There are not many merchants in Birmingham, in the large sense of the term. The chief mercantile business is done by parties termed factors, who in effect are, if not actually, the agents of great merchants. These "factors" purchase what they need for their wholesale customers from the manufacturers. About 2,000 of the Birmingham manufacturers are what are termed garret- masters; they work themselves, and employ a few hands. The "factor" buys as few as half-a-dozen tea-pots, or a hundred gross of pearl buttons, from these little men, until he makes up his number. His business partakes more of the character of retail than wholesale, and the grinding--technically slaughtering--system of the factors of Birmingham has an unfavourable Yankeefying effect on their character. The principal mercantile houses are in direct communication with American houses, if not actual partners or agents. A panic in New York finds an immediate echo in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, just as a fall or rise of cotton in New Orleans is immediately felt in Lancashire. It is worth observing, that in some instances great transactions are carried on with wonderfully little show in Birmingham, and no state. We could not give a better instance of the difficulty of "judging by appearances" than in the following sketch from nature. There is a broad street of tall mean houses, which, except at the workmen's dinner hour, seems always empty. In this street is a large house of a dirty, faded appearance; the cobwebbed windows blocked up; the door with a broken knocker and a sad want of paint. It is evidently the ci-devant residence of a Birmingham manufacturer of the old school, before the suburbs of Edgbaston and Handsworth sprang up, now turned into a warehouse or receptacle for lumber. As to apply to the front door would be useless, you turn up a dark passage at the side, and reach another dingy door, which gives way with a rattle at your touch, and closes with a rattle and a bang; passing through you ascend a flight of creaking deal stairs, and reach a suite of low rooms, about as imposing in appearance as a deserted printing-office. A few juvenile clerks--the very converse of the snug merchants' clerks of the City of London--are distributed about. A stranger would not give 50 pounds for the furniture, capital, and credit, of the whole concern. And yet, in this strange place, is conducted a trade of many tens of thousands per annum, with branches in all the principal towns of Germany, Spain, Portugal, South America, and British India! A rapid idea of the Birmingham hardware trade may be obtained from the extensive show-rooms of Messrs. Herbert, in the Bull-ring. If we have failed to do justice to any branch of manufacture, we have a very sufficient excuse in the difficulty we experienced in obtaining access to manufactories, or even information as to what was worth examination. HEALTH AND EDUCATION.