Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/20

6 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 a green velvet binding inwrought or tapestried with historical scenes and early playgrounds of brilliant imagination and poetical fiction. Just pass the gauging-rod of mechanical enterprise through the volume from Coventry to Kidderminster, and see what specimens of handicraft it will bring out and show, like a string of beads of infinite variety of tinting and texture. See what wares intervene between the two opposite extremities—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 Lichfield Cathedral and Baxter's Church at Kidderminster, or between Stratford-on-Avon and Kenilworth or Warwick Castle. Let him notice what manner of men have lived within this circuit, and what manner of mark their lives and thoughts made upon 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 teems. Walking and looking in these different directions,