A PROTEST 
 
 AGAINST THE 
 
 EXTENSION of RAILWAYS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 LAKE DISTRICT. 
 
f 
 
 A PROTEST AGAINST THE 
 
 EXTENSION of RAILWAYS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 LAKE DISTRICT, 
 
 By Robert 
 
 Somervell, 
 
 WUh Articles thereon reprinted from the ‘ Saturday Review,’ tfc. 
 AND A PREFACE BY 
 
 JOHN RUSK IN, LL.D. 
 
 Honorary Student of Christchurch, and Slade Professor of Fine Art, C fc. 
 
 WINDERMERE: J. GARRETT. 
 
 London : Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 
 
 Wholesale Price, Ninepence, 25/24 ; Retail, One Shilling, nett. 
 
The age culls simples , 
 
 With a broad clown s bach turned broadly to the glory of the stars. 
 
 We are gods by our own reck’ning, and may well shut up the 
 temples , 
 
 A.nd wield on , amid the incense-steam , the thunder of our cars. 
 
 For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking , self-admiring , 
 With, at every mile run faster, — ^ 0 the wondrous , wondrous age ! ' 
 Little thinking if we work our Souls as nobly as our iron , 
 
 Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The evidence collected in the following pages, in sup¬ 
 port of their pleading, is so complete; and the sum¬ 
 
 mary of his cause given with so temperate mastery by 
 Mr. Somervell, that I find nothing to add in circumstance, 
 and little to reinforce in argument. And I have less 
 heart to the writing even of what brief preface so good 
 work might by its author’s courtesy be permitted to 
 receive from me, occupied as I so long have been, in 
 
 efforts tending in the same direction, because, on that 
 very account, I am far less interested than my friend 
 m this ,ocal ancl limited resistance to the elsewhere 
 
 fatally victorious current of modern folly, cruelty, and 
 ruin. When the frenzy of avarice is daily drowning 
 our sailors, suffocating our miners, poisoning our children, 
 and blasting the cultivable surface of England into a tree¬ 
 less waste of ashes, * — w hat does it really matter whether 
 
 * See,-the illustration being coincidently given as I correct this 
 page for press —the description of the horrible service, and history of 
 the fatal explosion of Dvnamito, on the once lovely estates of the Duke 
 of Hamilton, in the ‘Hamilton Advertiser’ of 10th and 17th June. 
 
2 Preface. 
 
 a flock of sheep, more or less, be driven from the slopes 
 of Helvellyn, or the little pool of Thirlmere filled with 
 shale, or a few wild blossoms of St. John’s vale lost to 
 the coronal of English Spring? Little, to any one; and 
 — let me say this, at least, in the outset of all saying — 
 nothing , to me. No one need charge me with selfishness 
 in any word, or action, for defence of these mossy hills. 
 I do not move, with such small activity as I have yet 
 shown in the business, because I live at Coniston, (where 
 no sound of the iron wheels by Dunmail Raise can reach 
 me,)—nor because I can find no other place to re¬ 
 member Wordsworth by, than the daffodil margin of 
 his little Rydal marsh. What thoughts and work are 
 yet before me, such as he taught, must be independent 
 of any narrow associations. All my own dear moun¬ 
 tain grounds, and treasure-cities, Chamouni, Interlachen, 
 Lucerne, Geneva, Yenice, are long ago destroyed by 
 the European populace; and now, for my ow T n part, 
 I don’t care what more they do; they may drain Loch 
 Katrine, drink Loch Lomond, and blow all Wales and 
 Cumberland into a heap of slate shingle; the world is 
 wide enough yet to find me some refuge during the days 
 appointed for me to stay in it. But it is no less my duty, 
 in the cause of those to whom the sweet landscapes of 
 England are yet precious, and to whom they may yet teach 
 what they taught me, in early boyhood, and would still, 
 if I had it now to learn, — it is my duty to plead with 
 
Preface. 3 
 
 what earnestness I may, that these sacred sibylline books 
 may be redeemed from perishing. 
 
 But again, I am checked, because I don’t know how 
 to speak to the persons who need to be spoken to in this 
 matter. 
 
 Suppose I were sitting, where still, in much changed 
 Oxford, I am happy to find myself, in one of the little 
 latticed cells of the Bodleian Library: — and my kind 
 and much loved friend, Mr. Coxe, were to come to me, 
 with news that it was proposed to send nine hundred 
 excursionists through the library every day, in three 
 parties of three hundred each; — that it was intended 
 they should elevate their minds by reading all the books 
 they could lay hold of while they stayed; — and that 
 practically scientific persons accompanying them were to look 
 out for, and burn, all the manuscripts that had any gold 
 in their illuminations, that the said gold might be made of 
 practical service: —but that he, Mr. Coxe, could not, for his 
 part, sympathize with the movement, and hoped I would 
 write something in deprecation of it ! As I should then 
 feel, I feel now, at Mr. Somervell’s request that I would 
 write him a preface in defence of Helvellyn. What 
 could I say for Mr. Coxe ? Of course, that nine hun¬ 
 dred people should see the Library daily, instead of one, 
 is only fair to the nine hundred, and if there is gold in 
 the books, is it not public property ? If there is copper 
 or slate in Helvellyn, shall not the public burn or ham- 
 
4 
 
 Preface. 
 
 mer it out — and they say they will, of course — in spite 
 of us ? What does it signifiy to them how we poor old quiet 
 readers in this mountain library feel ? True, we know 
 well enough,— what the nine hundred excursionist scholars 
 don’t — that the library can’t be read quite through in a 
 quarter of an hour; also, that there is a pleasure in real 
 reading, quite different from that of turning pages; and 
 that gold in a missal, or slate in a crag, may be more 
 precious than in a bank, or a chimney pot. But how are 
 these practical people to credit us, — these, who cannot 
 read, nor ever will; and who have been taught that nothing 
 is virtuous but care for their bellies, and nothing useful 
 but what goes into them ? 
 
 Whether to be credited or not, the real facts of 
 the matter, made clear as they are in the following 
 pages, can be briefly stated for the consideration of any 
 candid person. 
 
 The arguments in favour of the new railway are in 
 the main four, and may be thus answered. 
 
 I. ‘ There are mineral treasures in the district capable 
 of development.’ 
 
 Answer . It is a wicked fiction, got up by whosoever 
 has got ifc up, simply to cheat shareholders. Every lead 
 and copper vein in Cumberland has been known for 
 centuries; the copper of Coniston does not pay; and 
 there is none so rich in Helvellyn. And the main central 
 volcanic rocks, through which the track lies, produce 
 
Preface. 5 
 
 neither slate nor haunatite, while there is enough of them 
 at Llanberis and Dalton to roof and iron grate all Eng¬ 
 land into one vast Bedlam, if it honestly perceives itself 
 in need of that accommodation. 
 
 H* ‘ The scenery must be made accessible to the 
 public.’ 
 
 Answer. It is more than accessible already; — the 
 public are pitched into it head-foremost, and necessarily 
 miss two-thirds of it. The Lake scenery really begins, 
 on the south, at Lancaster, where the Cumberland hills are 
 seen over Morecambe Bay; on the north, at Carlisle, 
 where the moors of Skiddaw are seen over the rich plains 
 between them and the Solway. No one who loves mountains 
 would lose a step of the approach, from these distances, on 
 either side. But the stupid herds of modern tourists let 
 themselves be emptied, like coals from a sack, at Winder- 
 mere and Keswick. Having got there, what the new rail¬ 
 way has to do is to shovel those who have come to Keswick, 
 to Windermere — and to shovel those who have come 
 to Windermere, to Keswick. And what then ? 
 
 HI. 1 But cheap, and swift transit is necessary for 
 the working population, who otherwise could not see the 
 scenery at all.’ 
 
 Answer. After all your shrieking about what the oper¬ 
 atives spend in drink, can’t you teach them to save enough 
 out of their year’s wages to pay for a chaise and pony 
 for a day, to drive Missis and the Baby that pleasant 20 
 

 
 
 
 6 Preface . 
 
 miles, stopping wlien they like, to unpack the basket on 
 a mossy bank ? If they can’t enjoy the scenery that 
 way, — they can’t any way; and all that your railroad 
 company can do for them is only to open taverns and 
 skittle grounds round Grasmere, which will soon, then, 
 be nothing but a pool of drainage, with a beach of 
 broken gingerbeer bottles; and their minds will be no 
 more improved by contemplating the scenery of such a 
 lake than of Blackpool. 
 
 IV. What else is to be said? I protest I can find 
 nothing, unless that engineers and contractors must live. 
 Let them live; but in a more useful and honourable way 
 than by keeping Old Bartholomew Fair under Helvellyn, 
 and making a steam merry-go-round of the lake country. 
 
 There are roads to be mended, where the parish will 
 not mend them, harbours of refuge needed, where our 
 deck-loaded ships are in helpless danger: get your com¬ 
 missions and dividends where you know that work is 
 needed; not where the best you can do is to persuade 
 pleasure-seekers into giddier idleness. 
 
 The arguments brought forward by the promoters 
 of the railway may thus be summarily answered: of those 
 urged in the following pamphlet in defence of the country 
 as it is, I care only, myself, to direct the reader’s attention 
 to one (see pp. 27, 28.), the certainty, namely, of the 
 deterioration of moral character in the inhabitants of 
 
Preface. 7 
 
 every district penetrated by a railway. Where there 
 is little moral character to be lost, this argument has small 
 weight. But the Border peasantry of Scotland and Eng¬ 
 land, painted with absolute fidelity by Scott and Words¬ 
 worth, (for leading types out of this exhaustless portraiture, 
 I may name Dandie Dinmont, and Michael,) are hitherto 
 a scarcely injured race; whose strength and virtue yet 
 survive to represent the body and soul of England, before 
 her days of mechanical decrepitude and commercial dis¬ 
 honour. There are men working in my own fields who 
 might have fought with Henry the Fifth at Agincourt, 
 without being discerned from among his knights; I can 
 take my tradesmen’s word for a thousand pounds; my 
 garden gate opens on the latch to the public road, by day 
 and night, without fear of any foot entering but my own, 
 and my girl-guests may wander by road, or moorland, or 
 through every bosky dell of this wild wood, free as the 
 heather bees or squirrels. 
 
 ^ AV hat effect, on the character of such a population, 
 will be produced by the influx of that of the suburbs of 
 our manufacturing towns, there is evidence enough if the 
 reader cares to ascertain the facts, in every newspaper on 
 his morning table. 
 
 And now, one final word, concerning the proposed 
 beneficial effect on the minds of those whom you send to 
 corrupt us. 
 
 I have said I take no selfish interest in this resistance 
 
8 Preface. 
 
 to the railroad — But I do take an unselfish one: — 
 It is precisely because I passionately wish to improve 
 the minds of the populace, and because I am spending my 
 own mind, strength, and fortune, wholly on that object, 
 that I don’t want to let them see Helvellyn while they 
 are drunk. I suppose few men now living have so 
 earnestly felt — none certainly have so earnestly declared, 
 that the beauty of Nature is the blessedest and most 
 necessary of lessons for men; and that all other efforts 
 in education are futile, till you have taught your people 
 to love fields, birds, and flowers. Come then, my benevo¬ 
 lent friends, join with me in that teaching. I have been at 
 it all my life, and without pride, do solemnly assure you 
 that I know how it is to be managed. I cannot indeed 
 tell you, in this short preface, how, completely, to fulfil so 
 glorious a task. But I can tell you clearly, instantly, and 
 emphatically, in what temper you must set about it. Here 
 are you, a Christian, a gentleman, and a trained scholar ; — 
 there is your subject of education — a Godless clown, in 
 helpless ignorance. You can present no more blessed 
 offering to God than that human creature, raised into 
 faith, gentleness, and the knowledge of the works of 
 his Lord. But, observe this — you must not hope to 
 make so noble an offering to God of that which doth cost 
 you nothing! You must be resolved to labour, and to 
 lose, yourself, before you can rescue this over-laboured 
 lost sheep and offer it alive to its Master. If then 
 
Preface. 9 
 
 my benevolent friend, you are prepared to take out 
 your twopence, and to give them to the hosts here in 
 Cumberland, saying— ‘ Take care of him, and whatso¬ 
 ever thou spendest more, I will repay thee when I come 
 to Cumberland myself:’ on these terms — oh my benevo¬ 
 lent friends I am with you, hand and glove, in every 
 effort you wish to make for the enlightenment of poor 
 men’s eyes. But if your motive is, on the contrary, to 
 put twopence into your own purse, stolen between the 
 Jerusalem and Jericho of Keswick and Ambleside—out of 
 the poor drunken traveller’s pocket; — if your real object, 
 in your charitable offering, is — not even to lend unto the 
 Lord by giving to the poor, but to lend unto the Lord 
 by making a dividend out of the poor; — then, my 
 pious friends, enthusiastic Ananias, pitiful Judas, and 
 sanctified Korah, — I will do my best, in God’s name, to 
 stay your hands, and stop your tongues. 
 
 4 
 
 JOHN EUSKIN. 
 
 IIrant.wood, 2 2nd June, 1876. 
 
RAILWAYS IN THE LAKE DISTRICT. 
 
 * Is then no nook of English ground secure 
 
 * From rash assault ? Schemes of retirement sown 
 ‘In youth, and mid the busy world kept pure 
 
 ‘As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown, 
 ‘ Must perish ; — how can they this blight endure ? 
 
 ‘ And must he too the ruthless change bemoan 
 
 ‘ Who scorns a false utilitarian lure 
 
 ‘Mid his paternal fields at random thrown? 
 
 ‘Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orrest-head 
 ‘ Given to the pausing traveller’s rapturous glance: 
 ‘Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance 
 ‘ Of nature j and, if human hearts be dead, 
 
 ‘ Speak, passing winds ; ye torrents with your strong 
 ‘And constant voice, protest against the wrong.’ 
 
