one of the utilitarian forces that are now working for human comfort and progress. There was a happy coincidence in the advent of this new illumination. Not only was it a mechanical or material but a moral coincidence of pleasant augury. It was natural that such men as Watt and Boulton should find in a lump of coal the two great properties of the sun—heat for steam and light for illumination; but it was a coincidence full of moral beauty, that they first set that light aglow in their Soho Works to celebrate the conclusion of peace between England and France in 1802. The association may have been entirely accidental, but it is no less interesting for that circumstance: the enlightenment of the public mind and the illumination of the dwellings and cities of the people emanated, in natural succession, from Birmingham, the one under Attwood, the other under Watt.
But there is still another coincidence worthy of note and admiration in the productive history of Birmingham. In speaking of the invaluable agencies which Watt and Boulton brought into operation, and especially of the new light they elaborated for the great cities and private dwellings of the people, a predecessor in a collateral and co-working science of illumination should have had a prior notice. This was John Baskerville, who was to the printing-press what Watt was to the steam-engine. Indeed, from Caxton's day to
