dit of the British nation, no purchaser could be found in
the whole commonwealth of letters. The universities coldly rejected the
offer. The London booksellers understood no science like that of profit.
The valuable property, therefore, lay a dead weight, till purchased by a
literary society at Paris, in 1779, for 3700_l_.

It is an old remark, that no country abounds with genius so much as this
island; and it is a remark nearly as old, that genius is no where so
little rewarded; how else came Dryden, Goldsmith, and Chatterton to want
bread? Is merit, like a flower of the field, too common to attract
notice? or is the use of money beneath the care of exalted talents?

Invention seldom pays the inventor. If you ask, what fortune Baskerville
ought to have been rewarded with? "The _most_ which can be comprised in
five figures." If you farther ask, what he possessed? "The _least_;" but
none of it squeezed from the press. What will the shade of this great
man think, if capable of thinking, that he has spent a fortune of
opulence, and a life of genius, in carrying to perfection the greatest
of all human inventions; and his productions, slighted by his country,
were hawked over Europe, in quest of a bidder?

We must _revere_, if we do not _imitate_, the taste and economy of the
French nation, who, brought by the British arms, in 1762, to the verge
of ruin, rising above distress, were able, in 17 years, to purchase
Baskerville's elegant types, refused by his own country, and expend an
hundred thousand pounds in printing the works of Voltaire!

BRASS FOUNDRY.

The curious art before us is perhaps less ancient than profitable, and
less healthful than either. I shall not enquire whose grandfather was
the first brass-founder here, but shall leave their grandsons to settle
that important point with my successor who shall next write the History
of Birmingham. Whoever was the first, I believe he figured in the reign
of King William; but, though he sold his productions at an excessive
price, he did not, like the moderns, possess the art of acquiring a
fortune: but now the master knows the way to affluence, and the servant
to liquor.

To enumerate the great variety of occupations amongst us, would be as
useless, and as unentertaining to the reader, perhaps to the writer, as
to count the pebbles in the street.

Having therefore visited a few, by way of specimen, I shall desist from
farther pursuit, and wheel off in a

HA