mind, which is best explained by the other words grand, populous,
extensive, active, commercial and humane. This painting is an exact
counter-part of the word at this day; but it does not correspond with
its appearance, in the days of the ancient Britons--We must, therefore,
for a moment, detach the idea from the word.

Let us suppose, then, this centre surrounded with less than one hundred
stragling huts, without order, which we will dignify with the name of
houses; built of timber, the interfaces wattled with sticks, and
plaistered with mud, covered with thatch, boards or sods; none of them
higher than the ground story. The meaner sort only one room, which
served for three uses, shop, kitchen, and lodging room; the door for
two, it admitted the people and the light. The better sort two rooms,
and some three, for work, for the kitchen, and for rest; all three in a
line, and sometimes fronting the street.

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. The rags which cover them leave
no room for the observer to guess at the sex. Only one person upon the
premisses presumes to carry a belly, and he a landlord. We might as well
look for the moon in a coal-pit, as for stays or white linen in the City
of Mud. The principal tool in business is the hammer, and the beast of
burden, the ass.