Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/81

 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 manufacture. 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, nor 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