Of British industries, not the least interesting to a large world of readers, great and small, will be found the manufacture of toys. Mr Bartley, in treating this subject in Mr Stanford's useful series of Handbooks to British Manufactures, rightly assumes that objects which are so inseparably connected with the happiness of our early life cannot be held unimportant; while we need but mention the name of Charles Dickens, in order to lend a charm to the avocations of a doll's dressmaker and a journeyman toy-maker. Although the English productions are almost entirely confined to a few special types of goods, which not only hold their own among foreign rivals, but are largely exported to the continent, we find that in London alone there are, besides various importers of toys, eleven rocking-horse manufacturers, ten wholesale dealers, and one hundred and fifty-one retail dealers, not including the large tribe of small retailers, who combine other occupations with the sale of toys. Though Germany, Switzerland, and France are the great storehouses of all toys of which the material is soft wood, the toy manufacture of London forms a large and interesting industry.

Penny wooden toys are turned out of a manufacturing establishment which consists of a toy-maker, his wife, and family. When the father has finished his work on the lathe, the mother and children have each their particular share in gluing, pasting, and painting. The material for these articles are scraps of timber bought out of builders' yards, the principal tools being the chisel and the lathe. Pewter toys are made in London in very large quantities. At one establishment a ton of metal is consumed each month in the production of Lilliputian tea, coffee, and dinner sets. English taste may be gathered from the fact, that the number of tea-sets made is nearly thirty times larger than either of the other two. Twenty-three separate articles make up a set, and of these articles two millions and a half are made yearly by one house alone. The metal is provided from miscellaneous goods, such as old candlesticks, tea-pots, pots and pans, bought from 'marine' store-dealers by the hundredweight; and when melted, is formed into the required shapes by different processes of casting in moulds. One girl can make two thousand five hundred small tea-cups in a day. Putting together the four separate pieces of a mould made of hard gun-metal, she fills it with the molten metal, dips its mouth into cold water, takes it to pieces, and turns out a cup that only wants trimming.

Under the head of paper toys, miniature packs of cards demand a large amount of material and labour. It is astonishing to read that one firm alone in London turns out each year one million packs of toy cards, using five or six tons of paper for the purpose, on each sheet of which are printed three packs in black and red. When these sheets have been pasted on cards—called 'middlings'—one girl can cut up and complete eight hundred and sixty-four packs each day, earning about one pound a week. These cards are sold at twopence, one penny, and a halfpenny a pack. The penny cards have, as might be expected, far the largest sale with the public; the manufacturer getting five shillings for a gross of twelve dozen, or somewhat less than half the retail price. Many thousand gross of these little packs go to all parts of the world. The twopenny packs are precisely the same as the penny packs, with the addition of an ornamental paper back to each card. The demand for these superior packs is small, for when the price of an article gets above a penny, we read that it at once shuts it out from a certain class of the buying public. The purchaser that will spend more than a penny will spend sixpence. The spending public, it seems, go in sets. There is the farthing set, mostly children, who patronise small shops of toys and sweets; there is the halfpenny set; and the penny set. We then jump to the sixpenny set. There is a very large manufacture of toy picture-books which are sold at one penny, a halfpenny, and a farthing. Even the farthing books have a picture on the cover printed in four colours; and valentines printed from wood-blocks and hand-painted can be sold for a halfpenny.

Another large industry grown up or developed of late years is the manufacture of india-rubber toys. The india-rubber, cut up into small pieces, and formed, by the admixture of white-lead and other substances, into sheets of a putty-like inelastic material, is fitted into two pieces of an iron mould, variously shaped according to the requirements of the toy, and then plunged into the vulcanising bath—a vessel filled with sulphur and other ingredients. When taken out, the india-rubber has become elastic, the two pieces of mould are unscrewed, and the toy, after trimming and painting, is ready for use.

Toy-boats, which in their construction go through fifteen different hands, are very cheap, though the whole of the work is done by hand. In one London manufactory as many as ten thousand sailing-boats are made every year; upwards of five hundred twelve-feet lengths of three-inch deals being used in their manufacture, and eight tons of lead being required for their keels.

