Birmingham

“ On still; until at length the coachman, as the sun declines to the west, points out, amid a gloomy cloud in front of us, the dim outlines of the steeples and factory chimneys of Birmingham. On still; down the wide open roadway of Deritend; past the many-gabled "Old Crown House;" through the only really picturesque street in Birmingham—Digbeth; up the Bull Ring, the guard merrily trolling out upon his bugle, "See the Conquering Hero Comes;" round the corner into New Street where we pull up—the horses covered with foam—at the doors of "The Swan." Our journey has taken us just twelve hours. ”

“ To use a Yankeeism, it is "the hub" of the Kingdom; here is the throbbing heart of all that is Liberal in the political life of Europe; this is the workshop of the world, the birth-spot of the steam-engine, and the home of mock jewellery. In all matters political, social, and national, it takes the lead, and if London is the Metropolis of all that is effete and aristocratic, Birmingham has the moving-power of all that is progressive, recuperative and advancing. ”

“ If we travel two miles from the centre of Birmingham, upon the Wolverhampton road, which may be called, the road to taste, and is daily travelled by the nobility and gentry, we shall arrive at the epitome of the arts.
Though this little spot lies in the county of Stafford, we must accept it as part of Birmingham; neither is it many yards distant from the parish.
The proprietor, invited by a genius, a fortune of 30,000l. and a little stream, which promised to facilitate business, has erected the most elegant works in these parts, said to accommodate seven hundred persons. ”

“ The fact that a man may shut off his motor and coast downhill from his home to his office in the lower part of Birmingham, is not without symbolism. Birmingham is all business. If I were to personify the place, it would be in the likeness of a man I know—a big, powerful fellow with an honest blue eye and an expression in which self-confidence, ambition, and power are blended. Like Birmingham, this man is a little more than forty years of age. Like Birmingham, he has built up a large business of his own. ”

“ I either have, or shall remark, for I know not in what nich I shall exhibit this posthumous chapter, drawn like one of our sluggish bills, three months after date, "That Birmingham does not abound in villainy, equal to some other places: that the hand employed in business, has less time, and less temptation, to be employed in mischief; and that one magistrate alone, corrected the enormities of this numerous people, many years before I knew them, and twenty-five after." ”

“ The seats in the church would disgrace a meaner parish than that of Birmingham; one should be tempted to think, they are the first ever erected upon the spot, without taste or order: the timber is become hard with age, and to the honour of the inhabitants, bright with use. Each sitting is a private freehold, and is farther disgraced, like the coffin of a pauper, with the paltry initials of the owner's name. ”

“ Birmingham I have now tried for a reasonable time, and I cannot complain of being tired of it. As a town it is pitiful enough—a mean congeries of bricks, including one or two large capitalists, some hundreds of minor ones, and, perhaps, a hundred and twenty thousand sooty artisans in metals and chemical produce. The streets are ill-built, ill-paved, always flimsy in their aspect—often poor, sometimes miserable. ”

“ Thus the mines of Wednesbury empty their riches into the lap of Birmingham, and thus she draws nurture from the bowels of the earth.
The chief, if not the only manufactory of Birmingham, from its first existence to the restoration of Charles the Second, was in iron: of this was produced instruments of war and of husbandry, furniture for the kitchen, and tools for the whole system of carpentry. ”

“ The manufacturers are so scattered round the country, that we cannot travel far, in any direction, out of the sound of the nail-hammer. But Birmingham, like a powerful magnet, draws the produce of the anvil to herself. ”

“ Birmingham, under leaden skies, is not a cheerful town; and a less promising exterior than that of Bingley Hall it would be difficult to imagine. A depressing back street, brick walls, and smoke-laden atmosphere. ”

“ Sometimes when I am visiting a newly-risen manufacturing town which has lately blossomed out into a state of thriving progress, I am forcibly reminded of what Birmingham was some years ago, and think of the changes that have come over our city during the past thirty or forty years. The everyday social life is in many respects different from what it was. Young people, with a higher education and more advanced ideas than their sires, keep their parents up to date, and it is the young people who rule the roost in many houses. ”

“ To this modern conduct of Birmingham, in sending her sons to the foreign market, I ascribe the chief cause of her rapid increase.
By the poor's books it appears, there are not three thousand houses in Birmingham, that pay the parochial rates; whilst there are more then five thousand that do not, chiefly through inability. Hence we see what an amazing number of the laborious class of mankind is among us. This valuable part of the creation, is the prop of the remainder. They are the rise and support of our commerce. ”

“ 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 ”

“ A contemporary has congratulated the inhabitants of Birmingham upon the fact that "the ground upon which it stands is ancient as the scite of any Eternal City." Presuming, therefore, that a native of the town must be better aware of the predilection of the inhabitants than a stranger, we venture to bespeak their favour by following the same line of antiquities, and in doing so assure them its ground is as ancient as the scite of the Garden of Eden;" ”

“ 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. ”