 In these lines Wordsworth gave vent to the feelings of 
 repugnance and regret with which he viewed the proposal, 
 made now more than thirty years ago, to construct a 
 line of railway from Kendal to a spot within a mile 
 of the Head of Windermere. The sonnet was followed, 
 a few weeks later, by two letters from the Poet, which 
 appeared in the ‘Morning Post.’ These were afterwards 
 revised and published, with some additions, in the form of 
 a pamphlet. 
 
 Before the first of these letters was written, the site 
 of the present Windermere Station had been fixed on as 
 the terminus of the railway; and, although Wordsworth 
 continued Ins opposition to the whole scheme, he wrote 
 
12 
 
 The State of the Question . 
 
 not only with a view to the circumstances of his own 
 clay, but plainly foreseeing the revival of the attempt to 
 penetrate to the heart of the district, in the future. It 
 is meet then, at a time when such an attempt appears 
 imminent, that we should, in any endeavour to rouse 
 public interest in the fate of the district, begin with 
 some notice of what was thus written in 1844. 
 
 Wordsworth felt that lie had to deal with three 
 classes of opponents, each in its own way raising the 
 cry of selfishness against him. There was first the herd 
 of speculators and money-makers who sought to bring 
 into discredit all who stood in the way of their gains; 
 second, ‘ they who are dazzled by the application ol 
 ‘physical science to the useful arts, and indiscriminately 
 ‘ applaud what they call the spirit of the age as manifested 
 in this way; and, lastly, those persons who are ever 
 ready to step forward in what appears to them to be the 
 cause of the poor, but not always with becoming attention 
 ‘ to particulars.’ It is to the latter classes that Wordsworth 
 addresses himself. 
 
 Showing, first how the taste for what is called pic¬ 
 turesque natural scenery is peculiarly a modern one, he 
 insists further on its rarity; and observes that however 
 desiiable it may be that every one should possess it, such 
 a taste cannot be implanted at once, but must be gradually 
 developed. Then, after illustrating the assertion that 
 ‘the features of nature which go to the composition of 
 
13 
 
 The Slate of the Question. 
 
 1 such scenery . . . cannot, in tlieir finer relations to the 
 * human mind, be comprehended, or even very imperfectly 
 ‘conceived, without processes of culture or opportunities 
 ‘ of observation in some degree habitual; ’— he suggests that 
 the dwellers in towns should be prepared, by more frequent 
 intercourse with Nature in her gentle moods of field and 
 wood, to appreciate her more majestic aspects. Finally 
 he ridicules the folly of destroying the charm of the 
 district, on the pretence of bringing people under its 
 influence. 
 
 Such, in the main, is the scope of the first letter. 
 In the second the argument is enforced by other consider¬ 
 ations. Thus he deprecates the proposal to send people 
 from the humbler ranks of society in large droves to the 
 Lakes, on the ground, not only of their inability to gain 
 any material benefit from the romantic scenery, but also 
 of the want of respect for their independence shewn by 
 such a proceeding. He puts in a plea on behalf of the 
 resident gentry who, having settled in the locality for 
 the sake of retirement, might be driven away by the 
 proposed change; and observes, with much truth, that 
 the poor would suffer by exchanging their old neighbours 
 of the richer sort,—whose constant kindliness and care 
 he eulogizes, — for ‘ strangers not linked to the neigh- 
 ‘ bourhood, but flitting to and fro between their fancy 
 ‘villas and the homes where their wealth was accumula- 
 ‘ ted and accumulating by trade and manufactures.’ 
 
14 
 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 He thus concludes his appeal. ‘It will he felt by 
 ‘those who think with me upon this occasion that I have 
 ‘been writing on behalf of a social condition which no 
 ‘ one who is competent to judge of it will be willing to 
 ‘ subvert, and that I have been endeavouring to support 
 
 ‘moral sentiments and intellectual pleasures of a high 
 i or( ^ er against an enmity which seems growing more and 
 more every clay; I mean u Utilitarianism/’ serving as a 
 6 mas k for cupidity and gambling speculations. My business 
 ‘ with this evil lies in its reckless mode of action by Rail- 
 ‘ ways, now its favourite instruments. Upon good authority 
 I have been told that there was lately an intention of 
 driving one of these pests, as they are likely too often 
 to prove, through a part of the magnificent ruins of 
 Furness Abbey an outrage which was prevented by 
 some one pointing out how easily a deviation might be 
 made; and the hint produced its due effect upon the 
 ‘ engineer. 
 
 Sacred as that relic of the devotion of our ancestors 
 ‘ deserves to be kept, there are temples of Nature, temples 
 built by the Almighty, which have a still higher claim 
 to be left unviolated. Almost every reach of the winding 
 vales in this district might once have presented itself to 
 a man of imagination and feeling under that aspect, or 
 as the Vale of Grasmere appeared to the Poet Gray 
 more than seventy years 'ago. u No flaring gentleman’s 
 “ house” says he, “nor garden-walls break in upon the 
 
 
15 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 “ repose of this little unsuspected paradise, but all is peace,” 
 ‘&c., &c. Were the Poet now living, how would he have 
 c lamented the probable intrusion of a railway with its 
 6 scarifications, its intersections, its noisy machinery, its 
 ‘ smoke, and swarms of pleasure-hunters, most of them 
 ‘ thinking that they do not fly fast enough through the 
 ' country which they have come to see. Even a broad 
 ‘ highway may in some places greatly impair the char- 
 6 acteristic beauty of the country, as will be readily ac- 
 ‘ know lodged by those who remember what the Lake of 
 ‘ Grasmere was before the new road that runs alone its 
 ‘ eastern margin had been constructed. 
 
 ‘ Quanto prsestantius esset 
 ‘Numen aquae viridi si margine clauderet undas 
 ‘ Herba — 
 
 ‘ As it once was, and fringed with wood, instead of the 
 ‘ breast work of bare wall that now confines ic. In the 
 ‘ same manner has the beauty, and still more the sublimity 
 f of many Passes in the Alps been injuriously affected. Will 
 ‘ the reader excuse a M.S. poem in which I attempted to 
 ‘ describe the impression made upon my mind by the des- 
 ‘ cent towards Italy along the Simplon before the new 
 ‘military road had taken place of the old muleteer track 
 ‘ with its primitive simplicities ? 
 
 * Brook and road 
 
 ‘ Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy pass. 
 
16 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 ‘And with them we did journey several hours 
 ‘ At a slow step. The immeasurable height 
 ‘Of woods decaying, never to be decayed, 
 
 ‘ The stationary blast of waterfalls, 
 
 ‘And in the narrow rent, at every turn, 
 
 ‘Winds thwarting winds bewildered and forlorn, 
 
 ‘The torrents shooting from the clear blue sky. 
 
 The rocks that muttered close upon our ears, 
 
 ‘Black drizzling crags that spake by the way-side 
 ‘As if a voice were in them, the sick sight 
 ‘And giddy prospect of the raving stream, 
 
 ‘ The unfettered clouds and region of the heavens, 
 
 ‘ Tumult and peace, the darkness and the light, 
 
 * Were all like workings of one mind, the features 
 ‘ Of the same face, blossoms upon one* tree. 
 
 Characters of the great Apocalvpse, 
 
 ‘The types and symbols of Eternity, 
 
 Of first, and last, and midst, and without end. 
 
 1798. 
 
 ‘ Thirty years afterwards I crossed the Alps by the 
 same Pass; and what had become of the forms and powers 
 ‘ to which I had been indebted for those emotions ? Many 
 of them remained, of course, undestroyed and indestruc¬ 
 tible. But, though the road and torrent continued to 
 run parallel to each other, their fellowship was put an 
 end to. The stream had dwindled into comparative in¬ 
 significance, so much had Art interfered with and taken 
 ‘ the lead of Nature; and although the utility of the new 
 work, as facilitating the intercourse of great nations, was 
 ‘ readily acquiesced in, and the workmanship, in some 
 r places, could not but excite admiration, it was impossible 
 to suppress regret for what had vanished for ever. The 
 ' orafc °ries heretofore not unfrequently met with, on a road 
 
17 
 
 The State of the Question . 
 
 ' still somewhat perilous, were gone ; the simple and rude 
 ‘ bridges swept away; and instead of travellers proceeding, 
 f with leisure to observe and feel, were pilgrims of fashion 
 ‘ hurried along in their carriages, not a few of them per- 
 ‘ haps discussing the merits of “the last new Novel.” or 
 c poring over their Guide-books, or fast asleep. Similar 
 ‘ remarks might be applied to the mountainous country of 
 "Wales; but there too, the plea of utility, especially as 
 " expediting the communication between England and Ire¬ 
 land, more than justifies the labours of the Engineer. 
 ‘Not so would it be with the Lake District A railroad 
 "is already planned along the sea coast, and another from 
 " Lancaster to Carlisle is in great forwardness: an inter¬ 
 mediate one is therefore, to say the least of it, super- 
 "fluous. Once for all let me declare that it is not against 
 "Railways but against the abuse of them that I am con- 
 
 ‘ tending. 
 
 "I have now done with the subject. The time of life 
 "at which I have arrived may, I trust, if nothing else 
 ‘will, guard me from the imputation of having written 
 "from any selfish interests, or from fear of disturbance 
 ‘which a railway might cause to myself. If gratitude 
 "for what repose and quiet in a district hitherto, for the 
 "most part, not disfigured but beautified by human hands, 
 "have done for me through the course of a long life, and 
 "hope that others might hereafter be benefited in the same 
 "manner and in the same country, be selfishness, then, 
 
18 
 
 The State of the Question . 
 
 * indeed, but not otherwise, I plead guilty to the charge. 
 ‘Nor have I opposed this undertaking on account of the 
 ‘inhabitants of the district merely , but, as hath been in¬ 
 timated, for the sake of every one, however humble his 
 ‘condition, who coming hither shall bring with him an 
 ‘eye to perceive, and a heart to feel and worthily enjoy. 
 ‘And as for holiday pastimes, if a scene is to be chosen 
 ‘suitable to them for persons thronging from a distance, 
 ‘it may be found elsewhere at less cost of every kind. 
 ‘ But, in fact, we have too much hurrying about in these 
 ‘ islands; much for idle pleasure, and more from over 
 ‘activity in the pursuit of wealth, without regard to the 
 ‘good or happiness of others. 
 
 ‘ Proud were ye, Mountains, when, in times of old, 
 
 Your patriot sons, to stem invasive war, 
 
 Intrenched your brows ; ye gloried in each scar : 
 
 ‘ Now, for your shame, a Power, the Thirst of Gold, 
 
 € That rules o’er Britain like a baneful star, 
 
 * Wm s that your peace, your beauty, shall be sold, 
 
 ‘ And clear way made for her triumphant car 
 Through the beloved retreats your arms enfold ! 
 
 Heard ye that Whistle ? As her long-linked Train 
 Swept onwards, did the vision cross your view ? 
 
 Yes, ye were startled; — and, in balance true, 
 
 ‘ Weighing the mischief with the promised gain, 
 
 Mountains, and Yales, and Floods, I call on you 
 To share the passion of a just disdain. 
 
 William Wordsworth.* 
 
 Thus TV ordsworth thought and wrote thirty years ago. 
 His opinion concerning the appreciative powers of human 
 
19 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 nature is not, certainly, so flattering to average humanity 
 as that of the Daily News ; but it will, I trust, be suffi¬ 
 ciently clear to the reader of the following, pages, that 
 the opposition of to-day is based, not on any desire to 
 return to a position of exclusiveness — however logically 
 tenable upon Wordsworth’s hypothesis — but on a frank 
 acceptance of the existing state of things, including what, 
 to be quite plain, we may as well call ‘cheap trips.’ 
 
 The changes wrought, during the last thirty years, 
 in our manufacturing centres, have certainly increased, 
 rather than diminished, the difficulty of educating 
 any one to the appreciation of nature in their im¬ 
 mediate vicinity. And this alone should make the pre¬ 
 servation of the Lake District an object of greater soli¬ 
 citude to the country at large than ever before. 
 
 In another respect our position is stronger than 
 Wordsworth’s. Not only have the Railways which were 
 planned when he wrote been constructed, but others have 
 been added, bringing travellers up to, or beyond, the 
 edge of the district on every side. 
 
 It must be observed that there are two distinct points 
 from which the question of extending a line of railway 
 into the Lake District may be regarded. Either the 
 minerals of the district are worth working, or they are 
 not. Upon this matter I am not disposed to hazard an 
 
20 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 opinion. But the arguments made use of upon the one 
 supposition, differ from those which are put forward upon 
 the other, by those who favour the railway project; and 
 it may be well to note their divergence, and to indicate 
 some of the considerations which weigh against them. 
 
 Upon the supposition that there are rfo minerals in 
 the district worth working, it is urged that the con¬ 
 struction of a railroad, while it would scarcely damage 
 the landscape, would make easy the access to places 
 which must now be reached by a walk or a drive. 
 
 It would be idle to attempt to convince a man 
 who can see nothing disfiguring or incongruous in the 
 intrusion, upon a sequestered valley, of a railway with 
 its staring accompaniments, that his opinion results from 
 any lack of fineness in his perceptive powers. But 
 concerning this question of access something may be said. 
 Perfect accessibility, of course, would demand a com¬ 
 plete network of lines, with stations at every lovely 
 spot. Nobody, I believe, wants exactly that. It must 
 therefore be a question of degree. 
 
 Considering it as such, I venture to say that a little 
 study of present railway facilities will convince any one 
 with a knowledge of the district that, unless we are to 
 legislate solely for the indolent, or for the few who, being 
 too weak to walk, are too poor to ride, no reasonable 
 case for extending the railway can be made out. Even 
 those who can afford but a day at a time may, by a 
 
21 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 judicious use of their opportunities, and by varying the 
 point of entrance, see a great part of the district. 
 
