Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/39

Rh approximate estimates or conceptions of the value of this motive power to various countries; some have measured it against the small standards of horse-power and man-power; but it is almost like gauging infinity with a yard-stick, to attempt to measure and value the new capacities which this force has given to mankind. What Stratford-upon-Avon was to Shakespeare, Birmingham should be to Watt. He was not born here, nor was he schooled here in the first rudiments of his science; but here he launched his great invention; here he brought out in one grand result the value and vitality of all his early conceptions and experiments in Scotland. At Soho, but a little way from Newhall Hill, where the parallel force of public opinion was organized a motive power in the moral world, steam force was first made a perfected working-power for the material and mechanical world.

But Birmingham has given to the world another working-power, a fitting and natural complement to the two great forces we have noticed; as natural and complemental as light is to the heat of the sun. Watt and Boulton, having developed steam at Soho into a working-force for its thousand uses, now educed a light to lighten the towns and villages which that force should build and fill with mechanical industries. At Soho they elaborated and gave to the world gas-power; for it really belongs to