries between, every tool used in honest labour."

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

HOUSE OF LORDS-LAST EVENING.
The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on the woolsack
at five o'clock.