the management of. By this time Mr. Garbett and Lord Shelburne, who walked, arrived; he bought some new books printed by Mr. Baskerville, and I some Japan, and it being now dark we returned home.
May 17th.—As soon as breakfast was over we went to see the making of buckles, papier mâché boxes, and the melting, painting, and stamping of glass. By twelve o'clock we returned to Mr. Garbett's, took some chocolate, and, thanking him for our entertainment at Birmingham, got into our coach to return home, the young Mr. Garbett being of the party till we got through the town. Then we parted, giving him an invitation to Bowood Park, and dined at Shipston; at night we lay at Chappel-on-the-Heath.
May 19th.—After breakfast Lady Louisa went to attend Princess Amelia, and we sent, without success, to Eton to desire leave for Master Parker to come to us. We dined alone, and in the evening Lord Shelburne was so good to write for me the following account of the place we had been so much amused at:
"Birmingham originally had no manufacture except a small one of linen thread, which continues there to this day, though now to the amount of ten or twelve thousand pounds. It is not fifty years since the hardware began to make a figure, from thence begun by people not worth above three or four hundred pounds a-piece, some of which are now worth three or four hundred thousand, particularly a Mr. Taylor, the most established manufacturer and trader; some, however, are beginning to rival him in the extent of his trade. Its great rise was owing to two things, first the discovery of mixed metal so mollient or ductile as easily to suffer stamping, the consequence of which is they do buttons, buckles, toys, and everything in the hardware way by stamping machines which were before obliged to be performed by human labour. Another thing quickly followed, instead of employing the same hand to finish a button or any other thing, they subdivide it into as many different hands as possible, finding beyond doubt that the human faculties
