SAINT PHILLIP's.

We have touched upon various objects in our peregrinations through
Birmingham, which meet with approbation, though viewed through the
medium of smoke; some of these, being covered with the rust of time,
command our veneration; but the prospect before us is wholly modern.

We have mounted, by imperceptable gradations, from beauty to beauty,
'till we are now arrived at the summit.

If an historian had written in the last century, he would have recorded
but two places of worship; I am now recording the fourteenth: but my
successor, if not prevented by our own imprudence, in driving away the
spirit of commerce, may record the four-and-twentieth. The artist, who
carries the manufactures among foreigners, or the overseer, who wantonly
loads the people with burdens, draws the wrath of the place upon his
own head.

This curious piece of architecture, the steeple of which is erected
after the model of St. Paul's, in London, but without its weight, does
honour to the age that raised it, and to the place that contains it.
Perhaps the eye of the critic cannot point out a fault, which the hand
of the artist can mend: perhaps too, the attentive eye cannot survey
this pile of building, without communicating to the mind a small degree
of pleasure. If the materials are not proof against time, it is rather
a misfortune to be lamented, than an error to be complained of, the
country producing no better.