the landing of Caesar, it would give pleasure
to the curious enquirer, could he be informed of her size in those very
early ages; but this information is for ever hid from the historian, and
the reader. Perhaps there never was a period in which she saw a decline,
but that her progress has been certain, though slow, during the long
space of two or three thousand years before Charles the Second.

The very roads that proceed from Birmingham, are also additional
indications of her great antiquity and commercial influence.

Where any of these roads lead up an eminence, they were worn by the long
practice of ages into deep holloways, some of them twelve or fourteen
yards below the surface of the banks, with which they were once even,
and so narrow as to admit only one passenger.

Though modern industry, assisted by various turnpike acts, has widened
the upper part and filled up the lower, yet they were all visible in the
days of our fathers, and are traceable even in ours. Some of these, no
doubt, were formed by the spade, to soften the fatigue of climbing the
hill, but many were owing to the pure efforts of time, the horse, and
the showers. As inland trade was small, prior to the fifteenth century,
the use of the wagon, that great destroyer of the road, was but little
known. The horse was the chief conveyor of burthen among the Britons,
and for centuries after: if we, therefore, consider the great length of
time it would take for the rains to form these deep ravages, we must
place the origin of Birmingham, at a very early date.

One of these subterranean passages, in part filled up, will convey its
name to posterity in that of a street, called Holloway-head, 'till
lately the way to Bromsgrove and to Bewdley, but not now the chief road
to either. Dale-end, once a deep road, has the same derivation. Another
at Summer-hill, in the Dudley road, altered in 1753. A remarkable one is
also between the Salutation and the Turnpike, in the Wolverhampton road.
A fifth at the top of Walmer-lane, changed into its present form in
1764. Another between Gosta-green and Aston-brook, reduced in 1752.

All the way from Dale-end to Duddeston, of which Coleshill-street now
makes a part, was sunk five or six feet, though nearly upon a flat,
'till filled up in 1756 by act of Parliament: but the most singular is
that between Deritend and Camp-hill, in the way to Stratford, which is,
even now, many yards below the banks; yet the seniors of the las