Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/74

 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 accounts 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 '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? We were very