every inhabitant, nor having the least idea of becoming one myself.
Though the reflections of an untaught youth of seventeen cannot be
striking, yet, as they were purely natural, permit me to describe them.

I had been before acquainted with two or three principal towns. The
environs of all I had seen were composed of wretched dwellings, replete
with dirt and poverty; but the buildings in the exterior of Birmingham
rose in a style of elegance. Thatch, so plentiful in other towns, was
not to be met with in this. I was surprised at the place, but more so at
the people: They were a species I had never seen: They possessed a
vivacity I had never beheld: I had been among dreamers, but now I saw
men awake: Their very step along the street showed alacrity: Every man
seemed to know and prosecute his own affairs: The town was large, and
full of inhabitants, and those inhabitants full of industry. I had seen
faces elsewhere tinctured with an idle gloom void of meaning, but here,
with a pleasing alertness: Their appearance was strongly marked with the
modes of civil life: I mixed a variety of company, chiefly of the lower
ranks, and rather as a silent spectator: I was treated with an easy
freedom by all, and with marks of favour by some: Hospitality seemed to
claim this happy people for her own, though I knew not at that time from
what cause.

I did not meet with this treatment in 1770, twenty nine years after, at
Bosworth, where I accompanied a gentleman, with no other intent, than to
view the field celebrated for the fall of Richard the third. The
inhabitants enjoyed the cruel satisfaction of setting their dogs at us
in the street, merely because we were strangers. Human figures, not
their own, are seldom seen in those inhospitable regions: Surrounded
with impassable roads, no intercourse with man to humanise the mind, no
commerce to smooth their rugged manners, they continue the boors