when, spoilt by wear, it passed out of Caxton's
hands. Some 450 volumes from the Caxton Press were thus carefully
compared and classified in chronological order. In 1877 Blades took an
active part in organizing the Caxton celebration, and strongly supported
the foundation of the Library Association. He was a keen collector of
old books, prints and medals. His publications relate chiefly to the
early history of printing, the _Enemies of Books_, his most popular
work, being produced in 1881. He died at Sutton in Surrey on the 27th of
April 1890.

BLAENAVON, or BLAENAFON, an urban district in the northern parliamentary
division of Monmouthshire, England, 15 m. N. by W. of Newport, on the
Great Western, London & North Western and Rhymney railways. Pop. (1901)
10,869. It lies in the uppermost part of the Afon Lwyd valley, at an
elevation exceeding 1000 ft., in a wild and mountainous district, on the
eastern edge of the great coal and iron mining region of Glamorganshire
and Monmouthshire. There are very extensive iron and steel works, with
blast furnaces and rolling mills in the district, which employ the large
industrial population.

BLAGOVYESHCHENSK, a town of East Siberia, chief town of the Amur
government, on the left bank of the Amur, near its confluence with the
Zeya in 50 deg. 15' N. lat. and 127 deg. 38' E. long., 610 m. by river
above Khabarovsk. Founded in 1856, the town had, in 1900, 37,368
inhabitants, and is the seat of the bishop of Amur and Kamchatka. There
are steam flour-mills and ironworks. It is a centre for tea exported to
Russia, cattle brought from Transbaikalia and Mongolia for the Amur, and
for grain.

BLAIKIE, WILLIAM GARDEN (1820-1899), Scottish divine, was born on the
5th of February 1820, at Aberdeen, where his father had been the first
provost of the reformed corporation. After studying at the Marischal
College, where Alexander Bain and David Masson were among his
contemporaries, he went in 1839 to Edinburgh to complete his theological
course under Thomas Chalmers. In 1842 he was presented to the living of
Drumblade by Lord Kintore, with whose family he was connected. The
Disruption controversy reached its climax immediately afterwards, and
Blaikie, whose sympathies were entirely with Chalmers, was one of the
474 ministers who signed the deed of demission and gave up their
livings. He was Free Church minister at Pilrig, between Edinburgh and
Leith, from 1844 to 1868. Keenly i