Hark! what a sound!—­art’s pond’rous fabric reels,
  Beneath machinery’s ten thousand wheels;
  Loud falls the stamp, the whirling lathes resound,
  And engines heave, while hammers clatter round: 
  What labour forges, patient art refines,
  Till bright as dazz’ling day metallic beauty shines.

  Thy swords, elastic, arm our hero’s hands;
  Thy musquets thunder in remotest lands;
  Thy sparkling buttons distant courts emblaze;
  Thy polish’d steel emits the diamond’s rays;
  Paper, beneath thy magic hand assumes
  A mirror brightness, and with beauty blooms. 
  With each Etruscan grace thy vases shine,
  And proud Japan’s fam’d varnish yields to thine.

  Thine, too, the trinkets, that the fair adorn,
  But who can count the spangles of the morn? 
  What pencil can pourtray this splendid mart. 
  This vast, stupendous wilderness of art? 
  Where fancy sports, in all her rainbow hues,
  And beauty’s radiant forms perplex the muse. 
  The boundless theme transcends poetic lays,—­
  Let plain historic truth record thy praise.

The Roads pointed out

TO PLACES DISTANT FROM BIRMINGHAM.

Miles       Folio
Alcester                         ..  21      186
Atherstone                       ..  20      178
Banbury                          ..  42      134
Barr-beacon                      ..   7      188
Barr-park                        ..   5      122
Bath                             ..  87      176
Bilstone                         ..  11      101
Blenheim                         ..  52      133
Bristol                          ..  84      176
Bromsgrove                       ..  13      176
Buxton                           ..  61      163
Cheltenham                       ..  51      176
Chester                          ..  75      101
Coalbrook Dale                   ..  30      101
Coleshill                        ..  10      180
Coventry                         ..  18      161
Derby                            ..  40      163
Dublin                           .. 218      101
Dudley, thro’ Oldbury            ..   9      130
Dudley, thro’ Tipton             ..  10      125
Dunchurch                        ..  29      161
Edgbaston                        ..   1      190
Edinburgh                        .. 298      113&163
Evesham                          ..  31      186
Glocester                        ..  52      176
Hagley                           ..  12      169
Halesowen                        ..   7      169
Handsworth                       .. 2-1/2    106
Harborne                         ..   3      182
Henley-in-Arden                  ..  14      133
Hockley House                    ..  10      133
Holyhead                         .. 158      101
Kidderminster                    ..  18      169
King’s Norton                    ..   6      186
Knowle                           ..  10      134
Leamington                       ..  22      133&134