We have left to the last place notice of the toy which is the speciality of English toy-makers, the wax-doll. The wax, after being melted in large vessels by means of boiling water, is poured into hollow plaster-moulds made in three pieces, and laid in rows with the crown of the head downwards. When the workman has filled from a can ten or twelve of these moulds, returning to the first one in the row, he pours back into his can as much of the wax as remains fluid; and so on with the other moulds. Most of the wax is thus poured back again into the can; but that which adheres to the mould has now become a hollow wax head, thick or thin according to the time which elapses between pouring the wax into the mould and pouring it out again. Then comes the process of fixing the glass eyes, which, save the very best, are now made abroad, the Germans having driven the Birmingham manufacturers out of the field. The wax ridges left by the joints of the mould are smoothed down, the surface is brushed over with turpentine to clean it, and with violet powder to beautify it; and when the cheeks have been tinted with rouge and the lips with vermilion, the head is ready for the hair-dressing operations. For the best dolls, the wig is made by a lengthy process of fixing one or two hairs at a time, so as to give a natural appearance to the hair. In the common dolls, the hair is more quickly put on in locks. The black hair, most of which comes from abroad, is human; but the favourite flaxen curls are of mohair, the silky wool of the Angora goat. Composition dolls' heads are made of pasteboard from iron moulds. The pasteboard is placed over a mould representing half a head cut vertically behind the ear, and is then forced by means of a pestle into every crevice. Another mould for the other half of the head, is similarly filled; and when nearly dry, the two halves are removed from the moulds and pasted together. The head thus moulded, which becomes as hard as leather, is coated with a composition of size and whiting, washed with oil and turpentine; and then having received a pair of eyes, is dipped into a vessel of melted wax, and re-dipped until it looks like a solid wax-head. The wax is then cut from off the eyes, and scraped from the part of the head which the hair will cover; and the head is then ready for painting, powdering, and hair-dressing. A third class of dolls, known in the trade by the misnomer of 'rag dolls,' is the pretty muslin-faced creature with blue eyes and becoming cap. Her face is of wax, covered with an outer skin of muslin, and is made by pressing a wax mask, moulded in the ordinary way, into a mould exactly like the one in which the wax was cast, over which is stretched a piece of thin muslin. In this way the wax necessarily adheres so closely to the muslin, that it becomes a sort of skin to the mask. These faces are nothing but masks, and require the caps to conceal the junction with the skulls, made of calico and sawdust, like the bodies. The bodies are mostly the handiwork of women and the smaller members of the doll-maker's family. The doll manufacturer gives out so many yards of calico which are to produce so many bodies, the sawdust to be found by the maker. Then by a division of labour in cutting out, sewing up, filling with sawdust, and making the joints, many dozen bodies will be turned out by one family in a week. The arms are a branch of the trade upon which certain persons are almost exclusively employed. They are made of calico above the elbow, of leather for the part below, and are paid for at the incredibly small price of sixpence-halfpenny a dozen pairs; smaller arms for very cheap dolls costing three-halfpence a dozen pairs. We read that the hands, which thus cost each the sixteenth part of a penny, have always a certain number of fingers! The materials are found by the makers themselves; so when we consider that each doll sold to the public for sixpence should not cost more than threepence in the making, if the toy-merchant and the retailer are to earn a living, there remains but a pittance to be earned by the Caleb Plummers and Jenny Wrens. Though most dolls leave their first homes in an undressed condition, the larger establishments employ many young women in the dressmaking department of their trade. One article of dolls' attire forms a distinct branch of trade—the little many-coloured leather shoes, which are made from the waste material left by the makers of children's ornamental boots and shoes. A thousand such pairs are made weekly by one large manufactory in Clerkenwell.

And now we replace our puppets in their box, grateful for having been let into some of the mysteries of their creation, not only the more ready to admire the charming little picture of the toy-maker, by John Leech, in the Cricket on the Hearth, but more sensible of a sympathy with doll-nature, and more certain that toys are as much needed for old as for young. Happy is it if the toys of grown-up folks cause as little mischief and as much pleasure as the innocent toys of childhood!