In our after topography and history of towns on the “Grand Junction” line, we shall have occasion to allude to their several claims to the honours of “hoar antiquity;” but none it would appear can boast of more remote fame than our own brave old town of Birmingham, or, as it has been variously written, _Bromycham_, _Bremecham_, _Bermyngham_, and _Bromnsycham_, the etymology of which terms have served to puzzle the learned in such lore for years gone by, and will do for years to come. What never can be positively settled, always proves a most fascinating subject for argument. Mr. Hutton, the antiquary, imagines the derivation to be this: _wich_, or _wick_, being used to signify a town or village, and _brom_, from the _broom_ growing in the vicinity. But we must leave the subject for more voluminous writers. The late Mr. Hamper, our especial antiquary, traced the orthography through no less than _one hundred and forty_ variations. In proof of Birmingham being a place of no very recent creation, the prodigious accumulation of scoria produced by the smelting of iron, at Aston furnace, may be referred to; as also the great number of exhausted coal mines, on a large common within a few miles, called Wednesbury Old Field. Both these must have been the work of many centuries, as is proved by the fact, that in the former, the mass of scoria has not perceptibly increased within the memory of that remarkable individual, “the oldest inhabitant,” though constantly receiving additions. It appears that the Britons were acquainted with the use and manufacture of iron previously to the Roman conquest, as they are described with chariots armed with scythes. It requires no very great stretch of imagination to suppose Birmingham (the _Bremenium_ of the Romans) to have been a chief station for the fabrication of such weapons. In Doomsday Book, “_Bermengeham_” is noticed; and the manor and lordship were held by the De Birmingham family and their ancestors, during the reigns from Henry I. to Henry VIII., when John Dudley, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, being in possession of Dudley, and desirous of adding to it the manor of Birmingham, contrived, by a series of villanous artifices and perjury, to wrest it from Edward de Birmingham, and add it to his own possessions. On the attainder and execution of the duke, in the reign of Mary, the manor escheated to the crown; and in 1643 a descendant of the family, through the female line, was raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron Ward, of Birmingham, changed afterwards to Viscount Dudley and Ward, and Earl of Dudley. The remains of the ancient manor house have long been removed to make way for improvements; its former name, “The Moat,” (now called Smithfield,) and two neglected effigies in St. Martin’s church, of a crusader and an ecclesiastic of the De Birmingham family, are all that remain to tell of their former greatness. Few historical events seem to have disturbed the