pages 73

The Cotton District                   73

still worse. On sunshiny days one is reminded of a sullen countenance constrained to smile against the will. A "Lancashire scene" has been said to resolve into "bare hills and chimneys"; and as regards the cotton districts the description is, upon the whole, not inaccurate. Chimneys predominate innumerably in the landscape, a dark pennon usually undulating from every summit - perhaps not pretty pictorially, but in any case a gladsome sight, since it means work, wages, food, for those below, and a fire upon the hearth at home. Though the sculptor may look with dismay upon his ornaments in marble once white as a lily, now under its visitation grey as November, never mind - the smoke denotes human happiness and content for thousands: when her chimneys are smokeless, operative Lancashire is hungry and sad.
In the towns most of the chimneys belong to the factories - buildings of remarkable appearance. The very large ones are many storeys high, their broad and lofty fronts presenting tier upon tier of monotonous square windows. Decoration seems to be studiously avoided, though there is often plenty of scope for inexpensive architectural effects that, to say the least, would be welcome. Seen by day, they seem deserted; after dark, when the in-