In a picturesque point of view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,--and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness--cleanliness--can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot- pavements are, for the most part flagged, although some of the round pebble corn-creating footways still remain in the back streets. One suburb, Edgbaston, is the property of Lord Calthorpe, and has been let out on building leases which entirely exclude all manufactories and inferior classes of houses. The result has been a crop of snug villas, either stucco or polished red brick; many of them surrounded by gardens and shrubberies, and a few of considerable pretension. Of this suburb the Birmingham people think a great deal; but, as it is built upon a dead flat in long straight lines, its effect is more pleasing to the citizen after a hard day's work, than to the artist, architect, landscape gardener, or lover of the picturesque. Birmingham is, in fact, notable for its utility more than its beauty,--for what is done in its workshops, rather than for what is to be seen in its streets and suburbs. Nowhere are there to be found so numerous a body of intelligent, ingenious, well educated workmen. The changes of fashion and the discoveries of science always find Birmingham prepared to march in the van, and skilfully execute the work needed in iron, in brass, in gold and silver, in all the mixed metals and in glass. When guns are no longer required at the rate of a gun a minute, Birmingham steel pens become famous all over the world. When steel buckles and gilt buttons have had their day, Britannia teapots and brass bedsteads still hold their own. No sooner is electrotype invented, than the principal seat of the manufacture is established at Birmingham. No sooner are the glass duties repealed than the same industrious town becomes renowned for plate glass, cut glass, and stained glass; and, when England demands a Palace to hold the united contributions of "The Industry of the World," a Birmingham banker finds the contractor and the credit, and Birmingham manufacturers find the iron, the glass, and the skill needful for the most rapid and gigantic piece of building ever executed in one year. In order to appreciate the independent character and quick inventive intelligence of the Birmingham mechanic, he should be visited at his own home. A system of small independent houses, instead of lodgings, prevails in this town, to the great advantage of the workmen.