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404 several other schools founded about the same time, and enlarged by the increased value of the property funded for their support and by additional donations. Truly Coventry may well have been called a city of convents, hospitals, monasteries, and other religious houses. On enlarging the Blue Coat School building the foundations of the ancient cathedral were brought to light.

In addition to all these benevolent foundations for education, another for the material comfort and well-being of the common people is a most valuable perquisite to them. It consists of 1,300 acres, lying around the city, of common land on which any poor man may pasture his cow without charge. For several hundred years this free pasturage has been held inviolate; but it is doubtful if the inheritance will be kept green for them many years longer; as the town cannot expand much further without overlapping upon this great common. If it is thus alienated from them by this necessity, it is to be hoped that its value will accrue to them in some other form equally useful.

I visited Coventry twice during the Exhibition of the Arts and Industries of the city in 1867, and saw all their silk-weaving machinery in busy occupation in a large hall, well ornamented with other productions of ingenious handicraft. It was a unique and interesting sight; for these machines