ST. PHILIP’S CHURCH.--From this time there is nothing to mark the architectural progress of the town until the important event of the making by Act of Parliament, passed in 1711, of a new parish of St. Philip in Birmingham. This was immediately followed by the building of the Church of St. Philip, a remarkably good example of the School of English Renaissance founded by Wren and continued by his pupils, of whom the architect of this Church, Thomas Archer, was one of the most successful. The first stone of the Church was laid in 1711, and it was consecrated in 1715. It is a large building, the area divided into nave and aisles by square, fluted pillars, carrying semicircular arches, and supporting galleries which extend over the aisles. With the exception of the steeple, the whole has been restored, and within the last year the chancel, which was but a shallow recess, has been lengthened by one bay. The fine east window by Mr. Burne Jones, a native of Birmingham, is considered to be one of his most successful works. The building of the Church was soon followed by the erection of rows of houses of an uniform character on the north and south sides of the churchyard. These have nearly all disappeared: they were built of brick in the good domestic style of the early part of the last century, with picturesque doorways, with curved and broken pediments, balustraded parapets, and heavy white sashes with broad moulded frames. The interiors had fine oak staircases with turned and twisted balusters, and were good examples of the cheery home-like dwellings of their time. Other buildings, forming “The Old Square,” of a somewhat similar character, have lately been pulled down to make way for a new street, and very little that is even as old as the “Georges” will be left us after a very short time. THE TOWN HALL.--The building of the Town Hall, begun in 1832, was the first great local architectural event of the present century. It was designed by Messrs. Hansom & Welch, architects, of Liverpool, in professed imitation of the Corinthian Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome, but it falls far below its prototype in the scale and richness of the “order.” To properly adapt a temple of the Romans to the various wants and requirements of a Town Hall for the people of Birmingham required considerable inventive skill, and to obtain the required height the temple was mounted on a lofty rusticated basement. The grand flights of steps to the colonnades, which add so much dignity to the Greek and Roman temples, are here accessible only by means of a ladder. It is nevertheless a noble building, of Anglesey marble, though what we admire in the exterior is due to the ancient architect, and not to the adapters. The interior is well suited to its many and varied uses, but the entrances are narrow and undignified, and the lobbies insufficient.