sary at the present date one or two more figures would require being added to the amount. This town improvement was completed in 1806, when the Commissioners purchased the remaining houses and shops round St. Martin's, hut property owners had evidently learned something during the five years, for whereas the Commissioners at first estimated the further cost at £10,957, they reluctantly had to provide no less than £22,266, the additional sum required being swallowed up by "incidental expenses." The poet already quoted had apparently been absent during these alterations, for he wailingly bemoaned—
"Poor old Spiceal Street half gone,
The poor old Church stands all alone,
And poor old I can only groan,
That I can't find Brumagem."
Though an Improvement Act for Duddeston and Nechells was obtained in 1829, the town improvements for the next forty years consisted principally of road making, street paving, market arranging, &c., the opening-up ideas not getting well-rooted in the minds of our governors until some time after the Town Council began to rule the roast. That a great deal of work was being done, however, is shown by reference to the Borough accounts for 1840, in which year £17,366 was expended in lighting, watching, and otherwise improving the thoroughfares, in addition to £13,794 actually spent on the highways. 1852 saw the removal of the turnpikes, at a cost of over £3,200; in the same year £5,800 was expended in widening the entrance to Temple Row from Bull Street, and £1,800 for rounding off the corner of Steelhouse Lane and Snow Hill. In October, 1853, it was decided to obtain for £33,000 the 11,540 square yards of land at the corner of Ann Street and Congreve Street, where the Municipal Buildings. Art Gallery, and new Gas Office now stand. Almost every year since has seen the purchase of properties more or less required for substantial improvements, though some of them may not even yet have been utilised. A few fancy prices might be named which have had to be paid for old bits of property here and there, but about the dearest of all was £53 10s, per yard, which the Council paid (in 1864) for the land required to round off the corner of New Street and Worcester Street, a further £1,300 going, in 1873, to extinguish certain leasehold rights. This is by no means the highest figure given for land in the centre of the town, as Mr. John Feeney, in 1882, paid at the rate of £66 per yard for the site at corner of Cannon Street and New Street, the portion retained for his own use costing him even more than that, as he generously allowed the Corporation to take 30½ yards for £1,000. The introduction of the railways, and consequent obliteration of scores of old streets, courts, alleys, and passages, has been of vast service towards the general improvement of the town, as well in the matter of health and sanitation, as leading to the construction of many new buildings and the formation of adequate approaches to the several railway stations, the erection of such establishments as the Queen's Hotel, the Great Western Hotel, &c. Nor have private property owners and speculators been at all backward, as evidenced by our magnificent modern banking establishments, the huge piles of commercial buildings in Colmore Row, New Street, and Corporation Street, the handsome shops in New Street, High Street, and Bull Street, with many other edifices that our grandfathers never dreamed of, such as the Midland, the Grand, and the Stork Hotels, the palatial Club Houses, the Colonnade and Arcades, New Theatres, Inns of Court, &c., &c. Many of these improvements have resulted from the falling-in of long leases on the Colmore, the Grammar School, and other estates, while others have been the outcome of a far-seeing policy on the part of such moneyed men as the late Sir Josiah Mason, Isaac Hor-
