for the workmen. The workmen required food--tradesmen came and supplied that food--and Swindon rose as Chicago rose, as if by magic. From that day to this additions have been made, and other departments concentrated upon this one spot, till at the present time the factory covers a space equal to that of a moderate farm, and employs nearly four thousand workmen, to whom three hundred thousand pounds are yearly paid, whereby to purchase their daily bread. But at that early stage the difficulty was to find experienced workmen, and still greater to discover men who could superintend them. For these it was necessary to go up into the shrewd North, which had already foreseen the demand that must arise, and had partially educated her children in the new life that was about to dawn on the world; and so it is that to this time the names of those who are in authority over this army of workers carry with them in their sound a strong flavour of the heather and the brae, and seem more in accordance with ideas of 'following the wild deer' than of a dwelling in the midst of the clangour and smoke. All these new inhabitants of the hitherto deserted fields had to be lodged, and in endeavouring to solve this problem the company were induced to try an experiment which savoured not a little of communism, though not so intended. A building was erected which was locally called the 'barracks,' and it well deserved the name, for at one time as many as perhaps five hundred men found shelter in it. It was a vast place, with innumerable rooms and corridors. The experiment did not altogether answer, and was in time abandoned, when the company built whole streets, and even erected a covered market-place for their labourers. They went further, and bore the chief expense in building a church. A reading-room was started, and grew and grew till a substantial place was required for the accommodation of the members. Finally, the 'barracks' was converted into a place of worship for a Dissenting body, and a grand hall it afforded when the interior was removed and only the shell left. But by this time vast changes had taken place, and great extensions had arisen through private energy. This land was the poorest in the neighbourhood; low-lying, shallow soil on top of an endless depth of stiff clay, worthless for arable purposes, of small value for pasture, covered with furze, rushes, and rowen; so much so that when a certain man with a little money purchased a good strip of it, he was talked of as a fool, and considered to have committed a most egregious error. How vain is human wisdom! In a few years the railway came. Land rose in price, and this very strip brought its owner thousands; so that the fool became wise, and the wise was deemed of no account. Private speculators, seeing the turn things were taking, ran up rows of houses; building societies stepped in and laid out streets; a whole town seemed to start into being at once.