ago; and so of others. Had he lived till now he might have largely
increased his roll of local millionaires with such names as Gillott,
Muntz, Mason, Rylands, &c. On the other hand he relates how some of the
old families, whose names were as household words among the ancient
aristocracy, have come to nought; how that he had himself charitably
relieved the descendants of the Norman Mountfourds, Middemores and
Bracebridges, and how that the sole boast of a descendant of the Saxon
Earls of Warwick was in his day the fact of his grandfather having "kept
several cows and sold milk." It is but a few years back since the
present writer saw the last direct descendant of the Holtes working as a
compositor in one of the newspaper offices of this town, and almost any
day there was to be seen in the streets a truck with the name painted on
of "Charles Holte Bracebridge, Licensed Hawker!"

~Famines.~--In the year 310, it is said that 40,000 persons died in this
country from famine. It is not known whether any "Brums" existed then.
In 1195 wheat was so scarce that it sold for 20s. the quarter; ten years
after it was only 12d. In 1438, the times were so hard that people ate
bread made from fern roots. In 1565, a famine prevailed throughout the
kingdom.

~Fashionable Quarter.~--Edgbaston is our "West End," of which Thomas
Ragg (before he was ordained) thus wrote:--


--Glorious suburbs! long
May ye remain to bless the ancient town
Whose crown ye are; rewarder of the cares
Of those who toil amid the din and smoke
Of iron ribbed and hardy Birmingham.