appear as annexations of grates, without poker or shovel; and the family
plate-chest was part of bed-room furniture. Stools were the substitutes
for chairs in the principal sitting-room, in the proportion of even
twenty of the former to two of the latter, which were evidently
intended, _par distinction_, for the husband and wife.

~Galton.~--The family name of a once well-known firm of gun, sword, and
bayonet makers, whose town-house was in Steelhouse Lane, opposite the
Upper Priory. Their works were close by in Weaman Street, but the mill
for grinding and polishing the barrels and blades was at Duddeston, near
to Duddeston Hall, the Galton's country-house. It was this firm's
manufactury that Lady Selbourne refers to in her "Diary," wherein she
states that in 1765 she went to a Quaker's "to see the making of guns."
The strange feature of members of the peace-loving Society of Friends
being concerned in the manufacture of such death-dealing implements was
so contrary to their profession, that in 1796, the Friends strongly
remonstrated with the Galtons, leading to the retirement of the senior
partner from the trade, and the expulsion of the junior from the body.
The mansion in Steelhouse Lane was afterwards converted into a
banking-house; then used for the purposes of the Polytechnic
Institution; next, after a period of dreary emptiness, fitted up as the
Children's Hospital, after the removal of which to Broad Street, the old
house has reverted to its original use, as the private abode of Dr.
Clay.

~Gambetta.~--The eminent French patriot was fined 2,000 francs for
upholding the freedom of speech and the rights of the press, two things
ever dear to Liberal Birmingham, and it was proposed to send him the
money from here as a mark of esteem and sympathy. The _Daily Post_ took
the matter in hand, and, after appealing to its 40,000 readers every day