n s. ix. APRIL 11, i9H.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
283
Majesty to Birmingham for the purpose of
the public inauguration of Aston Hall and
Park on 15 June, 1858. The Princess
Victoria first had visited the town in 1830,
when on tour with her mother, the Duchess of
Kent. An incident of the visit was the
impulsive -conduct of a Mrs. Fairfax (one
of a crowd of onlookers as the royal ladies
were leaving their hotel), who suddenly
rushed at the younger lady and kissed her,
to the annoyance of both the illustrious
tourists. Her Majesty also honoured Birm-
ingham with her presence on other occasions.
Peter Hollins's statue of Sir Rowland Hill (1795-1879) was originally set up in the hall of the Exchange in Stephenson Place, in 1870, but was removed in 1874 to the hall of the then new General Post Office in Para- dise Street, and again, in 1890, to that of the present General Post Office close by. Other statues are at Kidderminster (his birthplace) and in Cornhill, London. The Postal Reformer was the son of a Birming- ham schoolmaster, and himself at one time carried en a successful private school on reformed principles at " Hazelwood," Hagley Road, Edgbaston. He is represented as holding a roll of postage stamps. Sir Rowland is buried in Westminster Abbey. Other distinguished members of his family were closely associated with the public life of Birmingham.
James Watt (1736-1819), the perfecter of the steam engine (1796), lived and worked near Birmingham from 1796 onwards. He had as his business partner Matthew Boulton (1728-1809), also a famous organizer of industry, and in their employ at the Soho Works was William Murdoch (1754-1839), the inventor of lighting by coal-gas. The most successful of the street memorials of the city is that of Watt by Alexander Monro, at the Paradise Street end of Ratcliff Place, between the Town Hall and the Institute. It was unveiled during a session of the Social Science Congress, on 2 Oct., 1868. The original model of the head is in the City Art Gallery.
An earlier statue of Watt (erected by his son James) is in a special mortuary chapel of St. Mary's Church at Hands- worth (its Registers date from 1558), and is considered by many as the masterpiece of its sculptor, Sir Francis Chantrey, R.A. It is a seated figure, the monumental glory of Birmingham. Watt, Boulton, and Mur- doch are all buried at Handsworth (as is also Francis Eginton), and near the statue are sculptured busts of Boulton and Murdoch.
There are similar statues in Westminster
Abbey, and at Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Greenock, and Manchester. James Watt,
jun., long resided at Aston Hall, formerly
the seat of the Holte family, and died there
an octogenarian in 1847. He was almost
its last resident, and a few years after his
death the Hall passed into the possession of
the Corporation, and remains, perhaps, the
most interesting of the historic buildings of
Birmingham. The Soho manufactory was
demolished about the end of 1862, but many
valued relics associated with its history are
now available for public inspection. It was
at Soho, that the ponderous " Boulton "
penny and twopenny pieces were minted.
There are also two nameless battered and
woeful-looking effigies on the 'west front of
Aston Hall, concerning the story of which
local tradition is silent.
On 1 Aug., 1874, Prof. Huxley unveiled a statue by F. J. Williamson erected at a cost of 972?. of Dr. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), natural philosopher and theo- logian, on the occasion of the centenary of his discovery of " dephlogisticated air " (oxygen). He settled in the town from Leeds in 1780, and as one of the Unitarian ministers, from 1781, of the " Old Meeting " Chapel (the site of which is now covered by the Midland Railway Station), and possessed of an insatiable appetite for controversy,, came to be associated in the public mind with opinions making, it was thought, for dis- loyalty to Church and State. The general unrest culminating in the French Revolu- tion involved Priestley in a storm of popular disapproval. His house at Fair Hill was destroyed by a mob, and' with it his labora- tory, library, and manuscripts, and he shook the dust of Birmingham off his feet in 1791, on making a final departure to America. Edmund Burke, who had visited him in the town, described him as " the most happy of men and the most to be envied."
The philosopher is represented in the act of directing rays through a lens into a mortar containing mercury ; the figure is graceful, and the expression of the face serene and thoughtful. The statue origi- nally stood as an architectural balance to that of Watt on the other side of the Town Hall. It at that time occupied a site in Congreve Street, but on the creation of Victoria Square its position was altered more than once. It stood for many years at first with the Wright statue, and subsequently also with that of Queen Victoria on an irregularly shaped street refuge (west end) in front of the Council
