ful to an injured society.

Thus, from imprudence, folly, and vice, is produced poverty;--poverty
produces labour; from labour, arise the manufactures; and from these,
the riches of a country, with all their train of benefits.

It would be difficult to enumerate the great variety of trades practised
in Birmingham, neither would it give pleasure to the reader. Some of
them, spring up with the expedition of a blade of grass, and, like that,
wither in a summer. If some are lasting, like the sun, others seem to
change with the moon. Invention is ever at work. Idleness; the
manufactory of scandal, with the numerous occupations connected with the
cotton; the linen, the silk, and the woollen trades, are little
known among us.

Birmingham begun with the productions of the anvil, and probably will
end with them. The sons of the hammer, were once her chief inhabitants;
but that great croud of artists is now lost in a greater: Genius seems
to increase with multitude.

Part of the riches, extension, and improvement of Birmingham, are owing
to the late John Taylor, Esq; who possessed the singular powers of
perceiving things as they really were. The spring, and consequence of
action, were open to his view; whom we may justly deem the Shakespear
or the Newton of his day. He rose from minute beginnings, to
shine in the commercial hemisphere, as they in the poetical and
philosophical--Imitation is part of the human character. An example of
such eminence in himself, promoted exertion in others; which, when
prudence guided the helm, led on to fortune: But the bold adventurer who
crouded sail, without ballast and without rudder, has been known to
overset the vessel, and sink insolvent.

To this uncommon genius we owe the gilt-button, the japanned and gilt
snuff-boxes, with the numerous race of enamels--From the same fountain
also issued the paper snuff-box, at which one servant earned three
pounds ten shillings per week, by painting them at a farthing each.

In his shop were weekly manufactured buttons to the amount of 800_l_
exclusive of other valuable productions.

One of the present nobility, of distinguished taste, examining the
works, with the master, purchased some of the articles, amongst others,
a toy of eighty guineas value, and, while paying for them, observed with
a smile, "he plainly saw he could not reside in Birmingham for less than
two hundred pounds a day."

The toy trades first made their appearance in Birmingham,