Stratford on Avon, with SHOTTERY, where Ann Hathaway was courted by Shakspeare and CHARLECOTE, the residence of the Sir Thomas Lucy whom the poet immortalised as Justice Shallow, are all within ten miles of Leamington.  On all these so much has been written that we will not venture to “pile up the agony” any higher.  The best companion on the road to Stratford is Charles Knight’s Life of Shakspeare, which colours all the scenes of the poet’s life in Warwickshire with the atmosphere of the sixteenth century, and summons to meet us in the streets of Stratford costumes and characters contemporary with Falstaff, Shallow, and Dogberry so well, that we do not see the Clods in corduroys, the commercial Gents in paletots, and the Police in trim blue, whom we really meet.

[The Avon viaduct:  ill13.jpg]

SOHO.  WATT, BOULTON, MURDOCH.

On leaving Birmingham, the railway almost immediately passes from Warwickshire into Staffordshire, through two parishes, Handsworth and Aston, which, presenting nothing picturesque in natural scenery or remarkable in ancient or modern buildings, with one exception, yet cannot be passed over without notice, because they were residences of three remarkable men, to whom we are largely indebted for our use of the inventions which have most contributed to the civilisation and advance of social comfort in the nineteenth century.

Two miles from old Birmingham, now part of the modern town, lies Soho, in the suburb of Handsworth, which, in 1762, was a bleak and barren heath.

In that year Matthew Boulton, the son of a wealthy Birmingham hardwareman, purchased Soho, and erected on it a mansion, with pleasure grounds, and a series of workshops, for carrying on the then staple trades of the town, in shoe buckles, buttons, and other articles included in the general title of “toys.”  In 1774, Boulton entered into partnership with James Watt, and commenced, in concert with him, the experiments in which Watt had been for some years engaged for improving Savary’s imperfect Steam-Pumping Engine.  After years of the concentrated labour of genius of the highest order, and the expenditure of not less than 47,000 pounds, their success was complete, and Watt’s inventions, in the words of Lord Jeffrey, rendered the Steam Engine “capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased, as to set weight and solidity at defiance.  By his admirable contrivances, it became a thing stupendous alike for its force and its applicability, for the prodigious power it can exert, and the ease and precision, and ductility with which that power can be varied, distributed, and applied.  The trunk of an elephant that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it.  It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal like wax before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air.  It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors, cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves.”