Suffer me to transcribe a passage from Leland, one of our most celebrated writers, employed by Henry the VIIIth to form an itinerary of Britain, whose works have stood the test of 250 years.  We shall observe how much he erred for want of information, and how natural for his successors to copy him.

“I came through a pretty street as ever I entered, into Birmingham town.  This street, as I remember, is called Dirtey (Deritend).  In it dwells smithes and cutlers, and there is a brook that divides this street from Birmingham, an hamlet, or member, belonging to the parish therebye.

“There is at the end of Dirtey a propper chappel and mansion-house of timber, (the moat) hard on the ripe, as the brook runneth down; and as I went through the ford, by the bridge, the water came down on the right hand, and a few miles below goeth into Tame.  This brook, above Dirtey, breaketh in two arms, that a little beneath the bridge close again.  This brook riseth, as some say, four or five miles above Birmingham, towards Black-hills.

“The beauty of Birmingham, a good market-town in the extreme parts of Warwickshire, is one street going up alonge, almost from the left ripe of the brook, up a meane hill, by the length of a quarter of a mile, I saw but one parish-church in the town.

“There be many smithes in the town that use to make knives and all manner of cutting tools, and many loriners that make bittes, and a great many naylers; so that a great part of the town is maintained by smithes, who have their iron and sea-coal out of Staffordshire.”

Here we find some intelligence, and more mistake, cloathed in the dress of antique diction, which plainly evinces the necessity of modern history.

It is matter of surprise that none of those religious drones, the monks, who hived in the priory for fifteen or twenty generations, ever thought of indulging posterity with an history of Birmingham.  They could not want opportunity, for they lived a life of indolence; nor materials, for they were nearer the infancy of time, and were possessed of historical fads now totally lost.  Besides, nearly all the little learning in the kingdom was possessed by this class of people; and the place, in their day, must have enjoyed an eminent degree of prosperity.

Though the town has a modern appearance, there is reason to believe it of great antiquity; my Birmingham reader, therefore, must suffer me to carry him back into the remote ages of the Ancient Britons to visit his fable ancestors.

We have no histories of those times but what are left by the Romans, and these we ought to read with caution, because they were parties in the dispute.  If two antagonists write each his own history, the discerning reader will sometimes draw the line of justice between them; but where there is only one, partiality is expected.  The Romans were obliged to make the Britons war-like, or there would have been no merit in conquering them: