Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/201

 and appearance; urns, tureens, salvers, candlesticks, stands, and the thousand other ornaments of the dining and tea-tables, and side-board. The articles themselves are of copper, which being received by the workmen in oblong ingots, a mass of silver exactly fitting it is placed upon each ingot, soldered together with borax and certain other materials, and then passed between two cylindrical rollers of immense power, which reduce the mass to the necessary thickness. The plate is then fit for working, and receives the desired form by the action of a prodigious weight of lead driven down upon it by a machine, which impresses it into a mould beneath of the pattern required. One or more strokes are used, according to the nature of the pattern, whether shallow or deep. If the article be of a complicated form, the different parts are made distinct, and afterwards soldered together. They are then trimmed up, and finely burnished by women, with little instruments headed with flint and horn. The earnings even of this branch are about fifteen shillings per week, if the ladies be industrious; but those^of the other branches much higher. The foreign trade is to the East-Indies, America, Levant, Germany, and France.

Crossing the Don, we quitted Sheffield, and rode for six miles through a country which conveyed a