“ My route to this lay through Stamford. Thither I could not go by a stage coach until the following day; and of necessity I prepared to make the most of my present day in gloomy, noisy, and, at that time, dirty Birmingham.
Be not offended, compatriot of Birmingham, that I salute your natal town with these disparaging epithets. It is not my habit to indulge rash impulses of contempt towards any man or body of men, wheresoever collected, far less towards a race of high-minded and most intelligent citizens, such as Birmingham has exhibited to the admiration of all Europe. ”

“ Some of them, at length, receive the last polish, and arrive at perfection; while others, ruined by a flaw, are deemed wasters.
I have known the man of opulence direct his gilt chariot out of Birmingham, who first approached her an helpless orphan in rags. I have known the chief magistrate of fifty thousand people, fall from his phaeton, and humbly ask bread at a parish vestry.
Frequently the wheel of capricious fortune describes a circle, in the rotation of which, a family experiences alternately, the heighth of prosperity and the depth of distress ”

“ I add, that the ancient lords of Birmingham, among their manorial privileges, had the grant of a gallows, for capital punishment; but as there are no traces even of the name, in the whole manor, I am persuaded no such thing was ever erected, and perhaps the anvil prevented it.
Many of the rogues among us are not of our own growth, but are drawn hither, as in London, to shelter in a crowd, and the easier in that crowd to pursue their game. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The prosperity of this happy place proves the assertion, of which every man is free the moment he enters.
We often behold a pompous corporation, which sounds well in history, over something like a dirty village--This is a head without a body. The very reverse is our case--We are a body without a head. For though Birmingham has undergone an amazing alteration in extension, riches and population, yet the government is nearly the same as the Saxons left it. ”

“ Birmingham, like many large and growing towns both in England and America, had filled a great area with long and intersecting streets of houses, shops, and factories, before it thought of leaving a goodly breathing and recreating space for the people. ”

“ Birmingham in 1812.—The appearance of the town then would be strange indeed to those who know but the Birmingham of to-day. Many half-timbered houses remained in the Bull Ring and cows grazed near where the Town Hall now stands, there being a farmhouse at the back of the site of Christ Church, then being built. Recruiting parties paraded the streets with fife and drum almost daily, and when the London mail came in with news of some victory in Spain it was no uncommon thing for the workmen to take the horses out and drag the coach up the Bull Ring amid the cheers of the crowd. ”

“ A short distance beyond, on the summit of the hill, commands an extensive view of Birmingham, the venerable trees in Aston park, the spire of that church, and Barr-beacon. As you pass along the road, this delightful prospect varies every step you take for a considerable distance. These lands, formerly known by the name of Washwood heath, being inclosed in the year 1803, now let from forty to fifty shillings per acre. At the four mile stone, there is on the right a cheerful prospect over the country, with the lofty spire of Yardley church in full view. ”

“ The town of Birmingham and its immediate neighbourhood, is drained by the brooklets which unite to form the river Tame, the first of the southern tributaries of the Trent. Thus, physiographically speaking, Birmingham lies well within the basin of the Humber. To the west of the watershed of Dudley and the Lickey, the rivers of the district have a short and rapid descent to the main stream of the Severn; to the south eastward, they glide gently across the Midland Plain to its tributary—the soft-flowing Avon. ”

“ Crime.—A few local writers like to acknowledge that Birmingham is any worse than other large towns in the matter of crime and criminals, and the old adage respecting the bird that fouls its own nest has been more than once applied to the individuals who have ventured to demur from the boast that ours is par excellence, a highly moral, fair-dealing, sober, and superlatively honest community. ”

“ As human nature is nearly the same, whether in or out of Birmingham; and as enormities seem more prevalent out than in, we may reasonably ascribe the cause to the extraordinary industry of the inhabitants, not allowing time to brood over, and bring forth mischief, equal to places of inferior diligence. ”

“ Such is a faithful and honest attempt to exhibit something of the character, habits, and manners of one of Birmingham's most worthy sons; a man who, whatever his faults and failings, did much to elevate the noble profession to which he belonged, and thereby to alleviate the sufferings of thousands of his fellow creatures, not only of his own time, but for generations to come. ”

“ Birmingham, like other modern enterprising centres, goes moving on "down the ringing grooves of change." The city means to forge ahead, and will not permit anything to impede its progress. Scaffolding seems more conspicuous than ever, and before the ink is dry upon my page, more old buildings will be down and more new buildings will be up. ”

“ Why should Birmingham be without its Crystal Palace of Industry when there is hardly an article used by man or woman (save food and dress materials) but what is made in her workshops? We have the men, we have the iron, and we have the money, too! And it is to be hoped that ere many years are over, some of our great guns will see their way to construct a local Exhibition that shall attract people from the very ends of the earth to this "Mecca" of ours. ”

“ It appeared in the course of the trial, that the ancestors of William de Birmingham had a MARKET HERE before the Norman conquest! I shall have occasion, in future, to resume this remarkable expression. I have also met with an old author, who observes, that Birmingham was governed by two Constables in the time of the Saxons; small places have seldom more than one. These evidences prove much in favour of the government, population, and antiquity of the place. ”