te animals, but now the
whole wrath of the driver falls upon one.

We can scarcely view a boat travelling this liquid road, without raising
opposite sensations--pleased to think of its great benefit to the
community, and grieved to behold wanton punishment.

I see a large field of cruelty expanding before me, which I could easily
prevail with myself to enter; in which we behold the child plucking a
wing and a leg off a fly, to try how the poor insect can perform with
half his limbs; or running a pin through the posteriors of a locust, to
observe it spinning through the air, like a comet, drawing a tail of
thread. If we allow, man has a right to destroy noxious animals, we
cannot allow he has a right to protract their pain by a lingering death.
By fine gradations the modes of cruelty improve with years, in pinching
the tail of a cat for the music of her voice, kicking a dog because we
have trod upon his foot, or hanging him for _fun_, 'till we arrive at
the priests in the church of Rome, who burnt people for opinion; or to
the painter, who begged the life of a criminal, that he might torture
him to death with the severest pangs, to catch the agonizing feature,
and transfer it into his favourite piece, of a dying Saviour. But did
that Saviour teach such doctrine? Humanity would wish rather to have
lost the piece, than have heard of the cruelty. What, if the injured
ghost of the criminal is at this moment torturing that of the painter?--

But as this capacious field is beyond the line I profess, and, as I have
no direct accusation against the people of my regard, I shall not enter.

DERITEND BRIDGE.

Cooper's-mill, situated upon the verge of the parishes of Afton and
Birmingham, 400 yards below this bridge, was probably first erected in
the the peaceable ages of Saxon influence, and continued a part of the
manorial estate 'till the disposal of it in 1730.

Before the water was pounded up to supply the mill, it must have been so
shallow, as to admit a passage between Digbeth and Deritend, over a few
stepping stones; and a gate seems to have been placed upon the verge of
the river, to prevent encroachments of the cattle.

This accounts for the original name, which Dugdale tells us was
_Derry-yate-end:_ derry, low; yate, gate; end, extremity of the parish;
with which it perfectly agrees.

The mill afterwards causing the water to be dammed up, gave rise to a
succession of paltry bridges, chiefly of timber, to prese