The balcony called Elizabeth's Bower is still standing; and the tradition goes, that in moonlight nights a white figure is often seen there looking fixedly and immovably into the depth below. The ruins of the banqueting-hall, with the gigantic chimney-piece, the extensive kitchen, and the wine-cellar beneath, are still clearly distinguishable; and many a lonesome chamber may still be standing in the towers, to which all access is cut off. The fancy delights in guessing the past by what still remains; and I often dreamed, while climbing among the ruins, that I had found the very spot where the infamous Vernon traitorously plunged the truest and most unhappy of wives into eternal night. But equally lost are the traces of the crimes and of the virtues which lived within these walls; Time has long since thrown his all-concealing veil over them; and gone are the eternally-repeated sorrows and joys, the mouldering splendour, and the transient struggle. The day was gloomy; black clouds rolled across the heavens, and occasionally a yellow tawny light broke from between them; the wind whistled among the ivy, and piped shrilly through the vacant windows; now and then a stone loosened itself from the crumbling building, and rolled clattering down the outer wall. Not a human being was to be seen; all was solitary, awful;--a gloomy but sublime memorial of destruction. Such moments are really consolatory:--we feel more vividly than at any other that it is not worth while to grieve and trouble ourselves about earthly things, since sorrow, like joy, lasts but for a moment. As an illustration of the eternal mutation of human affairs, I found myself transported in the evening from the mute and lifeless ruins to the prosaic tumult of a multitude, busied but in gain; in the reeking, smoky, bustling manufacturing town of Birmingham. The last romantic sight was the flames which at night-fall illuminated the town on all sides from the tall chimneys of the iron-works. Here is an end to all sport of the fancy till more fitting time and place. _December 30th._ Birmingham is one of the most considerable and one of the ugliest towns of England. It contains a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom two-thirds are doubtless workmen, and indeed, it presents only the appearance of an immeasurable workshop. Immediately after breakfast I went to the manufactory of Mr. Thomasson, our consul here,--the second in extent. The first,--where a thousand workmen are daily employed, and an eighty-horse power steam-engine is applied to innumerable uses, even in the manufactory of livery buttons and pins' heads,--has been hermetically sealed to all foreigners ever since the visit of the Austrian princes, one of whose suite carried away some important secret. I passed several hours here with great interest, though in hideous, dirty, and stinking holes, which serve as the various workshops; and made a button, which R---- will deliver to you as a proof of my industry.