to coal-fields has turned its course elsewhere, to the smoky regions of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and the old town has lost its prosperity and its power.  Its charter has gone; it can boast of no municipal corporation; hence the town hall is scarcely needed save for some itinerant Thespians, an occasional public meeting, or as a storehouse of rubbish.  It begins to fall into decay, and the decayed town is not rich enough, or public-spirited enough, to prop its weakened timbers.  For the sake of the safety of the public it has to come down.

On the other hand, an influx of prosperity often dooms the aged town hall to destruction.  It vanishes before a wave of prosperity.  The borough has enlarged its borders.  It has become quite a great town and transacts much business.  The old shops have given place to grand emporiums with large plate-glass windows, wherein are exhibited the most recent fashions of London and Paris, and motor-cars can be bought, and all is very brisk and up-to-date.  The old town hall is now deemed a very poor and inadequate building.  It is small, inconvenient, and unsuited to the taste of the municipal councillors, whose ideas have expanded with their trade.  The Mayor and Corporation meet, and decide to build a brand-new town hall replete with every luxury and convenience.  The old must vanish.

And yet, how picturesque these ancient council chambers are.  They usually stand in the centre of the market-place, and have an undercroft, the upper storey resting on pillars.  Beneath this shelter the market women display their wares and fix their stalls on market days, and there you will perhaps see the fire-engine, at least the old primitive one which was in use before a grand steam fire-engine had been purchased and housed in a station of its own.  The building has high pointed gables and mullioned windows, a tiled roof mellowed with age, and a finely wrought vane, which is a credit to the skill of the local blacksmith.  It is a sad pity that this “thing of beauty” should have to be pulled down and be replaced by a modern building which is not always creditable to the architectural taste of the age.  A law should be passed that no old town halls should be pulled down, and that all new ones should be erected on a different site.  No more fitting place could be found for the storage of the antiquities of the town, the relics of its old municipal life, sketches of its old buildings that have vanished, and portraits of its worthies, than the ancient building which has for so long kept watch and ward over its destinies and been the scene of most of the chief events connected with its history.