 The imputation of selfishness is always an easy and 
 popular mode of attack, and so it is hardly surprising 
 that the old cry should be raised, that our object is 
 to keep the district ‘select,’ and to bar the way against 
 the crowds of ‘excursionists.’ Such charges cannot be 
 too warmly repudiated. For my own part I cannot 
 help thinking that it would add greatly to the comfort 
 and pleasure of the humbler classes of society if our 
 benevolent Railway Companies would grant them special 
 facilities for making cheap excursions at any time, by 
 the regular trains, instead of packing them closely in old 
 rolling-stock, and shortening the time of their enjoyment 
 by an irregular and often tediously prolonged journey. 
 But upon the present system — indeed, perhaps, upon any 
 system, on public holidays — crowds are inevitable; and 
 we bid them very heartily ‘Welcome.’ As has been 
 said elsewhere, ‘It is not to guard that district in the 
 ‘interest of a small section of society, but to preserve 
 ‘it for those — and they are found in every rank — who 
 can enjoy its unsullied natural loveliness, that this 
 ‘movement has been set on foot.’ 
 
 There are no doubt places which a pedestrian, start- 
 ing from the railway station, can scarcely visit in a 
 day of nine or ten hours. But, of the persons who 
 have only such intervals at their disposal, those who 
 
u 
 
 22 The State of the Question . 
 
 could best appreciate these inaccessible spots would be 
 the last to desire that the grand solitude or peaceful 
 beauty of the places they can reach should be abolished 
 to make attainable those which they cannot. 
 
 We have no right to charge it scornfully upon our 
 working classes that the number of such appreciative 
 persons is small. The blame must rest, not so much upon 
 them, as upon the circumstances of their daily life, in 
 places where God’s light is darkened., and His work de¬ 
 stroyed, by the hands of men; in homes which they 
 fly, not to, but from , upon their holidays. One won¬ 
 ders, indeed, upon what extent of actual observation is 
 founded that singular creed of the Daily Neios , expressed, 
 as it is, with almost Athanasian fervour: — c We are 
 L bound to believe that every one appreciates mountain 
 ‘ glories, that he would not be found among them if he 
 did not like them.’ Alas! it is not so yet. But if, 
 recognizing the beneficent and helpful power of noble 
 scenery, we desire to widen the sphere of its influence 
 so that, of all who shall be found among mountains, 
 it may be truly said that they love them, let us not 
 think to accomplish our purpose by making railways 
 through their solitudes, and turning their hamlets into 
 towns. If we are ever to raise men to communion 
 with the powers of nature, — to develope in them the 
 ‘wise passiveness 9 of the ‘heart that watches and 
 6 receives’ her lore — it will not be merely by giving 
 
The State of the Question. 23 
 
 them occasional and hurried glimpses of strange beauty, 
 but by dignifying the labour, and adorning the sur¬ 
 roundings * of their daily life. 
 
 But the question assumes, on both sides, a more 
 serious aspect if it can be shewn that there are minerals 
 worth working in the Lake District. On the one hand 
 the arguments for making a railway will appear to many 
 persons more cogent; while it must be admitted on the 
 other, that, in such an event, the destruction of the 
 beauty of the district would be more sudden and com¬ 
 plete. Although, therefore, there are good reasons for 
 doubting the existence of valuable mineral deposits, it 
 will be well to look the question fairly in the face. 
 
 At a subsequent page will be found reprinted an 
 article from the Daily News, in which the editor, accept¬ 
 ing Wordsworth’s authority as to the non-existence of 
 any mineral wealth, urges the importance of preserving 
 the district from further railway intrusion. 
 
 For much that the article contains, and for the firm 
 stand it takes on this ground, we have every reason 
 
 * I cannot forbear alluding with admiration to the effort to beautify 
 in simple ways the homes of the London poor, which is being made by 
 the ‘ Society for the Diffusion of Beauty/ A paper, explaining its ob¬ 
 ject and mode of action, may be had from the founder, Miss Hill, 14 , 
 Nottingham Place, W. It is to be hoped that branches of the Society 
 may spring up in other places. Only, let no one suppose that the best 
 and wisest of such work can supersede the necessity for a change in 
 the conditions of labour. 
 
24 The State of the Question . 
 
 to be grateful. But it is, on this very account, the 
 more important that its opening paragraphs should not 
 be allowed to pass unchallenged. The notion that it is 
 desirable to develop the wealth of the district by 
 means of a railway exists, with more or less of con¬ 
 fusion, in many minds, and runs through much of what 
 is said on the subject. This idea is embodied with 
 commendable perspicuity in the following sentences. 
 
 ‘ The projected line may/ says the Daily News , c be 
 ‘ designed to facilitate the transport of minerals, and 
 ‘ to bring a working population within reach of mines. 
 c In that case, to oppose the railway because the steara- 
 c whistle frightens the wild birds, disturbs the poet as 
 c he hunts for that difficult rhyme in the tenth line of 
 e his sonnet, or makes the artist drop his brush, would 
 c be to protect sentiment at the cost of the material 
 € prosperity of individuals, and the material prosperity 
 ‘ of the country. Now, though the moralist may deny 
 ‘ that material prosperity should be allowed to outweigh 
 e finer considerations, and though the artist may repine, 
 ‘ there can be little doubt that in most cases the ordin- 
 c ary laws of economy must have their way/ 
 
 Here be it observed that, whether with the in¬ 
 tention of making an easy victory for the c laws of 
 economy/ or not, the opponent case has been stated 
 in its weakest form. A perusal to its close of this 
 very article, still more of the papers that follow it, 
 
25 
 
 The State of the Question . 
 
 will convince the reader that there are grounds for op¬ 
 posing the railway, far stronger, and arguments more 
 powerful, than the disturbance of birds and artists. 
 
 One naturally enquires, — What are these 6 laws of 
 economy, ' the mere mention of which is supposed 
 to settle the question in spite of all ' finer con¬ 
 siderations ' ? The political economists often tell us 
 that the c laws' of their science are not commands 
 or injunctions, but merely scientific statements of facts. 
 It may, for example, be a law of so-called political 
 economy that, if a mountain contain deposits of ore 
 which, when reached by a railway, might be profitably 
 worked, the construction of such railway would in¬ 
 crease c the material prosperity of individuals, and the 
 material prosperity of the country.' And hence it 
 might be hastily assumed that, if there be iron in the 
 vale of Grasmere, the sooner we make a line to the 
 place the better. But, before taking this step, it 
 must be shewn that the consummation, in the Lake 
 District, of that state of individuals and country which 
 we describe by the term ' material prosperity/ is so 
 
 pre-eminently desirable, as to outweigh all other,_ 
 
 even confessedly 'finer'— considerations. 
 
 Now, of the material prosperity of the country at 
 large, I suppose there can be no dispute. It may be 
 suffering, so far as trade is concerned, a temporary re¬ 
 lapse, after a period of inflation ; but it is still happy 
 
26 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 in the multitude of its ‘ materially prosperous 3 in¬ 
 
 habitants ; while its capital city, in spite of ‘ its un- 
 f utterable external hideousness, and with its horrible 
 ‘ internal canker of publicd egestas , pmvatim opulentia 3 may 
 still be styled, in the words of the late Professor 
 Cairnes, 'a mighty monument of Economic achievement/ 
 But, at the same time, every step of its advancing 
 career is marked, in its ‘ materially prosperous 3 dis¬ 
 tricts, by the darkening of the light of heaven, and 
 the defilement and destruction of the beauty of the 
 earth. Sneer as we may about ‘ sentimentalism 3 and 
 ‘ utopian ideas/— and talk of the grandeur of indus¬ 
 trial achievement, and the triumphs of commerce,—it 
 remains, and will remain for ever true, — the curse of 
 thorn and thistle and sweat of brow notwithstanding, 
 that the glory of the Divine work is intended for 
 the joy and for the instruction of men; for their con¬ 
 templation, and not for their contempt. And year by 
 year, as the Divine ordinance is set at defiance, and the 
 people are farther and farther separated from these 
 holy influences, the ‘ materially prosperous 3 individuals, 
 for whose welfare we are so solicitous, find themselves 
 surrounded by an increasing crowd of lunatics, drunk¬ 
 ards, and criminals. Surely it is idle to urge the de¬ 
 
 velopment of ‘ material prosperity/ as in itself a suffi¬ 
 cient argument for turning, if it were possible, this 
 Lake Country into a mining region. 
 
27 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 The most obvious reasons for opposing such a wan¬ 
 ton act of destruction will be found stated in the fol¬ 
 lowing pages; and, as I remarked above, they exceed, 
 both m number and cogency, those suggested in the 
 quotation from the Daily News. 
 
 If, indeed, we care to have any poets or painters, 
 we must give them a little room to grow, or even to 
 run wild in. We may rest assured we shall get no 
 great art, either of pen or pencil, out of the back 
 streets of our manufacturing towns; and even South 
 Kensington may be powerless to help us, if we turn 
 the whole country into slums. 
 
 But supposing we resolve to be content with art 
 of the ‘ School/ and satisfied with the poetry of the 
 ‘pavement/ — we may yet find that, in destroying 
 our country districts, and levelling them up with an 
 
 imported population, we have killed the ‘goose that 
 lays the golden egg/ 
 
 Hear what the Times says, in a leading article 
 of January, in this year: — 
 
 ‘The Army, the Navy, the Railways, the Trades, 
 
 ‘ AND EVEN THE PROFESSIONS, ALL GET THEIR BEST MEN 
 
 i from THE rural districts. Cities, ports, and Water¬ 
 ing-places get all their domestic servants from the 
 ‘villages, and generally afford them new homes. The 
 ‘wonder is how mother earth stands the incessant drain. 
 
 ‘ But at this moment, in many a rural nook, the farmers 
 
28 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 ‘ are wild with indignation at the impossibility of keep¬ 
 ing the more promising lads, and the necessity of 
 ' patting up with the worst — that is, with any they 
 'can get. Yet, strange to say, this residuum, left on 
 ' the soil because it has not the spirit, or the know¬ 
 ledge, or the physical power to seek its fortune else- 
 ' where, goes on producing children that lords and 
 ' ladies might envy it. The profoundest ignorance, 
 'or ideas about politics and religion, which it would be 
 'awful to enquire into, do not prevent them from sup- 
 ' plying Her Majesty with by far the most useful, most 
 'loyal, and most convertible portion of her subjects/ 
 Apart altogether from its special claims, it would 
 be hard to find a more powerful plea than this, for the 
 preservation of the Lake District, In summing the 
 wealth of a country, the quality of its men will surely 
 count for something; and even the 'laws of economy/ 
 if only one understood them, might be found to have 
 something to say against diminishing the production of 
 the ' most useful, most loyal, and most convertible ' 
 of Her Majesty's subjects.* 
 
 * The following paragraph from the same article shows that the work 
 of the Company of St. George has the permissive sanction of the leading 
 journal. 
 
 ‘ If it is allowable to depopulate a district, to expatriate the poor, 
 ‘ that encumbered it, to stop the paths and roads, to surround the whole 
 * area with a high paling, and then call the area a shooting, and stock 
 ‘it with game, it cannot be less allowable to take a similar area and 
 ‘ prepare it for a larger population than it held before, and that a popu¬ 
 lation, not of brutes, but of men.’ 
 
29 
 
 The State of the Question. 
 
 Following the papers relating to the Lake District, 
 will be found a letter describing, simply and graphically, 
 the changes wrought by forty years in a single York¬ 
 shire town; and an article from the Saturday Review , 
 giving some additional glimpses of the scenery in a 
 manufacturing neighbourhood. Both documents are of 
 interest in connection with what has been said above; 
 
 presenting us as they do with a picture of the pre¬ 
 sent daily surroundings of large masses of the people, 
 and furnishing a series of choice illustrations of ‘ mate¬ 
 rial prosperity/ 
 
 Now, it is an easy matter to condemn this state 
 of things in toto, or to exclaim, with the much-shocked 
 editor of a religious paper, that 'if one half of this 
 'be true, the legislature ought to interfere, and to in¬ 
 terfere with vigour/ So also it is easy to blame in 
 general those sometimes thoughtless and ignorant, but 
 often well meaning though perplexed persons, who are 
 more or less evidently involved in the sad progress of 
 our industrial system, but of whose particular circum¬ 
 stances and difficulties we know nothing. 
 
 But it is a far different thing to deal actually with 
 the evil; and worse than useless to shriek for legislative 
 interference. Even now nothing is commoner than 
 to hear manufacturers complain of the restraint of the 
 law. The evil to be dealt with is not one but many. 
 Like the hydra it has a hundred heads; but the strength 
 

 30 The State of 
 
 of them all is rooted in the selfishness that seeks its 
 own advantage at the cost of the well-being of others. 
 We have to cut down that , and cast it out; and for such 
 conquest no Acts of Parliament will avail. 
 
 I am touching the edge of a great subject, and 
 must forbear. But, depend upon it, we are none of 
 us guiltless in this matter. We are shocked, every 
 now and then, by the description of such a village as 
 Ardsley; * or startled to hear that some of the ‘ mar¬ 
 vels of cheapness/ which so delight us, are wrung from 
 the gasping poverty of children, or, ground by the 
 pressure of hunger, out of dying men; but we do not 
 enough remind ourselves that by the patronage we give 
 to the production of cheap and specious rubbish, — by 
 our encouragement of those sharp tradesmen, who wring 
 their ‘ extraordinary bargains ’ often out of the dire 
 necessities of those from whom they buy, — by our 
 grudging or refusal of a just price for honest and 
 good work, — by our every act of wastefulness, or 
 wanton gratification of the thirst for luxury, — aye, and 
 often by the beggarly meanness that takes the chattels 
 of a poor tradesman, and impoverishes him by shame¬ 
 lessly-deferred payment, — we are aiding and abetting, 
 by all the means in onr power, the spread of the 
 squalor and wretchedness which we profess to abhor. 
 
 To say that — barring a few isolated cases of op- 
 
 # See the second article from the Saturday Review. 
 
the Question. 31 
 
 pression the working classes are well paid and might 
 be in much better circumstances if they made a wise use 
 of their wages in no way lessens our responsibility. Nor 
 can I adequately express the amazement with which I 
 frequently hear high wages spoken of, as though the mere 
 increase of riches could in itself make life more happy 
 or more blessed. If a man can have no joy in his 
 work, the larger wages he gets the worse, as a rule, 
 he will spend them. 
 
