legitimate style for municipal offices. We cannot here discuss the point. Liverpool would have to be heard upon the other side. Better, in any case, to have a Gothic town hall than to see churches and chapels copy the temples devoted a couple of thousand years ago to the deities of pagan Greece and Rome. It is not pleasant on a Sunday forenoon to be reminded of Venus, Apollo, and Diana. The new Owens College buildings, Oxford Road, are early fourteenth century Gothic, and when complete will present one of the finest groups of the kind in England. The architect (Mr. Waterhouse), it has been well said, has here, as elsewhere, "not fettered himself with ancient traditions, but endeavoured to make his learning a basis rather than a limit of thought." A great treat awaits the stranger also in the Catholic "Church of the Holy Name," a few steps beyond the Owens College. For a passer-by to help noting the beautiful western front and the maze of lofty buttresses and pinnacles is impossible. Ornament has been expended with a lavish but not indiscriminate profusion, the general effect being one of perfect symmetry--a character possessed equally by the interior. The style is geometric Gothic of the thirteenth century, to the capacities of which, all will acknowledge, Mr. Hanson has done full justice. The very gracefully designed Tudor buildings at Old Trafford, well known as the Asylums for the Blind and the Deaf and Dumb, were erected in 1838. [Illustration: TOWN HALL, MANCHESTER] Manchester is much less of a manufacturing town at present, in proportion to its extent and the entire breadth of its business life, than when the cotton trade was young. Now, as described in the preceding chapter, the towns and villages outside are all devoted to spinning and weaving. While Liverpool is one great wharf, the middle of Manchester is one great warehouse--a reservoir for the production of the whole district. The trade falls under two principal heads--the Home and the Export. In either case, the produce of the looms, wherever situate, is bought just as it flows from them--rough, or, technically, "in the grey." It is then put into the hands of bleachers, dyers, or printers, according to requirement, and afterwards handed to auxiliaries called "makers-up." Very interesting is it to observe, in going through a great warehouse, not only how huge is the quantity waiting transfer, but how differently the various fabrics have to be folded and ornamented so as to meet the taste of the nations and foreign countries they are intended for. Some prefer the absolutely plain; others like little pictures; some want bright colours, and embellishment with gold and silver. The uniformity of the general business of Manchester allowed of agreement, in November 1843, to shut all doors upon Saturdays at one o'clock. The warehouse half-holiday movement soon became universal, and now, by four or five p.m. on Saturdays large portions of the middle of the town are as quiet as upon Sundays.