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Rh noise, dust, bustle, and sight; and far from the public roads, invites the worshippers of the village to its quiet sanctuary. They come at the cheering voice of its sabbath bells, which ripples outward across the green valleys to homesteads half hidden and half revealed. And the congregation comes across the broad fields by footpaths that converge from every direction into the solemn aisles of the churchyard trees. The main avenue is nearly a third of a mile in length, with a lofty roofage half the way. 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 skirt of Birmingham is very ample and variegated. Though the half that it turns to the fire of The Black Country is badly scorched, crimped, and ragged, the other half is a flowing robe embroidered with emerald and gold. Moseley, Edgbaston, and Harborne are embraced in the latter, and are as goodly suburbs as any town in England can show. Hills, dales, gentle slopes, valleys, and streams, make a picturesque scenery. The residences of many of the prosperous business men of the borough are interspersed in this