Every word in the English language carries an idea:  when a word, therefore, strikes the ear, the mind immediately forms a picture, which represents it as faithfully as the looking-glass the face.—­Thus, when the word Birmingham occurs, a superb picture instantly expands in the mind, which is best explained by the other words grand, populous, extensive, active, commercial and humane.  This painting is an exact counter-part of the word at this day; but it does not correspond with its appearance, in the days of the ancient Britons—­We must, therefore, for a moment, detach the idea from the word.

Let us suppose, then, this centre surrounded with less than one hundred stragling huts, without order, which we will dignify with the name of houses; built of timber, the interfaces wattled with sticks, and plaistered with mud, covered with thatch, boards or sods; none of them higher than the ground story.  The meaner sort only one room, which served for three uses, shop, kitchen, and lodging room; the door for two, it admitted the people and the light.  The better sort two rooms, and some three, for work, for the kitchen, and for rest; all three in a line, and sometimes fronting the street.

If the curious reader chooses to see a picture of Birmingham, in the time of the Britons, he will find one in the turnpike road, between Hales-owen and Stourbridge, called the Lie Waste, alias Mud City.  The houses stand in every direction, composed of one large and ill-formed brick, scoped into a tenement, burnt by the sun, and often destroyed by the frost:  the males naked; the females accomplished breeders.  The children, at the age of three months, take a singular hue from the sun and the soil, which continues for life.  The rags which cover them leave no room for the observer to guess at the sex.  Only one person upon the premisses presumes to carry a belly, and he a landlord.  We might as well look for the moon in a coal-pit, as for stays or white linen in the City of Mud.  The principal tool in business is the hammer, and the beast of burden, the ass.

The extent of our little colony of artists, perhaps reached nearly as high as the east end of New-street, occupied the upper part of Spiceal-street, and penetrated down the hill to the top of Digbeth, chiefly on the east.

Success, which ever waits on Industry, produced a gradual, but very slow increase:  perhaps a thousand years elapsed without adding half that number of houses.

Thus our favourite plantation having taken such firm root, that she was able to stand the wintry blasts of fortune, we shall digress for a moment, while she wields her sparkling heat, according to the fashion of the day, in executing the orders of the sturdy Briton; then of the polite and heroic Roman; afterwards of our mild ancestors, the Saxons.  Whether she raised her hammer for the plundering Dane is uncertain, his reign being short; and, lastly, for the resolute and surly Norman.