 I must not pursue this subject. Both the Letter 
 aud the Article are worth careful reading and thought; 
 and may well suggest to the apostles of ‘material pro¬ 
 sperity ^ and ‘progress/ the propriety of setting some¬ 
 what more in order the very considerable territory 
 which they already occupy before attempting to annex 
 
 thereto the Lake District of England 
 
 © * 
 
 I have much pleasure in expressing my thanks to 
 the Editor of the Saturday Review, the Managers of the 
 Daily News, and the Proprietors of Punch, for their 
 permission to make use of the articles here re-printed; 
 also to Mr. Robert Browning for kindly-granted leave 
 to grace my fly-leaf with the precious lines from ‘ Lady 
 Geraldine’s Courtship,’ by the late Mrs. Browning. 
 
RAILWAYS AND SCENERY. 
 
 Reprinted, by permission, from the ‘Saturday Review’ of 
 22nd January, 1876. 
 
 Whether a Bill for making a railway from Windermere to 
 Ambleside, and thence through Rydal and Grasmere to Kes¬ 
 wick, is or is not introduced in the coming Session, there is 
 little doubt that some such application will be made in the 
 course of a year or two. As regards scenery, it seems almost 
 beyond the power of Railway Companies or hotel-keepers 
 to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs for them. No 
 matter how completely the characteristic qualities of a beau¬ 
 tiful district may be destroyed, greater facilities of approach 
 bring crowds of undiscerning travellers whose custom more 
 than repays the loss of those who no longer care to look at 
 a landscape which has been vulgarized past endurance. The 
 change is not merely insufficient to outweigh in the minds of 
 the new arrivals the fact that they can reach the scene of 
 their holiday in a shorter time and with less inconvenience; 
 it has for them positive attractions of its own. Monster 
 hotels, with a table-d’ hote for every meal, and the opportunity 
 of seeing everything in the society of a congenial crowd, are 
 
34 Railways and Scenery. 
 
 not drawbacks to be got over in consideration of counter¬ 
 balancing advantages; they are, in themselves additional 
 recommendations. Cheerfulness takes the place of sec¬ 
 lusion; and the heart of the tourist leaps within him as 
 he recognizes the signs which tell him he is not far from 
 his kind. Even if there were no other reason for pro¬ 
 posing to carry the railway beyond Windermere, the 
 anxiety of innkeepers whom the successes of their better- 
 placed rivals will not suffer to sleep would probably supply 
 sufficient promoters. Besides this, there may be fresh 
 mines discovered in the mountains on either side of the 
 valley, so that the new line might hope to secure in¬ 
 dustrial as well as passenger traffic. With these pos¬ 
 sibilities in prospect, it is useless to put aside the 
 question as one which is not likely to become practical. 
 The application for a new railway through the very 
 heart of the Lake Country will be made, and it will 
 be well if Parliament has had time to consider what 
 answer shall be given to it. 
 
 There was a time when consent would have been 
 almost a foregone conclusion. Until the financial col¬ 
 lapse of so many lines had proved that, even as re¬ 
 gards the means of locomotion, the supply may some¬ 
 times exceed the demand, those who preached that the 
 construction of railroads is not an end in itself had 
 no chance of gaining a hearing. For the moment 
 the world and all that is therein belonged to the en- 
 
Railways and Scenery. 85 
 
 gmeer and the contractor, and any one who dreamed 
 of setting bounds to their efforts was set down as a 
 reactionary dreamer. Financial embarrassments have 
 at length given the objector a chance of being listened 
 to. Amidst the disgust which accompanies bad in¬ 
 vestments, the position that a given district is not of 
 necessity the happier for the possession of a railroad 
 no longer seems a patent absurdity. It must be ad¬ 
 mitted, indeed, that the prima facie argument is al¬ 
 ways on the side of railways. The villagers of the 
 district, through which it is proposed to carry one, will 
 dispose of their produce to greater advantage, by reason 
 both of the increased facilities for sending it to mar¬ 
 ket, and of the increase in the number of those who 
 will consume it on the spot. If, in addition to this 
 new kinds of industry are developed, and mines or 
 factories spring up on the mountain-side or along the 
 course of the streams, still larger commercial gains 
 may be gathered in. Are there any considerations of 
 sufficient force to outweigh these ? 
 
 In answer to this there are two things to be said. 
 In the first place, the welfare of the particular district 
 concerned is not the only point to be kept in view. It 
 might conceivably be highly convenient to the inhabit¬ 
 ants of Queen’s Gate and Lancaster Gate to have a 
 railway carried across the centre of Kensington Gar¬ 
 dens. Mutual visits would be promoted, especially 
 
36 
 
 Railways and Scenery . 
 
 in bad weather, and a healthy competition might be 
 created between the tradesmen in the two neighbour¬ 
 hoods. But no amount of local unanimity would 
 avail anything against the general determination to retain 
 Kensington Gardens for the benefit, not only of the 
 bordering districts, but of the whole of London. 
 
 If there is any part of Great Britain which can be 
 said to be held in trust for the whole nation, it is the 
 Lakes. It is the most generally accessible of the 
 mountain districts, and notwithstanding all that has 
 been done round Coniston and Ullswater, it is still the 
 most unspoiled. What even mountain districts can be¬ 
 come under certain combinations of industry and loco¬ 
 motion, may be seen in parts of Yorkshire: and if the 
 ascent of Ilelvellyn or Fairfield had to be begun amidst 
 the smoke of chimneys, the roar of furnaces, and the 
 shrieks of railway engines, the special charm of the 
 Labe scenery would be gone. Much, no doubt, that 
 is striking and beautiful would remain, for it would be 
 long before even the most sanguine speculator would 
 be tempted to reproduce the Rigi railroad on a smaller 
 scale; but the seclusion and freshness of the valleys 
 would be destroyed, and the enjoyment even of the 
 mountains would be half neutralized by the annoyances 
 clustered at their feet. 
 
 We will not go the length of saying that there is 
 no conceivable gain to the inhabitants of Rydal and 
 
37 
 
 Hallways and Scenery . 
 
 Grasmere, which would constitute a sufficient reason for 
 depriving Englishmen of this means of escape from the 
 irritating surroundings of town life, and especially of 
 town life as it exists in the manufacturing districts, but 
 the case made out ought to be one of very unusual 
 strength. As a matter of fact, there is no ground 
 to suppose that any case at all can be made out. The 
 conversion of mountain valleys into theatres of mining 
 or manufacturing industry may be a benefit to the 
 country generally or to mankind, but it is a benefit 
 which is usually conferred at the sacrifice of some of 
 the comfort of the inhabitants. 
 
 The question is not, therefore, whether the interests 
 of the people of the Lake country are to be subordi¬ 
 nated to the interests of those who visit it in their holi¬ 
 days. It is whether the interests of those who wish 
 to make money out of the Lake country ought to be 
 treated as paramount over those of other classes. There 
 are circumstances, no doubt, which might make it neces¬ 
 sary to carry on the railway from Windermere; but 
 these circumstances should be strictly investigated and 
 severely judged. The creation of another valley brist¬ 
 ling with chimneys and machinery would be but a poor 
 compensation for the loss of one of the few districts 
 left in England in which really grand sceneiy is still 
 uninjured by man. Of the first kind of spectacle, 
 Yorkshire and South Wales have examples enough to 
 
38 Railways and Scenery. 
 
 offer. Of the last the number is now too small to 
 make the destruction of any one of them a light matter. 
 
 It is not merely the substitution of one mode of 
 locomotion for another that is involved in the extension 
 of railways in the Lakes. If nothing but the con¬ 
 veyance of passengers were concerned, it might be possible 
 so to construct the line as to prevent it from greatly 
 disfiguring the country through which it passed. Much 
 of the injury which has been inflicted in this way has 
 been due, not to the fact that a railway has been made, 
 so much as to the fact that it has been made in a par¬ 
 ticular way. A little deviation from the course actually 
 taken, a little additional outlay in making a viaduct or 
 embankment less conspicuous, or a bridge less ungrace¬ 
 ful, even the simple expedient of planting an ugly 
 wall with creepers, or hiding it with fast-growing trees, 
 would often have made an immense difference. There 
 has been great and culpable carelessness in this respect 
 on the part of those who have had the power to say 
 whether a railway shall be made or not. It ought 
 long ago to have been made the duty of some depart¬ 
 ment of the Government to see that, wherever the 
 Legislature is asked to confer additional powers of tak¬ 
 ing land, no needless injury shall be done to the scenery 
 of the district through which the Company applying 
 for these powers, proposes to carry their line. Even 
 in the absence of such a department, a Parliamentary 
 
‘Railways and Scenery. 39 
 
 Committee might insist on exacting proper security against 
 the needless disfigurement of so exceptional a district as 
 the Lakes. 
 
 But in this case the railway is only a small part of 
 the danger to be feared. The landowners in the interior 
 of the Lake country are but human. They have their 
 expenses, their embarrassments, their natural desires to 
 increase their income or to lay up capital for their 
 families; and if a railway is brought to their doors, it 
 is certain that some of them will be induced to test 
 the contents of the ground they own, in the hope that 
 it may prove as rich in mineral wealth as the ground on 
 the outskirts of the district has already proved. If it 
 is urged that when this time arrives it will be soon 
 enough to inquire how the destruction, so far as natural 
 beauty is concerned, of a district in which, though it be 
 not national property, the nation has a certain intelligible 
 interest, can be prevented, it is enough to say that it 
 will then be too late. Parliament must have greatly 
 changed its nature before it interferes to hinder a land¬ 
 lord from doing what he will with his own land. If a 
 man has a railway at his door there is no force, at least 
 none that is likely to be brought into play, strong enough 
 to prevent him from opening a mine in his field. Indeed, 
 as the law stands now, there is no force strong enough 
 to prevent him so polluting the stream that flows through 
 his land that it becomes loathsome alike to sight and 
 
40 
 
 Railways and Scenery . 
 
 taste. These things he can do without asking Parliament 
 to help him, and with a reasonable certainty that Par¬ 
 liament even if asked, will do nothing to hinder him. 
 But so long as there is no railroad nearer than Win¬ 
 dermere, Rydal Water is not likely to be invaded by 
 either mines or mills, and as a railway cannot be made 
 without the aid of Parliament, it is at this point that 
 obstructives can most conveniently take their stand. 
 
 We have guarded ourselves against being supposed 
 to say that no more railways ought to be made in the 
 Lake country. It is enough for our purpose if it is 
 conceded that no more ought to be made without careful 
 inquiry, without full consideration of the weighty argu¬ 
 ments against their extension in this particular district, 
 and without a preliminary recognition that a very much 
 more imperative case ought to be made out for their 
 construction in this particular district than in almost 
 any other. So far as is yet known, no advantage that 
 we do not already possess can be secured by prolonging 
 the railway beyond Windermere; whereas it is evident 
 that against any gain that may be realized by prolon¬ 
 gation must be set certainly the partial, and possibly the 
 entire, destruction of scenes of natural beauty, and, by 
 comparison, of unbroken solitude, which can never be 
 reproduced. In the present condition of England this 
 argument ought to have a strong influence on the Legis¬ 
 lature which has to decide the question. 
 
RAILWAYS AND SCENERY. 
 
 Reprinted by permission from the i Daily News' 1 of 
 lltli January , 1876. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has taught us all to delight in the c moun¬ 
 tain glory and the mountain gloom,’ and therefore he has 
 a right to a hearing when he thinks that these beauties 
 of nature are endangered. It appears that there has 
 been some talk of constructing a railway between Amble- 
 side and Keswick, and Mr. Ruskin is distressed at the 
 prospect. He has asked every one who shares his fears 
 to oppose the projected railway. Many people will be 
 ready with the ordinary sneer at sickly sentimentalism, 
 exclusiveness, and the rest of it. The question, however, 
 whether or no Mr. Ruskin has good reason to dislike the 
 driving of a railway through such valleys as those of 
 Ambleside and Grasmere is by no means to be settled 
 in this easy way. An impression, or an opinion, may 
 spring from sentiment without being sickly, and the 
 sentiment which desires to keep a lovely corner of Eng¬ 
 land free from noises which are hideous and sights which 
 are certainly out of keeping with natural beauty is a 
 
42 Railways and Scenery. 
 
 healthy one enough. The projected railway may, for 
 all that we know to the contrary, be a necessary under¬ 
 taking. It may be designed to facilitate the transport 
 of minerals and to bring a working population within 
 reach of mines. In that case, to oppose the railway be¬ 
 cause the steam-whistle frightens the wild birds, dis¬ 
 turbs the poet as he hunts for that difficult rhyme in 
 the seventh line of his sonnet, or makes the artist drop 
 his brush, would be to protect sentiment at the cost of 
 the material prosperity of individuals, and the material 
 prosperity of the country. Now, though the moralist 
 may deny that material prosperity should be allowed to 
 outweigh finer considerations, and though the artist may 
 repine, there can be little doubt that in most cases the 
 ordinary laws of economy must have their way. Sup¬ 
 pose that there is a mine of pencil lead, for example, in 
 the Valley of Ambleside, and suppose that this material 
 is becoming rapidly exhausted, and perhaps even Mr. 
 Ituskin would allow that a commodity so indispensable 
 ■would have to be got at, even at the cost of a railway 
 along the shores of Grasmere. Now, the country thinks 
 that other minerals are at least as desirable as lead for 
 drawing-pencils, and is determined to have them. It 
 would scarcely be possible to oppose a railway constructed 
 for the purposes indicated, and yet the results would be 
 such as every lover of nature must regret. The streams 
 of the Lake district are already black as ink, even near 
 
Railways and Scenery. 43 
 
 the head of Coniston Water—the brooks are poisoned, 
 the mountain sides scarred, and broken up by a hun¬ 
 dred hideous buildings. The hills round Grasmere would 
 fare little better if mining operations were carried on 
 there. It is a sad thought, but apparently an inevitable 
 result of the discovery of valuable metals. But here, 
 of course, the question arises, are there such veins of 
 metal, and is the railway an economical necessity? On 
 tins subject we have evidence which ought to be good, 
 if a poet, revered by all men of English speech, spoke 
 true. We have the evidence of Wordsworth. 
 
