Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/35

 The most obvious reasons for opposing such a wanton act of destruction will be found stated in the following pages; and, as I remarked above, they exceed, both in 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:—

'. Cities, ports, and Watering-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