On the market day, a common labourer, like Massenello of Naples, formed the resolution to lead a mob.

He therefore erected his standard, which was a mop inverted, assembled the crowd, and roared out the old note, “Redress of Grievances.”  The colliers, with all their dark retinue, were to bring destruction from Wednesbury.  Amazement seised the town! the people of fortune trembled:  John Wyrley, an able magistrate, for the first time frightened in office, with quivering lips, and a pale aspect, swore in about eighty constables, to oppose the rising storm, armed each of them with a staff of authority, warm from the turning-lathe, and applied to the War-office for a military force.

The lime-powdered monarch began to fabricate his own laws, direct the price of every article, which was punctually obeyed.

Port, or power, soon overcome a weak head; the more copious the draught, the more quick intoxication:  he entered many of the shops, and was every where treated with the utmost reverence; took whatever goods he pleased, and distributed them among his followers; till one of the inhabitants, provoked beyond measure at his insolence, gave him a hearty kick on the posteriors, when the hero and his consequence, like that of Wat Tyler, fell together.—­Thus ended a reign of seven hours; the sovereign was committed to prison, as sovereigns ought, in the abuse of power, and harmony was restored without blood.

THE CONJURERS.

No head is a vacuum.  Some, like a paltry cottage, are ill accommodated, dark, and circumscribed; others are capacious as Westminster-Hall.  Though none are immense, yet they are capable of immense furniture.  The more room is taken up by knowledge, the less remains for credulity.  The more a man is acquainted with things, the more willing to give up the ghost.  Every town and village, within my knowledge, has been pestered with spirits; which appear in horrid forms to the imagination in the winter night—­but the spirits which haunt Birmingham, are those of industry and luxury.

If we examine the whole parish, we cannot produce one old witch; but we have plenty of young, who exercise a powerful influence over us.  Should the ladies accuse the harsh epithet, they will please to consider, I allow them, what of all things they most wish for, power, therefore the balance is in my favor.

If we pass through the planitary worlds, we shall be able to muster up two conjurers, who endeavoured to shine with the stars.  The first, John Walton, who was so busy in calling the nativity of others, he forgot his own.

Conscious of an application to himself, for the discovery of stolen goods, he employed his people to steal them.  And though, for many years confined to his bed by infirmity, he could conjure away the property of others, and, for a reward, reconjure it again.