The manufactures with which WORCESTER itself is associated, during the half-century just closed, have reached their meridian and have seriously declined. Our porcelain factories were once almost as famous as those of Sévres, and notices will be found in the following pages of continual visits from Royal and distinguished personages to witness the art of the potter, and to give large orders for splendid services of China; but this is one of those articles the demand for which has been greatly affected by a change of fashion, and plate has now almost wholly superseded China for dinner services amongst people of wealth. Truth requires it to be said also that our manufacturers have allowed themselves to be outstripped, in spirit and improvement, by those of other places. At the beginning of this century there were forty or fifty master glovers in Worcester. The trade received a serious check by the suspension of our intercourse with America in 1812, nevertheless, the number had increased in 1826 to 120; but the repeal of the import duty in that year, together with the more general use of Berlin and silk gloves, has had such a damaging effect upon the trade, that there are at present only twenty master glovers in the city. One firm, however (known as the Messrs. Dent’s), has a world-wide celebrity, and manufactures on a very large scale. It was not so much in price as in quality that the Worcester makers had to dread foreign competition; the article sent out from their workshops before the repeal of the duty was clumsily and badly made. Worcester gloves are now equal in every respect to those imported from France, and are often sold as French to accommodate the prejudice of the customer. It seems hard to say why Worcester, a city so centrally situated, and, before the railway era, so advantageously situated as regards the means of communication with other parts of the kingdom, has not become a manufacturing emporium and a place of much greater importance. In my belief, one principal reason has been the hindrance to speculative or _bonâ fide_ building, which exists in the bad tenure of land everywhere around the city; there can be no doubt that this has driven enterprising men to settle in places which in other respects were less suitable for their undertakings. There has, moreover, been a lack of unity and coöperation amongst the inhabitants in the promotion of the general good which has been “the worm i’ the bud” to many schemes which would in all probability have greatly advanced the prosperity of the city. Considerations of the common weal have been postponed to the interests of partizanship. To make an application of our civic motto—Worcester, if faithful to herself, may flourish ever. Worcester is rich in charitable institutions and revenues for alleviating the distresses of poverty. It may be a question, indeed, whether these have not reached the point at which eleemosynary aid ceases to be