 When the Kendal and Windermere Railway was pro¬ 
 jected, Wordsworth, as every one knows, wrote a sonnet 
 on the subject, as indeed he did on most subjects. He 
 contrasted the pride of the old hills and their indifference 
 to the scars which their patriotic sons inflicted on them 
 m the process of fortification, with the disgust of the 
 same mountains at the sound of ‘that whistle.’ He 
 called on the mountains, vales, and floods ‘to share the 
 ‘ passion of a just disdain.’ This was poetry, if not pan¬ 
 theism ; but Wordsworth returned to the charge in 
 prose, and it is what he said in that humble medium 
 that is most to the present purpose. ‘In this district,’ 
 he observed, ‘the manufactures are trifling; mines it 
 ‘has none, and its quarries are either wrought out or 
 superseded; the soil is light, and the cultivateable parts 
 ‘of the country are very limited; so that it has little 
 
44 Railways and Scenery. 
 
 ‘to send out, and little has it also to receive.’ Now 
 if this is a true account of the state of mines and 
 quarries — and, of course, in the discoveries of thirty 
 years it may have been proved untrue — there is really 
 no need for a railway in the most beautiful and secluded 
 part of the Lake Country. It has been alleged that 
 the district is closed to people who are too weak to take 
 one of the most lovely and exhilarating walks in Eng¬ 
 land, and too poor to hire a dog-cart, or the gig of 
 respectability. Granting that this is so, the question 
 arises whether they would find any consolation in rail¬ 
 ways. They would gain nothing but a hurried glance 
 at lakes, waterfalls, trees, and the interior of tunnels, 
 which enjoyments can be had in endless variety in most 
 parts of this country. Any peculiar charm of the meres 
 and hills they would necessarily miss, while they would 
 carry along with them the noise, the turmoil, the un¬ 
 sightly cuttings which are necessary accompaniments and 
 conditions of speedy travel elsewhere, but are surely un¬ 
 called for by the side of Grasmere. Of course, if the 
 invalids get their railway the country people will be able 
 to use it, and will journey from Ambleside to Keswick 
 much quicker than they used to do. At the same time 
 they will lose the healthy exercise or the beautiful drive. 
 Perhaps they are wiser than the Yirgilian rustics, and 
 know the blessings they enjoy; perhaps they do not 
 appreciate them, and think that speed is as necessary 
 
45 
 
 Hallways and Scenery. 
 
 m their beautiful country as it is on the road from Glas¬ 
 gow to London. Even granting that a Keswick man 
 will be able to go to Ambleside in a very short time, does 
 that argument make the railway desirable ? Words¬ 
 worth observed, in his letters to a daily paper in 1844 , 
 that ‘the staple of this country is, in fact, its beauty 
 ‘and its character of seclusion and retirement.’ Cannot 
 England afford herself the luxury of one district where 
 she can enjoy this peaceful beauty ? Are her men and 
 women become so weak that they cannot walk in Eng¬ 
 land the distances which would seem so short in Switzer¬ 
 land ? Every one knows that this is not the case. The 
 frosty Caucasus and the high Alps are the playing-ground 
 of Englishmen and Englishwomen, and it is really curious 
 if they cannot walk a few miles at home. To be spared 
 a walk of that sort is almost all they could gain by 
 the railway, if the railway has no other raison d'etre 
 than to save horse hire and shoe leather. 
 
 When Wordsworth wrote his letters in 1844 , he had 
 to combat the charge of selfish exclusiveness. Why, it 
 was asked, should he, the patron of the poor when the 
 poor chanced to be idiot boys and leech gatherers, try 
 to prevent the intelligent poor from sharing his enjoy¬ 
 ment ? He had done for the Lakes what Clough was 
 afraid of doing to his Highland waterfall, ‘made it a 
 ‘lion, and got it at last into guide books.’ Why 
 
 did he wish to prevent the working classes from seeing 
 
46 Hallways and Scenery . 
 
 his lion? Wordsworth’s answer came to this: first, 
 that he did not prevent them, for the Lakes were al¬ 
 ready within easy reach of all; secondly, that the public 
 had not been educated up to enjoying the Lakes and 
 mountains. A Manchester man had told him that a 
 beautiful detached rock near his house was ‘ a hugly 
 6 lump.’ People should not rush into his solitude and 
 spoil it, and then talk about ugly lumps. He thought 
 that the people should take walks in the fields, near 
 their homes, where they could study botany and be out 
 of the way. It was impossible that they could ap¬ 
 preciate Grasmere, and their appearance annoyed and 
 disturbed the poetic few, the county families, and the 
 faithful peasantry. This view of Wordsworth’s, which 
 admits of being stated in a rather cynical way, is not 
 one that could be seriously put forward any longer. 
 We are bound to believe that every one appreciates 
 mountain glories, that he would not be found among 
 them if he did not like them, and that, at all events, 
 he will never learn to appreciate them while he potters 
 about a field in the rural neighbourhood of Birmingham. 
 Moreover, fields near large towns are rather less easy 
 to get at than Ambleside itself. If there are two voices 
 — one of the sea, and the other of the mountains — 
 as Wordsworth tells us, and if these voices have so 
 many noble and moral remarks to make, as he implies, 
 every one has a right to hear them, and a right to be 
 
Railways and Scenery . 47 
 
 taken cheaply into places where they may be heard. 
 But there is nothing of exclusiveness in the opposition 
 to the railway which Mr. Buskin dislikes, because the 
 Lakes are already of very easy access to all persons. 
 A glance at the map in Bradshaw's topographical com¬ 
 pilation shows that the Lake Country is cross-hatched 
 with railroads. The traveller can go by train, rejoicing, 
 to Windermere, to Coniston Water, to Derwentwater, 
 and close to Ullswater. Surely he might walk or ride 
 to Wastwater, and Thirlmere, and Grasmere. He will 
 be all the better for it if he does, and if he cannot, 
 he will lose little by losing all that he would see from 
 the window of a train. Where no valid economical 
 reason presents itself, the country can surely afford her¬ 
 self a breathing place, a quiet country where Nature has 
 her own way, and where her voices can be heard without 
 disturbing and alien sounds. It is not true economy, 
 as Mr. Mill not only allowed but urgently insisted, 
 but selfish waste, to destroy, without pressing cause, 
 the beauty of mountains that breathe of freedom, and 
 the purity of fertilizing streams. The desert places of 
 
 the earth have played a great and worthy part in 
 human history; the wilderness has been a resting-place 
 for the greatest minds and the weariest. Surely England 
 can afford to indulge herself in this little corner of not 
 uncomfortable desert, this wilderness where the wavside 
 inns offer better fare than wild honey. 
 
LADY OF THE LAKE LOQUITUR. 
 
 Reprinted by permission from ‘Punch' of February 5, 1876. 
 
 „ Mr Rnglnn has issued an invitation to all persons “who have any 
 regard for him or his writings, to sign a petition to Parliament to prevent 
 the extension of railroads across the Lake country. It appears that 
 longing eyes have been cast by those who desire to develop the material 
 ^ C o SP I C y w e “'^.resources of the district, upon the route which 
 passes through Ambleside to Keswick. The ostensible reason assigned is 
 to bring the most attractive parts of Westmorland within reach of the 
 tourist, who now has to walk long distances or go to the expense of hiring 
 
 *} ^F' • 5?* thl . s the anthor of Modern Painters detects, and no 
 
 doubt rightly, the intention of converting these pleasant places of rest into 
 a mining region. — The Academy , January 22, 1876. 
 
 List ! Let my silver voice at least be heard, 
 Echoing that eloquence which oft hath stirred 
 Even Philistine feeling! 
 
 Let not the Trade-Gnome further still intrude 
 Within the sweet sequestered solitude, 
 
 Where Nature’s coyest charms may yet be wooed 
 To full revealing. 
 
 Can you not keep one inch of all your isle 
 In the unsullied light of Beauty’s smile, 
 
 Which dirt and discord banish? 
 
 Must your swart Titans thrust their iron arms 
 Till, scared by driving reek and rude alarms, 
 
 From their fouled path Pan’s brood with all their charms 
 Shall wholly vanish ? 
 
50 
 
 Lady of the Lake Loquitur . 
 
 If Progress its far aims to reach, must fill 
 The air with poison, choke the babbling rill, 
 
 And dye the limpid river, 
 
 And snch compulsion, as a rule, ’tis vain 
 To challenge, yet some haunts should sure remain, 
 Which wiser Man to Mammon’s grasping reign 
 Will scarce deliver. 
 
 Seeing all-liberal Heaven has given you here 
 Vales soft as those of Tempe or Cashmere, 
 
 Still lakes and solemn mountains, 
 Spurn not such largess ! Do not drive away 
 All Solitude’s shy nymphs, whose hands array 
 My banks with bowers, and keep in joyous play 
 My floods and fountains. 
 
 I am the Lady of the Silver Lake; 
 
 I would not have my mountain echoes wake 
 To shriek and snort incessant. 
 
 And you whose steps have strayed along my marge 
 Would Steam-Fiend’s roar, gush of foul mines’ discharge, 
 Fit the still scene where my smooth-shining targe 
 Reflects the crescent ? 
 
 Even to cold Utilitaria’s self— 
 
 Sole regent in these days to thirst of pelf 
 Given by self-dedication, — 
 
 I make appeal! Prudence forbids to spoil 
 The few fair spots on your sea-straitened soil, 
 Where poet-passion and o’erburdened toil 
 Find consolation. 
 
51 
 
 Lady of the Lake Loquitur. 
 
 Here have been nourished sons of Art whose song 
 Or storied canvas shall your fame prolong, 
 
 And swell your pride and pleasure. 
 
 Where Wordsworth roved let not the wheels of Trade, 
 Unresting as Ixion’s, make fresh raid, 
 
 Till Fancy flees her loveliest, best-loved shade, 
 
 And needful leisure! 
 
 Grant in these crowded times men’s needs are more 
 Than broad meres, mountains high, and forests hoar, 
 Birds’ song, or rose, or lily; 
 
 For these, too, higher human yearnings crave: 
 
 Were it not well source of such joys to save, 
 
 Nor wholly yield old Pan a helpless slave 
 To Puffing Billy ? 
 
 Though Commerce claim free course, and subtle Greed 
 In mask of Progress, her convenience plead 
 Should Wisdom not be chary 
 In casting Nature’s dearest dowers away ? 
 
 Leave Lakeland still to elf, and faun, and fay, 
 
 For Art and Thought and Toil seifs place of’ play, 
 
 And sanctuary ! 
 
PROTEST AND LETTER. 
 
 The following short Protest and Letter, with the connecting paragraphs, 
 a small Map of the district, and form of Petition to Parliament, are 
 issued as a separate paper for gratuitous circulation, and for signa¬ 
 ture.^ All who love the Lake Country may thus help in the work. 
 Copies of this paper may le had, gratis, from B. Somervell, Hazel- 
 thwaite, Windermere; to whom forms of petition when filled should 
 be forwarded. 
 
 It cannot be denied that for some years the rapid extension 
 of various industries has been doing much to change the faco 
 of our Country. What with Railways, Coals, Iron, and 
 Chemicals, great tracts of country have been rendered frightful; 
 while the general multiplication of smoking erections of all’ 
 sorts has blackened earth and sky over still larger areas. 
 It is evident that unless we are prepared to turn the country 
 into a smoke-darkened shop some check must, sooner or later, 
 be put upon this process. And as the threatened further 
 encroachment of a railway upon one of the loveliest districts 
 in England menaces it with the beginning of such destruction, 
 it is needful that all who know the value of fine natural scenery, 
 and feel the importance of preserving it, should make some 
 resistive effort. 
 
 It is not merely the substitution of one kind of road and 
 one kind of tractive power for another that is to be dreaded,— 
 
54 
 
 Protest and Letter. 
 
 but the change which such substitution always brings with it, 
 and the precedent it furnishes for further and more disastrous 
 innovation. 
 
 A glance at the accompanying map will shew that the 
 Lake District is entirely surrounded by railway, and approach¬ 
 able on all sides. The London and North Western Company 
 has access at Kendal, Windermere, Shap, Penrith, (for Pooley 
 Bridge), Troutbeck, (for Ullswater), and Keswick; and the 
 Furness Company, (in connection with the Midland) at 
 Grange, the foot of Windermere (Lake Side), Broughton, 
 Coniston, and Seascale, (for Wastwater and Ennerdale). So 
 far as the public is concerned what more could be wished? 
 In the very heart of the district the traveller is within three 
 or four hours’ drive of a railway station. 
 
 This notwithstanding, it is notorious that for some time 
 past the rival companies have been casting longing eyes upon 
 Ambleside, as a point desirable of attainment in itself, and 
 possibly a convenient base for further enterprise in tlje direction 
 of Grasmere or even Keswick. 
 
 Is such an extension by either Company desirable or 
 permissible ? 
 
 There are, perhaps, few Englishmen who would scruple, 
 at the call of their favourite tutelary, to blast the loveliness 
 of their mother country when it takes the modest form of 
 cornfield and hedgerow; but surely it concerns us all to keep 
 a few chosen places lovely and clean, if only for holiday time. 
 
 It is asserted that the mineral wealth of the district 
 would be wonderfully developed by a line of railway. Pro¬ 
 bably there are persons living who would undertake to turn 
 the country of Wordsworth into a Black Country, for a per¬ 
 centage on the transaction. But are we willing to give 
 them the chance ? Open up the district with a railway 
 give full scope to commercial enterprise — and we may find 
 ourselves unable to hinder them. 
 
 Englishmen who fancy it might be for the public good 
 to have a progressive Lake District, should spend their next 
 
55 
 
 Protest and Letter . 
 
 holiday in the Black Country, or take a run down, via Furness 
 Abbey, to Barrow and its neigbourhood, and try how they 
 like the change from Grasmere. 
 
