too weak a vessel to be richly and deeply laden.  Perhaps more injury is done by eating than by drinking; one is a secret, the other an open enemy:  the secret is always supposed the most dangerous.  Drinking attacks by assault, but eating by sap:  luxury is seldom visited by old age.  The best antidote yet discovered against this kind of slow poison is exercise; but the advantages of elevation, air, and water, on one hand, and disadvantages of crowd, smoke, and effluvia on the other, are trifles compared to intemperance.

We have a fourth class, and with these I shall shut up the clock.  If this valuable machine comes finished from the hand of nature; if the rough blasts of fortune only attack the outward case, without affecting the internal works, and if reason conduces the piece, it may move on, with a calm, steady, and uninterrupted pace to a great extent of years, ’till time only annihilates the motion.

I personally know amongst us a Mrs. Dallaway, aged near 90; George Davis, 85; John Baddally, Esq; and his two brothers, all between 80 and and 90; Mrs. Allen, 92; Mrs. Silk, 84; John Burbury, 84; Thomas Rutter, 88; Elizabeth Bentley, 88; John Harrison and his wife, one 86, the other 88; Mrs. Floyd, 87; Elizabeth Simms, 88; Sarah Aston, 98; Isaac Spooner, Esq; 89; Joseph Scott, Esq; 94; all at this day, January 9, 1780, I believe enjoy health and capacity.  This is not designed as a complete list of the aged, but of such only as immediately occur to memory.  I also knew a John England who died at the age of 89; Hugh Vincent, 94; John Pitt, 100; George Bridgens, 103; Mrs. More, 104.  An old fellow assured me he had kept the market 77 years:  he kept it for several years after to my knowledge.  At 90 he was attacked by an acute disorder, but, fortunately for himself, being too poor to purchase medical assistance, he was left to the care of nature, who opened that door to health which the physician would have locked for ever.  At 106 I heard him swear with all the fervency of a recruit:  at 107 he died.  It is easy to give instances of people who have breathed the smoak of Birmingham for threescore years, and yet have scarcely left the precincts of of youth.  Such are the happy effects of constitution, temper, and conduct!

Ancient State of Birmingham.

We have now to pass through the very remote ages of time, without staff to support us, without light to conduct us, or hand to guide us.  The way is long, dark, and slippery.  The credit of an historian is built upon truth; he cannot assert, without giving his facts; he cannot surmise, without giving his reasons; he must relate things as they are, not as he would have them.  The fabric founded in error will moulder of itself, but that founded in reality will stand the age and the critic.

Except half a dozen pages in Dugdale, I know of no author who hath professedly treated of Birmingham.  None of the histories which I have seen bestow upon it more than a few lines, in which we are sure to be treated with the noise of hammers and anvils; as if the historian thought us a race of dealers in thunder, lightning, and wind; or infernals, puffing in blast and smoak.