The Evening Service at the cathedral was far more gratifying than the morning’s experience had led me to anticipate. The evening sun streamed through the windows of the clere-story with inspiring effect, and the _Magnificat_ quite lifted me up to the devotional heights I had desired to attain, in such a place. Then came the anthem, suitable to Easter-week—“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” How amiable the beautiful and holy place in which such strains have been heard for ages! In passing through the streets, on my way home, I saw one of the popular sports of the Easter-holidays, peculiar to the midland counties, and a relic of the many frolics in use before the Reformation. Some buxom lasses were endeavoring to _lift_, or _heave_, a strapping youth, who, in no very gallant style, repelled the embraces and salutations of his female aggressors. I take it for granted, however, that he was not released until he had been handsomely lifted into the air, and made to purchase his freedom by a substantial fine. This is a custom confined, of course, to the vulgar—but even among them, according to my judgment, “more honored in the breach than in the observance.” CHAPTER III. _Birmingham—The Oratory—Newman._ Going up to London, I tarried for a few days at Birmingham, a town not pleasing to my fancy, and yet one which no tourist in England would choose to omit. I found it, indeed, as Leland described it three hundred years ago, “to be inhabited of many smithes, that use to make knives, and all manner of cutting tooles: and many lorimers, that make bittes, and a great many naylors; so that a great part of the town is maintayned by smithes who have their sea-coal out of Staffordshire.” To this, I cannot help adding, in the style of old Fuller, that “there be divers many also who do make buttons; and a great store of all things gilt, and showy, and not costlie nor precious withal, do come out of Brummagem; for which also the new bishoppes which Cardinal Wiseman did lately make therein, be commonly called the Brummagem hierarchie, that is to say, not so much Latin bishoppes as _Latten_ bishops; latten being much used in Brummagem, and is made of stone of calamine and copper, or chiefly of _brass_.” I confess that good part of my interest in Birmingham proper was to see what this new hierarchy were about. The Town-Hall has been often enough described and praised, and is, no doubt, very fine; but I did not go to England to see Grecian temples, and I took much more satisfaction in any old frame house of three centuries ago, than in the frigid and formal show of all its columns.