Things are very different now. The trades of Birmingham seem almost countless in their number; many of them conducted on a scale large enough for each one to suffice a small township of workers. Brass-founding, tube-making, gun-smithing, pin-making, wire-drawing, screw-turning, gold-smithing, electro-plating, tinplate working, coining (in the legitimate kind), steel pen-making—these are but a few of the countless industries to whose skirts clings for livelihood a population of half a million. When Mr. Pickwick visited Birmingham, he repaired to the “Old Royal” hotel. Where is the “Old Royal” now? Ask of the winds—nay, consult the histories of Birmingham, and you shall learn. But if the old hotel and many of its fellows be gone, at least the description of the entrance to the town holds good, and “the dingy hue of every object visible, the murky atmosphere, the paths of cinders and brick-dust” are phrases that awake echoes of recollection in the breasts of those who know the town of old: but “the dense smoke issuing heavily forth from high toppling chimneys, blackening and obscuring everything around,” is not so descriptive of the Birmingham of to-day. For fully realising that picture, and the added touches of the “deep red glow of furnace fires, the glare of distant lights, the ponderous wagons laden with clashing rods of iron, or piled with heavy goods,” one must journey to Dudley, where such things may be seen and heard in a hellish crescendo: Birmingham has largely put those things in the background. In Mr. Pickwick’s time “the hum of labour resounded from every house, lights gleamed from the long casement windows in the attic storeys, and the whirr of wheels and noise of machinery shook the trembling walls, and the din of hammers, the rushing of steam, and the dead, heavy clanking of engines was the harsh music that arose from every quarter”; but most of these things are nowadays decently hid in purlieus remote, or masked from the chief streets by the towering modern buildings of hotels, banks, assurance offices, and all the hundred-and-one parasitical things of a limited liability age, that fasten like vermin on the producing body. Birmingham became a City on January 11th, 1889. It is a City of two fine streets, surrounded by many miles of formless, featureless, dull and commonplace (or, at their worst, hideous and squalid) houses, workshops, and factories of every size and description. New Street was only new at a period over a century ago. Corporation Street was formed in 1871 by boldly cutting through a mass of slums. In those two thoroughfares, and the open space by the Town Hall to which they both lead, is included almost everything of architectural note. In their course are to be found the best and most attractive shops, and the principal banks and commercial offices. The rest is merely of a local and provincial character.