 Surely now, if ever, a firm stand must be made, and the 
 opinion of all wise and gentle persons stoutly expressed. 
 
 The Petition, of which a draft is annexed, is intended 
 for presentation to Parliament should any Bill be introduced 
 proposing to extend any line of railway into the district; 
 and all visitors who have the smallest care for its preservation 
 are earnestly asked, not only to sign their own names, but to 
 induce their friends in other parts of the country to do so. 
 There are many who would gladly sign, whose names might 
 be obtained in this way; and it is only by the hearty co¬ 
 operation of all that the work can be efficiently done. 
 
 (For Form of Petition see Page GO.) 
 
 I have ventured, reluctantly, to reprint the following Let¬ 
 ter, in no desire to perpetuate a controversy, but because it 
 states plainly one or two things which are only hinted at 
 in the foregoing Protest. 
 
 I do so in the hope that it may be found useful by 
 those who are endeavouring to rouse in the public mind 
 some sense of the utter folly of permitting all the lovely 
 places in our country to be destroyed, one after another, 
 by the advancing tide of what we are pleased to flatter 
 ourselves by calling ‘ Progress/ Surely we must be blind 
 to the real meaning of the word, or else to the nature of 
 the realities which we use it to denominate, if we suppose 
 that the change from the peaceful life of the country to 
 the feverish stir of our filthy towns, and the endless me¬ 
 chanical drudgery of our degenerate and degrading manu¬ 
 factures, is truly progressive . While, therefore, we urge the 
 importance of preserving the Lake District more particu¬ 
 larly on the ground of its especial beauty, and national 
 
56 
 
 Protest and Letter. 
 
 value as a recreation ground, let ns not lose sight of the 
 other and larger question—How far, even in less favoured 
 regions, the rapid growth of large towns and the peculiar 
 developments of modem trade can be approved as conducing 
 to the formation of noble character, and to the ‘Progress,’ 
 physical, moral, and spiritual, of the people. 
 
 The attempt to call attention to the threatened destruc¬ 
 tion of the Lake District, before it is too late, is already 
 meeting with the approval and support of persons in all 
 parts of the country. But the Public has been long accus¬ 
 tomed, either to!] look upon every railway as an unmistake- 
 able boon, or at best, to content itself, when any unusual 
 sacrilege has been done, with a half-ejaculated Shame ! so 
 that the work of arousing it to its duty is an arduous one. 
 There are numbers of persons who are with us in principle 
 and in sympathy, who are as yet only lukewarm. And 
 these must be interested and roused if possible, and led to 
 see that this is no selfish effort to save a few fields from 
 being turned into cinder ground, but an honest endeavour 
 to vindicate important but forgotten principles. 
 
 But we have not only to deal with objectors, but to 
 meet opponents. Of these, some, it is true, are blinded only 
 by selfishness or ignorance; but there are others who would 
 openly trample underfoot all precious things to obtain one 
 precious metal; and it is to contend with these that it 
 behoves us earnestly to strengthen our forces. 
 
 To this deliberate service of Mammon, more than to any 
 other cause, we owe the degradation of the arts of life, by 
 division of labour and machinery, to merely mechanical toil; 
 and their degeneracy,— for our vast machine power has been 
 used not to supply our needs more easily and completely, 
 but to encourage an extravagant and wasteful consumption 
 of rubbish; with this pleasing result at the close of half a 
 century of Progress, — that we can hardly obtain one of the 
 manufactured products of our country of the sterling quality 
 that our grandfathers could. 
 
Protest and Letter . 
 
 57 
 
 It is not likely that argument will shake the purpose, 
 or contempt stay the hand of men whose prime principle is 
 to make money. It simply remains for us now to deter¬ 
 mine whether they possess a majority in the councils of the 
 nation, or whether, as one would hope, there be not yet 
 strength of heart and purpose enough among the wise and 
 gentle to say with authority to this restless herd — ‘ thus 
 far shall ye come and no farther.’ 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OF ‘THE WESTMORLAND JOURNAL.’ 
 
 I have to thank you for your courteous insertion 
 and notice of my protest and petition against the construc¬ 
 tion of new railways in the Lake District: and you are so 
 far favourable to my views, that, with your permission, I 
 will state what I have to say in answer to your objections. 
 
 Your article divides itself into two parts; — criticism of 
 
 position, and definition of your own. Critically you de¬ 
 molish me before a select committee of the House of Com¬ 
 mons; and afterwards you give me some good-natured advice. 
 
 The argument which you put into the mouth of an 
 ‘acute Parliamentary barrister’ is as follows: 
 
 (a) I accept your statements about the defilement of 
 many parts of the country; 
 
 (b) that the Lake District is used by many as a 
 place for health-getting and recreation is a fact, and I do 
 not deny it; 
 
 (c) but the inhabitants of the smoke-darkened regions 
 are the very people who most need the refreshment of your 
 fine country, and yet, when they come for a day to the lakes, 
 some of the grandest scenery is barred against them, since 
 it can only be visited ‘at an expenditure far beyond the 
 reach of any one who does not belong to the affluent classes.’ 
 
 (d) Hence it is desirable that railways should be pushed 
 on into the heart of the district ; Q.E.D. 
 
 The weight of the argument rests upon the statement 
 in paragraph c. 
 
58 
 
 Protest and Letter . 
 
 Now, sir, I am not going to attempt myself, nor shall 
 I ask you to attempt, to draw the line between the ‘ affluent ’ 
 and the unaffluent classes ; but the least affluent excursionists 
 have legs ; and such being the case, and supposing they 
 are inclined to use them, — if they really love the fine 
 scenery between Ambleside and Keswick, they have time in 
 the nine or ten hours at their disposal to get into the 
 heart of it. 
 
 But for those who are unable or unwilling to take a 
 walk of 15 to 20 miles — is it really so, — that the cost of 
 getting among the hills is ‘ far beyond their reach ? * The 
 return fare by steamer between Bowness and Ambleside is 
 one shilling, and the ’bus from Waterhead to Grasmere a 
 shilling or sixpence. I am within the truth in saying that 
 hundreds of these excursionists might, for less money than 
 they spend in paddling or being paddled about Bowness Bay, 
 travel far into the heart of our hill country. 
 
 But living, as I do, at Windermere, I have taken some 
 pains to study the bearing and temper of these crowds, and 
 I do not scruple to say that the majority of the persons 
 composing them are bored by our fine scenery, and have 
 small care for anything in which the Lake District excels 
 a suburban tea-garden. 
 
 Do not let me be thought to speak rashly. There 
 are some of those who come to us for a day out of 
 Lancashire and Yorkshire, who do love and enjoy the place; 
 and the sight of their quiet, gladdened faces is beautiful 
 and touching to behold. For their sakes, quite as much 
 as for the sake of those whose means permit them to make 
 a longer stay, I plead that the place may be kept as it is. 
 
 For observe — and this brings me to the examination of 
 your position (‘ a railway — but as little of it as possible 
 — and elegant bridges, &c.,’) — when you make a railway 
 to a place of perfect natural beauty, when you cast up 
 your embankments and build your bridges, blast out your 
 cuttings and bore your tunnels, erect your stations and sheds, 
 
59 
 
 Protest and Letter. 
 
 your sidings and signals, and finish with a row of square- 
 set cottages, looking as if they had been baked whole in 
 one ugly mould, and stuck down in a lump, you do not 
 enable a larger number of people to visit the same place ; 
 you simply destroy all its characteristics past redemption’ 
 and put the old place out of sight of every one for ever. 
 
 Lastly —do not suppose that the Railway Companies 
 care very greatly about running cheap trips to Ambleside 
 and Grasmere. Their object in wanting a railway I hinted 
 at pretty plainly in my protest. When it comes to that, 
 elegant bridges will be of little avail. Only to-day I heard 
 something which, with your permission I will quote, as 
 an expression of opinion, though differing widely from 
 your own; ‘we are being undersold by foreigners in iron, 
 and if these hills contain iron we must get it, and never 
 mind the scenery. We can’t afford to keep fine scenery 
 for a few, Ac., Ac.’ Now if we desire to be nothing but 
 ironmongers, and to live our lives, and die, and be buried 
 amid the sweat and dust, the darkness and flame of our 
 forges —well and good. That is what some people call 
 ‘progress.’ But if purity of mountain air is good to be 
 enjoyed —if it be yet worth while to cherish the patriotism 
 that springs from affection for a noble country — if we have 
 any purer love than the love of gain, any joy in the works 
 of God, any care for rest, or any thoughts of peace —call 
 these things ‘sentiment’ if you will, but they are noble 
 sentiment, that is worth preserving ; and most surely to be 
 nourished and strengthened by the contemplation of the un¬ 
 sullied grandeur of Nature. We may mar that beauty of 
 Holiness, and despise that power for good if we will ; but, 
 believe me, when our work of destruction is done, we shall 
 find that they cannot be bought back with the price of all 
 the iron in the world. 
 
 I am, yours truly, 
 
 Robert Somervell. 
 
 Hazetthwaite, Windermere, Jidy 26 th, 1875 . 
 
60 
 
 Protest and Letter. 
 
 FORM OF PETITION. 
 
 To the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland in 
 Parliament assembled . 
 
 The humble petition of the undersigned, sheweth, that 
 whereas a tract of country, comprising parts of the Counties 
 of Westmorland, Cumberland, and Lancashire, and commonly 
 known as the Lake District of England, contains some of the 
 most beautiful scenery in Her Majesty’s dominions, and has in 
 time past been, and at this present time is, visited by large 
 numbers of Her Majesty’s subjects, and by them used as a place 
 of enjoyment, health-getting, and relaxation of mind and body, 
 And whereas it is expedient to preserve the aforesaid 
 District from the encroachment of all that may tend to destroy 
 its natural beauty, or open the way for such destruction, 
 
 And whereas it is proposed in a Bill now before your 
 
 Honourable House to extend a line of railway from-- 
 
 to-, 
 
 Your petitioners therefore pray that your Honourable 
 House will refuse to pass the said Bill, or any Bill proposing to 
 extend any line of railway into the district aforesaid. 
 
 And your petitioners will ever pray, &c. 
 
 It is possible that upon notice of a Railway Bill being given , it 
 may be deemed desirable to re-collect the signatures , to a definitive 
 Petition . In that event every signatory will be communicated 
 
 with direct The present collection of names is the most necessary 
 and important part of the work ; as it is desirable that in an 
 emergency every one interested in the matter may be promptly 
 informed . To defer organization until Parliamentary notice is 
 given 9 would be to court certain defeat 
 
TARTS OF 
 
 A LETTER FROM WAKEFIELD. 
 
 By E. L. 
 
 (Reprinted by permission from ‘ Fors Glavigera’ of July and 
 September , 1875.*) 
 
 What long years have passed since my eyes first saw the 
 calm sweet scene beyond Wakefield Bridge! I was bat a small 
 creature then, and had never been far from my mother’s door. 
 It was a memorable day for me when I toddled a full mile from 
 the shady up-town street where we lived, past strange windows, 
 over unfamiliar flags, to see the big weir and the chapel on the 
 Bridge. Standing on tiptoe, I could just see over the parapet 
 and look down-stream. 
 
 That was my first peep into fair, green England, and des¬ 
 tined never to be forgotten. The grey old chapel, the shining 
 water below, the far-winding green banks spangled with butted 
 cups, the grove-clad hills of Heath and Kirkthorpe,-— all seemed 
 to pass into my heart for ever. 
 
 There was no railway then, only the Doncaster coach career¬ 
 ing over the Bridge with a brave sound of horn; fields and 
 farmsteads stood where the Kirkgate Station is; where the 
 twenty black throats of the foundry belch out flame and soot, 
 there were only strawberry-grounds and blossoming pear-orchards, 
 among which the throstles and blackbirds were shouting for 
 gladness. 
 
 * ‘ Fora Clavigera; letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Groat 
 Britain by J. Buskin, LL.D., &c., published monthly, by G. Allen, Sunny- 
 side, Orpington, Kent. 
 
62 
 
 Letter from Wakefield. 
 
 The chapel lay neglected in a nest of wild willows, and a 
 peaceful cobbler dwelt in it. As I looked at it, Duke Richard 
 and King Edward became living realities to me; the dry bones 
 of Pinnock’s Catechism started suddenly into life. That was the 
 real old chapel of the fifteenth century. Some years after, they 
 ousted the cobbler, pulled down the old stones, restored it, and 
 opened it for ritualistic worship; but the cheap stonework has 
 crumbled away again, and it now looks as ancient as in days of 
 yore. Only, as I remember it, it had a white hoariness: the 
 foundry smoke has made it black at the present day. 
 
 Some of my companions had been farther out in the world 
 than myself. They pointed out the dusky shape of Heath Hall, 
 seen through the thinly-clad elm-trees, and told me how old 
 
 Lady-’s ghost still walked there on stormy nights. Beyond 
 
 was Kirkthorpe, where the forlorn shapes of the exiled Spanish 
 nuns had been seen flitting about their graves in the churchyard. 
 
 There on the right was the tree-crowned mound of Sandal 
 Castle, which Cromwell had blown down; the dry ditch was full 
 of primroses, they told me; those woods bounded Crofton, 
 famous for its cowslip fields ; and in Heath Wood you would see 
 the ground white with snowdrops in March. 
 
 I do not think that it is the partiality of a native that makes 
 me think you could hardly find a fairer inland pastoral scene, 
 than the one I beheld from Wakefield Bridge the first time I 
 stood there. On the chapel side there was the soft green Eng¬ 
 lish landscape, with woods and spires and halls, and the brown 
 sails of boats silently moving among the flowery banks ; on the 
 town side there were picturesque traffic and life ; the thundering 
 weir, the wide still water beyond, the big dark-red granaries, 
 with balconies and archways to the water, aud the lofty white 
 mills grinding out their cheering music. 
 
