Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1868-07-29
Elihu Burritt OH the "Black County

Elihu Burritt has just published in
England new book, called " Walks in
the Black Country and its Green Border
Land" An extract from the Introductory
pages will afford a favorable specimen OF
Mr. Burritt's picturesque style:
The Black Country, black by day and
red by night, cannot be matched for vast
and varied production by any other space
of equal radius on the surface of the globe
1t is a section of Titanic industry, kept in
murky perspiration by a sturdy set of
Tubal Gains and Vulcans, week in, week
out, and often seven days to the week. In
deed, the Sunday evening halo it wears
when the church bells are ringing to SER
vice on winter nights, glows "redder than
the moon," or like the moon dissolved at
its full on the clouds above the roaring
| furnaces 1t is a little dual world of it.
self, only to be gauged perpendicularly.
The better half, it may be, faces the sun !;
but the richer half, averted thence. looks by
gaslight towards the central fires If that
subterranean half could be for an hour in
verted to the sun if its inky vaults and
tortuous pathways, and all its black-roof-
ed chambers could be but once laid open
to the light of day, the spectacle would be
worlds wonder, especially if it were un
covered when all thousands of the subter-
ranean roadmakers, or the begrImmed
armies of pickmen, were bending to their
work. What neighing of the pit horses
would come up out of these deep coal
craters at the sight and sense of the sun
light. What black and dripping forests
of timber would be disclosed, brought from
all the wild, wooded lands of Norway.
Sweden and Canada, to prop up the rough
vaults and sustain the excavated acres
undermined by the pick -
"The Black Country is beau
tifully framed by green borderland; and
that border is rich and redolent with two
beautiful wealths-the sweet life of ma
lures happiest springs and summers, and
the hive and romance of England's happi-
est industries. Plant, in imagination, one
foot of your compass at the Town Hall in
Birmingham, and with the other sweep a
circle of twenty miles radius, and you will
have The Black Country" with all its
industries, in green velvet binding
inwrought or tapestried with historical
scenes and early Fairgrounds of brilliant
imagination and poetical fiction. Just
pass the gauging-rod of mechanical enter
prise through the volume from Coventry to
Kidderminster, and see what specimens of
handicraft it will bring out and and show,
like a string of beads of infinite variety
of tinting and texture. See what wares
intervene between the two opposite extrem-
ities-between the ribbons of Coventry and
the carpets of Kidderminster; or between
the salt bars of Droitwich and the iron
bars of Wolverhampton. Then let the
history miner run his rod through and see
what gems he will bring out between Lich-
field Cathedral and Baxter's Church at
Kidderminster, or between Strattord-on-
Avon and kenilworth or Warwick Castle
Let him notice what manner of men have
l---@1 Vvith'n this circuit, ana what manner
of mark their lives and thoughts made up
on it and upon the wide circumference of
the world Then let him travel from rim
to rim of the district and study its physical
conformation and its natural sceneries, and
he will recognize their symmetry with the
histories and industries with which it
teens