Music is cultivated in Manchester with a zest quite proportionate to its value. The original "Gentlemen's Concert Club" was founded as far back as the year of alarm 1745. The local love of glees and madrigals preserves the best traditions of the Saxon "glee-men." On 10th March 1881 the veteran Charles Hallé, who quite recently had been earning new and glorious laurels at Prague, Vienna, and Pesth, led the _five hundredth_ of his great concerts in the Free-trade Hall. "Our town," remarked the _Guardian_ in its next day's report of the proceedings, "is at present the city of music _par excellence_ in England.... The outside world knows three things of Manchester--that it is a city of cotton, a city of economic ideas, and a city of music. Since then the old character has been more than well sustained. Cobden was perhaps the first who made all the world see that Manchester had a turn for the things of the mind as well as for the production of calico and the amassing of money. Similarly, Mr. Hallé has made it evident to all the world that there is in Manchester a public which can appreciate the best music conveyed in the best way." It is but fair to the sister city to add that the first musical festival in the north of England was held in Liverpool in 1784, and that the erection of St. George's Hall had its germ in the local musical tastes and desire for their full expression. A good deal might be said in regard to the religious and ecclesiastical history of Manchester, a curious fact in connection with which is, that between 1798 and 1820, though the population had augmented by 80,000, nothing was done on their behalf by the Episcopate. The Wesleyan body dates from 7th May 1747, when its founder preached at Salford Cross--a little apartment in a house on the banks of the Irwell, where there were hand-looms, being insufficient to accommodate the congregation assembled to hear him. The literary history of Manchester is also well worthy of extended treatment; and, above all, that of the local thought and private spirit, the underlying current which has rendered the last sixty or seventy years a period of steady and exemplary advance. To some it may seem a mere coincidence, a part only of the general progress of the country; but advance, whether local or national, implies impetus received; and assuredly far more than simple coincidence is involved in the great reality that the growth of the town in all goodly respects, subsequently to the uprise of the cotton trade, has been exactly contemporaneous with the life and influence of the newspaper just quoted--the _Manchester Guardian_--the first number of which was published 5th May 1821. V MISCELLANEOUS INDUSTRIAL OCCUPATIONS