 But there were no worse shapes than honest, dusty millers 
 men, and browned boatmen, decent people ; no open vileness and 
 foul language were rampant in our quiet clean town in those days. 
 I can remember how clean the pavement used to look there, and 
 at Doncaster. Both towns are incredibly dirty now. I cannot 
 
Letter from, Wakefield. 63 
 
 bear to look at the filthy beslavered causeway, in places where I 
 remember to have never seen anything worse than the big round 
 thunder-drops I used to watch with gleeful interest. 
 
 In those days we were proud of the cleanness and sweet air 
 and gentility of Wakefield. Leeds was then considered rather 
 vu gar, as a factory town, and Bradford was obscure, rough, and 
 wild; but Wakefield prided itself in refined living on moderate 
 
 means, and cultured people of small income were fond of settling 
 there. h 
 
 Market day used to be a great event for us all. 
 
 I wish that you could have seen the handsome farmers’ wives 
 ranged round the church walls, with their baskets of apricots and 
 cream cheese, before reform came, and they swept away my dear 
 old school-house of the seventeenth century, to make an ugly 
 barren desert of a market ground. You might have seen, too the 
 pretty cottagers’ daughters, with their bunches of lavender’and 
 baskets of fruit, or heaps of cowslips and primroses for the wine 
 and vinegar Wakefield housewives prided themselves upon. On 
 certain days they stood to be hired as maid-servants, and were 
 prized in the country round as neat, clean, modest-spoken girls. 
 
 I do not know where they are gone to now,—I suppose to 
 the factories. Anyhow, Wakefield ladies cry out that they must 
 get servants from London, and Stafford, and Wales. So class 
 gets parted from class. 
 
 Things were different then. Well-to-do ladies prided them¬ 
 selves on doing their marketing in person, and kindly feeling and 
 acquaintanceship sprang up between town and country folk. My 
 Wakefield friends nowadays laugh at the idea of going to market. 
 They order everything through the cook, and hardly know their 
 own tradespeople by sight. We used to get delicious butter at. 
 tenpence a pound, and such curds and cream cheese as I never 
 taste now. ‘ Cook ’ brings in indifferent butter mostly, at near 
 two shillings. 
 
 As for the farmers’ wives, they would not like to be seen with 
 a butter-basket. They mostly send the dairy produce off by rail 
 to people whom they never see, and thus class is more sundered 
 
64 
 
 Letter from Wakefield. 
 
 from class every day, even by the very facilities that railways 
 afford. I can remember that the townspeople had simple merry¬ 
 makings and neighbourly ways that this generation would scorn. 
 Many a pleasant walk we had to the farms and halls that belted 
 the old town ; and boating parties on the Calder, and tea- 
 drinkings and dances—mostly extempore,— in the easy fashion 
 of Vicar Primrose’s days. 
 
 Bat pleasure must be sought farther off now. Our young 
 folks go to London or Paris for their recreation. People 
 seem to have no leisure for being neighbourly, or to get settled 
 in their houses. They seem to be all expecting to make a heap 
 of money, and to be much grander presently, and finally to 
 live in halls and villas, and look down on their early friends. 
 
 But I am sorry for the young people. They run through 
 everything so soon, and have nothing left to hope for or dream of 
 in a few years. They are better dressed than we were, and have 
 more accomplishments ; but I cannot help thinking that we 
 young folks were happier in the old times, though shillings were 
 not half so plentiful, and we had only two frocks a year. 
 
 Tradespeople were different, too, in old Wakefield. 
 
 They expected to live with us all their lives; they had 
 high notions of honour as tradesmen, and they and their 
 customers respected each other. 
 
 They prided themselves on the c wear ’ of their goods. If 
 they had passed upon the housewives a piece of sized calico or 
 shoddy flannel, they would have heard of it for years after. 
 
 How the richer ladies go to Leeds or Manchester to make 
 purchases; the town tradesmen are soured and jealous. They 
 put up big plate-glass fronts, and send out flaming bills; but 
 one does not know where to get a piece of sound calico or 
 stout linen, well spun and well woven. 
 
 Give me back our dingy old shops where everything was 
 genuine, instead of these glass palaces where we often get pins 
 without points, needles without eyes, and sewing thread sixty 
 yards to the hundred — which I actually heard a young Quaker 
 defend the other day as an allowable trade practice. 
 
65 
 
 Letter from IVakefield. 
 
 Yet people tell me that those were very benighted Tory 
 days I am regretting. Wakefield was held to be a Tory place, 
 given np hand and foot to the magnates who owned the great 
 estate around. I know how, when a small thing in frilled slops, 
 but with my bosom full of patriotic pride in our town, I used 
 to feel bitterly depressed at hearing a rising Radical Leeds 
 c othier, who came to see us sometimes, denounce Wakefield 
 as a ‘one-eyed hoil,’ his emphatic way of indicating our want 
 of sweep of vision. I remember he generally capped his 
 arguments by demanding, in sonorous tones, if any men worthy 
 of the name of Britons would put up with that ‘obsolete 
 monopoly’ of the (soke)* mills. 
 
 To tell the truth, I am afraid that we felt a good deal of 
 mean-spirited admiration for the neighbouring squires and 
 lords on the occasions when they showed themselves and their 
 handsome carriages in our streets: but at least the Wentworths 
 and Pilkingtons and Squire Waterton were gentlemen and 
 scholars; our new magnates have nothing to boast of but their 
 money. It seems to me better that people should boast of 
 
 the old oaks of Walton, and the old pictures of-Priory, 
 
 than tell how many thousands an iron lord made by the last 
 rise in iron: and that is what they talk of now. And if the 
 iion kings have supplanted the landlords, they are not any more 
 free. The old farmers might vote blindly out of blind respect 
 for the old landlords; but is it not better than the newly- 
 enfranchised puddlers and strikers selling votes openly for the 
 price of a gallon of whisky? We have lost a good deal, 
 although we are long rid of the soke monopoly, which used' 
 to be a standing reproach to us. I think that the town bought 
 off the soke just after the Corn Law agitation, when the 
 great railways began to enclose the wide meadows about the 
 town with their ugly ramparts and arches, where the trains 
 keep up a continual scream. 
 
 of y don,t know what this word means, and may have mistaken the reading 
 
66 
 
 Letter from Wakefield. 
 
 But the wool and corn magnates of the place held to their 
 old traditions long after that. I had gone abroad, but my heart 
 was in the old place, and I caught up eagerly all concerning it. 
 Sometimes I heard doleful acoounts of its decadence — how 
 the big houses were empty altogether, how the inns were closed, 
 the coaches stopped, the river traffic diminished, and the great 
 corn warehouses by the bridge falling to ruin. There was no 
 trace left of the gaieties that once gave the town the name of 
 1 Merrie Wakefield.’ All the smart young men were leaving it 
 to push their way in Leeds or Manchester, and the girls 
 left behind were growing up into a population of old maids. 
 
 So the doleful story went on for many a year. But 
 insensibly the key changed. Mills were springing up and shops; 
 and the houses had gone up in rent. The sleepy streets were 
 thronged with workers ; in short the town seemed new-born 
 altogether. 
 
 And now, on the once green Calder bank, where I used 
 to see garlands of brown pears ripening in the sweet sunshine, 
 there is a desert of dross and ashes, and twenty black throats 
 vomiting fire and fumes into the summer sky; and under the 
 big sheds you see hundreds of the liberated Britons of these 
 improved days, toiling, half-naked, in sweltering heat and din, 
 from morning to evening. This, however, is ‘the activity 
 and spread of the iron trade,’ which our local paper tells us 
 ‘ are the most satisfactory pledge of the future progress and 
 prosperity of our town.’ 
 
 I wish that I could believe it; but it vexes me beyond 
 comfort to see the first landscape I knew and loved blighted 
 by the smoke of the forges, and to* find one sweet association 
 after another swept away. 
 
 Even Sunday brings no respite to the eye. The forges 
 are fired up shortly after noonday, and many of the long 
 chimneys follow suit. And in the town the noise is so constant, 
 you can scarcely hear the church chimes unless you are close 
 to the tower. 
 
 Did you ever hear Wakefield chimes P We were very 
 
Letter from Wakefield . 
 
 proud of them in the old time. They had a round of pleasant 
 sleepy tunes, that never failed us through summer suns and 
 winter frost; and came to be bound up indelibly with the early 
 memories of us children. How I loved to hear them as I 
 bounded, full of morning gladness, across the green Vicar’s 
 Croft to school; or at night when lying an unwilling prisoner 
 m bed, before the warm summer evening was ended. To my 
 childish fancy there was a strange wizardry bound up with 
 that dark church steeple, frosted and crumbling with age, 
 which would break out overhead into mysterious music when 
 I was far afield, but expecting it. 
 
 Years after, when poor and lonely in a foreign city, I 
 came, one bitter winter’s day, upon an obscure cloister church 
 standing by a frozen river. It was a city without bells, and 
 I had often longed for the familiar sound. I was dreadfully 
 homesick that day, and stood upon the bridge, hapless, and 
 listless ; looking at the strange spire, the strange houses and 
 frozen-up boats, in a kind of dream. Suddenly the cloister 
 tower struck the hour, — four o’clock of a dark December 
 day, and presently it broke into a chime. 
 
 It was a very simple ditty ; but what a passion of longing 
 it wakened for England and the old chimes of that little 
 English town ! I felt as if my heart could bear no more. 
 
 I must go home; I must see the old places again, cost what 
 it might. But morning brought fresh counsels, and many a 
 year passed before I revisited the old place. 
 
 At last I was there again, after many disappointments, 
 and laid my head to rest once more beneath the shadow of the 
 old steeple. 
 
 I woke with an expectant heart. It was a bright May 
 day, such as I remembered twenty years before. The big 
 church bell tolled nine: then came a pause, and my thirsty 
 ears were strained to catch the first sounds of the dear old 
 chimes. * Ding ’ went a treble bell high in the air, the first 
 note of i Tara’s Halls,’ and then! — a hideous sound I cannot 
 describe, a prolonged malignant yell, broke from the sky and 
 
1 
 
 68 Letter from Wakefield. 
 
 seemed to fill the earth. I stopped my ears and ran indoors, 
 but the sound followed to the innermost chambers. It gathered 
 strength and malignancy every moment, and seemed to blast 
 all within its reach. It lasted nearly two minutes, and ended 
 with a kind of spasm and howl that made every nerve shudder. 
 I do not exaggerate. I cannot adequately describe the hideous 
 sound. When I had recovered my wits, I asked the meaning 
 of this horrible noise. My informant, a rising young towns¬ 
 man of the new stamp, told me that it was the new steam- 
 whistle at the foundry, commonly called the ‘ American Devil;’ 
 that it was the most powerful in the West Riding, and could 
 be heard five miles off. 
 
 It was only at half-power then, calling the workmen from 
 breakfast; but at six in the morning I could hear it in double 
 force. I asked if it was possible that people would quietly 
 put up with such a hideous disturbance. He owned that 
 the old inhabitants did not like it; but then, he said, they 
 were a sleepy set, and* wanted stirring up. 
 
 Indeed, I actually found that the town was infected by 
 four other similar whistles, profaning dawn and eve with their 
 heaven-defying screech. 
 
 The nuisance has been abolished since, I hear. They say 
 it actually killed one old lady by starting her up just at the 
 only moment when it was possible for her weary nerves to 
 get sleep. She happened to have a relation in the town council: 
 a stir was made about it, and the whistles were suppressed. 
 
 But the peaceful, half town, half rural life of Wakefield 
 is gone for ever, I fear. 
 
 Silk-mills and dye-works are encroaching on the corn¬ 
 fields and pastures ; rows of jerry-built cottages are creeping 
 up Pinder’s Fields, where I used to pull orchises; greasy mill- 
 girls elbow ladies in the Westgate, and laugh and jeer at 
 passing young men in a way that would have horrified the 
 old inhabitants. And everywhere there is an indescribable 
 smokiness and dirtiness more demoralizing than any tongue 
 can tell, or mind conceive. 
 
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 Letter from Wakefield. 
 
 Well, it is the 1 inarch of the times . 9 It will go on, I 
 suppose, as in other quiet pleasant English towns, until all 
 the sweet Calder valley is swallowed up in the smoke of Tophet. 
 They will cut the snowdrop wood down, and cover Heath 
 Common with cheap villas, and make the old hall into an 
 ‘ institution.’ You know how it will be. A river black with 
 filth, and stagnant with foulness, a wilderness of toiling 
 suburbs such as you saw at Bradford; and where the cowslips 
 and the corn grew, the earth will be thick with ‘ institutions.’ 
 There will be a Blind Institution, and an Eye and Ear 
 Institution, an Orthopaedic Institution, and a Magdalen Insti¬ 
 tution, and Mechanics’ Institutions; and we shall hear a great 
 deal of the liberality and beneficence of the cotton and iron 
 kings of the place. But will all this compensate one little 
 child for robbing it of its God-given birthright of earth and 
 sky ? 
 
 I cannot believe it. 
 
 Poor little martyrs ! There will be no ‘ swallow twittering 
 from the straw-built shed’ for them, — only the American 
 Devil calling father to his hot, hard day’s labour. What can 
 they make of it all P Wliat I saw on the Medlock yesterday — 
 such a hideous sight! — yet my husband remembers catching 
 fish there. The gases would kill a fish like a lightning-stroke, 
 now. 
 
 And the poor children! It makes me so sad, having 
 some of my own, to think of those who will be born there, 
 with hearts as hungry for nature and truth as mine was; 
 who will never see God’s heaven, save through grimy panes 
 
 and smoke; who will have no sweet cowslip-fields to walk in,_ 
 
 only the defiled pavement; who will grow hard and sour before 
 childhood is over, with the riddle of their joyless lives. 
 
 ; 
 
% 
 
 MR. RUSKIN AND WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Reprinted by permission from the ‘ Saturday Review ’ of 4th 
 March , 1876. 
 
 ‘ Bat these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind.’ 
 
 Tennyson . 
 
