of the ancient Britons for cutting swaths through the Roman infantry. The data are rather thin and feeble for this theory; but there may be good basis of probability for it to rest upon. Whatever tools of labour or weapons of war were made of iron or copper by the ancient Britons they might as well have been made at Birmingham and vicinity as anywhere in the kingdom.
Those who affect this antiquity naturally ascribe its name to a Briton or Roman origin, but it is evidently made up of good, homely Saxon syllables, each with its rural and domestic meaning. Some one, it is said, has traced out over one hundred variations in the spelling of the name, but Hutton's idea is the most genial, Broom-wych-ham, or "Broom-village-home." To make Birmingham or Brummagem out of this pleasant Saxon appellation would be as natural and easy as half the transformations that mark the nomenclature of English towns. There is a beautiful volume of history and human character in that good old Teutonic word, heim, or ham. It never lost its charm or power by expansion of meaning and application. It kept both when it signified the residence of a large community as well as the birth-place or living-place of a single family. How many heims and hams the different families of the Teutonic race have planted in England and all over Germany and Scandinavia! No word in
