If we turn the other side of the picture, we shall see a man born in affluence, take the reins of direction; but like Phaeton, not being able to guide them, blunders on from mischief to mischief, till he involves himself in destruction, comes prone to the earth, and many are injured by his fall.  From directing the bridle, he submits to the bit; seeks for bread in the shops, the line designed him by nature; where his hands become callous with the file, and where, for the first time in his life, he becomes useful to an injured society.

Thus, from imprudence, folly, and vice, is produced poverty;—­poverty produces labour; from labour, arise the manufactures; and from these, the riches of a country, with all their train of benefits.

It would be difficult to enumerate the great variety of trades practised in Birmingham, neither would it give pleasure to the reader.  Some of them, spring up with the expedition of a blade of grass, and, like that, wither in a summer.  If some are lasting, like the sun, others seem to change with the moon.  Invention is ever at work.  Idleness; the manufactory of scandal, with the numerous occupations connected with the cotton; the linen, the silk, and the woollen trades, are little known among us.

Birmingham begun with the productions of the anvil, and probably will end with them.  The sons of the hammer, were once her chief inhabitants; but that great croud of artists is now lost in a greater:  Genius seems to increase with multitude.

Part of the riches, extension, and improvement of Birmingham, are owing to the late John Taylor, Esq; who possessed the singular powers of perceiving things as they really were.  The spring, and consequence of action, were open to his view; whom we may justly deem the Shakespear or the Newton of his day.  He rose from minute beginnings, to shine in the commercial hemisphere, as they in the poetical and philosophical—­Imitation is part of the human character.  An example of such eminence in himself, promoted exertion in others; which, when prudence guided the helm, led on to fortune:  But the bold adventurer who crouded sail, without ballast and without rudder, has been known to overset the vessel, and sink insolvent.

To this uncommon genius we owe the gilt-button, the japanned and gilt snuff-boxes, with the numerous race of enamels—­From the same fountain also issued the paper snuff-box, at which one servant earned three pounds ten shillings per week, by painting them at a farthing each.

In his shop were weekly manufactured buttons to the amount of 800_l_ exclusive of other valuable productions.

One of the present nobility, of distinguished taste, examining the works, with the master, purchased some of the articles, amongst others, a toy of eighty guineas value, and, while paying for them, observed with a smile, “he plainly saw he could not reside in Birmingham for less than two hundred pounds a day.”