 Mr. Ruskin is the Don Quixote of the nineteenth century, 
 who makes war against chimneys and manufactories instead 
 of windmills. In the Fors Clavigera of last September and 
 in several succeeding numbers the town of Wakefield has been 
 the subject of unfavourable comment, and a correspondent 
 goes so far as to hint that an accession of trade has its draw¬ 
 backs as well as its, advantages. In looking back to the old 
 account of the town — unless, indeed, we are to suppose that 
 each historian merely copied the words of his predecessor — 
 Wakefield seems to have given the impression that it was a 
 pleasant place to live in. ‘ There be few towns in the inward 
 parts of Yorkshire that hath a fairer site or soil about it.’ says 
 Leland, aud he adds that a right honest man shall fare well 
 there for twopence a meal. Two hundred years passed over 
 it, and left it very much the same. There is an engraving 
 of it in Thoresby’s Leeds, about 1715, ‘as it appears from 
 London road.’ The chief features are, in the foreground, the 
 river Calder with its weir and rushing waters, the long line 
 
72 
 
 Mr. Buskin and Wakefield. 
 
 of arches supporting the well-known Memorial Chapel on 
 the bridge, and in the background the parish chnrch with its 
 lofty spire, around which are grouped clusters of houses and 
 cottages, which cover the sides of the hill down to the river 
 banks. Commerce is unrepresented; no one seems in a hurry; 
 wood-cutting is going on in one corner, sheep-washing in 
 another; two magnificently dressed gentlemen in Cavalier hats 
 with fowling-pieces, a spaniel, and game-bag, are standing in 
 the middle of the road, while a fisherman is wading across the 
 river just above the weir. This is the spot which Mr. Ruskin 
 speaks of as being now one of the two most frightful things 
 he has ever yet seen. In 1770 the chapel was used as a ware¬ 
 house for goods, and its 4 beautiful carving much defaced.’ 
 Arthur Young, who was in Wakefield about that time on his 
 Northern tour, gives an encouraging account of the town from 
 an aesthetic point of view. Mutton and beef were 3|d. per lb., 
 wages from 6s. to 14s. a week, manufacturer’s house-rent from 
 40s. to 50s.; the trade of the place was very dull, and had 
 been so ever since the peace. In 1801, the population was 
 about 8000; in 1811, 8,593; in 1821, nearly 11,000; and in 
 1838, Dibdin became eloquent and prophetical on its future: — 
 4 It is the most opulent as well as trade-stirring town in the 
 West Riding of York, and contains a population of upwards 
 of 15,000 souls. By this time thirty years to come, it will 
 have quadrupled that number.’ Thirty-eight years have gone 
 by, and Wakefield has only doubled the number. The chimneys 
 have, however, more than kept pace with the population, nor 
 is Dibdin’s account out of place now of the ‘curling columns 
 of dense and slowly moving smoke which seem to involve 
 everything within its immediate neighbourhood in impenetrable 
 obscurity.’ Had Wakefield but increased in the same pro¬ 
 portion as its neighbours, the loss of the advantages given to 
 it by nature would have been less felt. In all the great West 
 Riding towns, Leeds or Sheffield or Bradford, there is a certain 
 sense of power, of concentrated energy, which, though the 
 sky is darkened and the air poisoned, strikes and impresses 
 
Mr. Buskin and Wakefield. 73 
 
 the mind. The shops are large, the streets are thronged, and 
 the traveller will feel himself as much a mere unit as if he 
 were in London or Manchester. But Wakefield is neither a 
 commercial centre nor is it the county town. It has an historic 
 past, and once had buildings of architectural merit. It possesses 
 a lovely natural site, and broad streets, which the competition 
 of its rivals would have made as grass-grown as those of Ferrara 
 if grass were a possible product. This useful herb will soon 
 be a luxury in many parts of the West Riding. 
 
 It is sad to watch a district as it becomes a seat of manu¬ 
 facture. The little villages on the hill-sides soon encroach on 
 one another, year by year demanding from the State fresh 
 machinery to supply their social wants. The face of the land 
 is changed. Refuse from the mill or colliery is plastered up 
 into great unsightly masses. There is neither earth, nor air, 
 noi water. Chemical constituents and filth of every description 
 take their place, and the train must be made use of to obtain 
 an illustration from natural history. First the rivers, then 
 the trees are poisoned. Neither can be replaced. In twelve 
 years a plantation will not have grown as many feet; everything 
 is either dead or dying. Long lines of rotten hedges, mended 
 with disused wire ropes from the nearest colliery, separate 
 the fields, while here and there dead trees fling their black 
 arms to the sky. It is not worth while to fell them, so there 
 they stand giving evidence of the past existence of life in 
 the district. If a Hercules is required to clean the rivers, 
 the roads might tax the powers of General Wade. It is nearly 
 as dangerous to venture out upon the highways as it was in 
 1685, or in the days when Mary Wollstonecraft was upset four 
 times on her journey from Havre to Paris. The roads are full 
 of holes and pitfalls, caused partly by the heavy traffic, partly 
 by the fact that they are never mended, as it is the business 
 of no one to attend to them. It is a sad irony to read now 
 of such or such a town or village being pleasantly situated 
 on the banks of its river. It is hardly possible to walk along 
 the side of the stream. The blue scum which floats sullenly 
 
74 
 
 Mr. Huskin and Wakefield. 
 
 by has killed everything with which it has come into contact. 
 There is no boat on the river, only here and there barges sank 
 at the back-waters and in the creeks, with their lines just 
 above the water, telling of work done and homes lived in, 
 but now gradually rotting away in filth. Further on a 
 drain or beck discharges its contents, steaming with vapour, 
 but the river is too foul to be coloured by the accession 
 of any tributary, however filthy. Here is the evidence 
 of a witness in the employment of the Aire and Calder 
 Company: — ‘ He saw a quantity of water containing hair 
 and other sediment flowing from some tanks in the 
 defendant’s works over a large sump, and thence into Sheep- 
 scar beck. The sump was almost filled with a pulpy sediment. 
 In the vicinity of the point where this discharge entered the 
 beck there were several cart-loads of sediment in the bed of 
 the stream. The sediment looked like lime and hair mixed. 
 The water in the beck was white as far down as he could see.’ 
 Not a bird is to be heard or seen ; not that this is a matter 
 to regret, as an ill-looking lad sneaks by with a single-barrelled 
 gun. No animal life cheers the naturalist. No hare or 
 partridge ventures near a population which would sally forth 
 with every known implement of warfare to destroy it. The 
 attested neighbourhood of a rabbit would empty a colliery 
 for a week. Everything in your walks in such a country calls 
 up some unpleasant association. The landscape reminds you 
 of the illustrations in Dickens’s novels; the ponds are those 
 in which Bill Sykes tried to drown his dog. It is neither 
 town nor country. Miserable cottages are being built in rows 
 to arrive at which you must plunge through a slough of black 
 mud. Damp, ill-built, and ill-drained, disease clings to them, 
 and family after family is compelled to leave. It is impossible 
 to build houses with profit, and the result is overcrowding. 
 Sanitary inspection is in many places unknown or useless. The 
 Inspector is appointed as a matter of form, but is not called 
 upon to furnish the Board with a report. The Barnsley Times 
 gives an account of the village of Ardsley which is probably 
 
Mr. Bushin and Wahefielcl. 75 
 
 true of many others. The cesspools overflow the highways; 
 an open field is used as a slaughter-house; so many people 
 live in the same building that they have to go to bed in turns ; 
 while in one case fourteen people slept in one great round bed 
 with their feet to the centre. Water is a necessity of life, but 
 it does not exist. The river wo have already described is the 
 substitute discovered for it by the nineteenth century. The 
 historian of the University of Lagado, when he represented 
 one of its professors as endeavouring to produce food by a 
 process which wo had rather not specify, little thought that 
 the day would come when his description would be far from 
 a satire. The town of Wakefield has solved the problem, and 
 derives much of its sustenance from the source referred to. 
 Paracelsus is said to have invented a perfume of the same 
 material, and, were not the West Riding already so well 
 supplied, enterprising tradesmen might turn their attention 
 to a new means of profit. The time will come when a water 
 merchant’s trade will be a very important one, and when the 
 manufacturer will set before his guests as a princely treat a 
 bottle of some celebrated year, ascertained by analysis to bo 
 free from organic matter. 
 
 No sense escapes in the new order of things, and the 
 shrill scream of the ‘buzzer’ can be heard at a distance of 
 miles. Thicker and more deadly smoko is vomited forth each 
 year, and no attempt is made to deal with the evil. Lord 
 Winmarleigh presented a petition the other day for an amend¬ 
 ment of the Acts relating to noxious vapours, and said that 
 he knew a property which had been all but destroyed by 
 them. ‘The trees in it were like a forest of masts even 
 at midsummer, and whereas there were formerly on it oaks 
 worth £100, it would be difficult now to find in or any¬ 
 where near it an oak or other tree worth a hundred shil¬ 
 lings. The Duke of Richmond, in reply, assured their Lord- 
 ships that the Government felt the importance of the subject. 
 If Goodwood were only between Leeds and Bradford, the 
 Duke’s assurance would be far more valuable. In those 
 
76 
 
 Mr. Ruskin and Wakefield. 
 
 parts of Lancashire which lie around Wigan and Bolton and 
 southwards to Manchester, the country is permanently dis¬ 
 figured, and we cannot believe that the Inspectors of Nuisances 
 have ever put into execution the powers they possess. In 
 the West Biding towns something has been done, though to 
 a very small extent. In Huddersfield orders to abate the 
 nuisance in a few cases have been issued, but with little or 
 no effect. In Barnsley some of the principal manufacturers 
 and colliery owners have been compelled to erect new chim¬ 
 neys. In Bradford over seven hundred informations have 
 been laid against offenders, and penalties were inflicted and 
 orders to abate by the borough justices were made in all 
 cases, the number of chimneys coming under the Act being 
 about four hundred and seventy-six. In Halifax, owing to 
 the measures enforced, there is a great improvement in the 
 consumption of smoke. In Leeds a local Act of Parliament 
 has been enforced. In Wakefield Mr. Buskin will be in¬ 
 terested in hearing that nothing has been done, and it is 
 said that a meeting which was held many years ago to pro¬ 
 test against the non-consumption of smoke resulted in a vote 
 of thanks to the manufacturers who made it and brought 
 trade to the town. Charles Lamb was heard to declare that 
 his love of natural scenery would be abundantly satisfied by 
 the patches of long waving grass and the stunted trees that 
 blacken in the old churchyard nooks which you may yet 
 find bordering on Thames Street. Wakefield, though not en¬ 
 tirely cousisting of Charles Lambs, shares the same opinion. 
 
 It may be asked, What is to be the end of all this 
 desolation and destruction of life ? Those who can undoubt¬ 
 edly will migrate in search of pure air and water, and evi¬ 
 dences of refinement will become gradually scarcer. Houses 
 descend very fast in the social scale in the neighbourhood 
 of towns. In the agricultural counties the downward pro¬ 
 gress of the old manor-house is often slow. It has probably 
 but one tenant, and when his farm-servants are dining to¬ 
 gether at the long oaken table in the central hall he is 
 
Mr. Itusldn and Wakefield. 77 
 
 conforming more nearly than he is aware to the habits of 
 those who lived there three hundred years ago. Occasionally 
 the landlord comes there for a week’s shooting, and the best 
 bedroom, with its wainscoted panels and carved cornice, its 
 Jacobean chests and faded Turkey carpet, is preserved from 
 being the apple or the onion chamber. In the garden the 
 yew trees and the walnuts are in their full glory, and the 
 red brick walls that enclose them have all the delightful 
 depth of colour which belongs to their age. A colliery, 
 however, is not a helpful neighbour to the gabled hall. The 
 lane that leads to it is dirtier than the dirtiest of those that 
 lead to the. Porta Salara at Rome. The porch is blocked 
 up with bricks, and an open drain trickles along the slope 
 in front of the house. The wall has fallen down which 
 once inclosed the neglected garden, and half buried in the 
 soil. lies the stone escutcheon which bears the arms of the 
 family that owned the property in the seventeenth century. 
 There, is no particular road anywhere ; paths lie in every 
 direction, for the collier is the typical crow that flies straight 
 from point to point. In Lord John Manners’s well-known 
 poem, ‘England’s Trust,’ the claims of our ‘old nobility’ 
 are advocated in preference to those of wealth, commerce, 
 learning, and laws. Had his sentiment been expended upon 
 the Tudor and Elizabethan manor-houses of the country, we 
 should have been more inclined to sympathize with him. 
 There is very little old nobility, and that little is not easy 
 to discover. In Yorkshire, and especially in the manufactur¬ 
 ing parts of the county, property has ohanged owners very 
 often. Two hundred years ago hardly a country house was 
 m the hands of the ancestors of those who now hold it. 
 The ordinary Yorkshire family dates back about two cen¬ 
 turies, at which time it struggled out of some town to invest 
 a little capital in land. The West Riding is very deficient 
 in great houses built before the beginning of last century. 
 Hardly a fragment is left of Howley, the old home of the 
 Saviles; and Temple Newsam, the only Elizabethan palace 
 
78 
 
 Mr. JRuskin and Wakefield. 
 
 in the West Riding, will soon become lost in the smoke 
 that surrounds it. If Mr. Ruskin can save a single tree 
 or stream, he will have done a great deal of good, and if 
 he can purify and educate Wakefield, nothing need appear 
 hopeless to him. It is not given to every town to have a 
 lunatic asylum with 1,400 patients and a goal with 1,300 
 criminals. Lunacy, as is well known, is spreading out of 
 all proportion to the increase of population, and in the event 
 of the establishment of electoral districts Wakefield might 
 hope for a second member. What might not then be ex¬ 
 pected from a town whose political history for the last forty 
 years has been so bright, and has justified so well the hopes 
 of those who extended the franchise P We can conceive of 
 a millennium of universal happiness, when no man’s house 
 shall be without a buzzer, beer shall be the only available 
 drink, and twenty persons shall sleep in the same round bed. 
 
 WINDERMERE : PRINTED BY J. GARNETT.