pages 70-71
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70                   Illustrations of Lancashire

few years ago the Lancashire cotton towns seemed to vie with one another which should best deserve the character of cold, hard, dreary, and utterly unprepossessing. The streets, excepting the principal artery (originally the road through the primitive village, as in the case of Newton Lane, Manchester), not being susceptible of material change, lmostly remain as they were - narrow, irregular, and close-built. Happily, of late there has been improvement. Praiseworthy aspirations in regard to public buildings are not uncommon, and even in the meanest towns are at times undeniably successful. In the principal centres - Manchester, Bolton, Rochdale, and another or two - the old meagreness and unsightliness are daily becoming less marked, and a good deal that is really magnificent is in progress as well as completed. Unfortunately, the efforts of the architect fall only too soon under the relentless influence of the factory and the foundry. Manchester is in this respect an illustration of the whole group; the noblest and most elegant buildings sooner or later get smoke-begrimed. Sombre as the Lancashire towns become under that influence, if there be collieries in the neighbourhood, as in the case of well- named "coaly Wigan," the dismal hue is intensified, and in dull and rainy weather grows