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Following that plan of contrasts which travellers generally find most agreeable, we should advise that tourists, taking their route southward, will avail themselves of the North Staffordshire lines to visit two of the most beautiful mansions, if they were foreign we should say palaces, in England—Alton Towers, the seat of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Trentham Hall, the seat of the Duke of Sutherland, and conclude by investigating the Porcelain Manufactories, which, founded by Wedgwood, are carried on with excellent spirit and taste by a number of potters, among whom Alderman Copeland and Mr. Herbert Minton are pre-eminent.
Alton Towers stand near Cheadle, on the Churnet Valley Line; Trentham Hall not far from Stoke.
A day may be pleasantly spent in examining the elaborate gardens of Alton, which are a magnificent specimen of the artificial style of landscape gardening. Mr. Loudon gives a very elaborate description of them in his large work on the subject of gardens to great houses.
At Cheadle the Earl of Shrewsbury has erected at his own expense, Mr. Pugin being his architect, a small Roman Catholic Church, which is a magnificent specimen of that gentleman’s taste in the “decorated” style. “Heraldic emblazonments, and religious emblems, painting and gilding, stained glass, and curiously-wrought metal work, imageries and inscriptions, rood loft and reredos, stone altar and sedilia, metal screenwork, encaustic paving, make up the gorgeous spectacle.”
The doors of the principal entrance are painted red, and have gilt hinges fashioned in the shape of rampant lions spreading over nearly their entire surface.
In one of the canopied niches is a figure, representing the present Earl of Shrewsbury kneeling, with a model of the church in his hand as the founder, with his “patron,” St. John the Baptist, standing behind him.
This Cheadle Church, in which Mr. Pugin has had full scope on a small scale for the indulgence of his gorgeous faith and fancies, reminds us that at Oscot College, within sight of the smoke of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, towns where the best locks, clasps, hasps, bolts, and hinges can be made; the doors and windows, in deference to Mr. Pugin’s mediæval predilections, are of the awkward clumsy construction with which our ancestors were obliged to be content for want of better. On the same principle the floors ought to have been strewed with rushes, the meat salt, the bread black rye, and manuscript should supersede print. But it is not so, there is no school in the kingdom where the youth are better fed, or made more comfortable than at Oscot.
TRENTHAM has a delicious situation on the Trent, which forms a lake in the park, inhabited by swans and monstrous pike. The Hall used to be one of the hideous brick erections of the time of pigtails and laced waistcoats,—the footman style of dress and architecture. But the genius of Barry (that great architect whom the people on the twopenny steamboats seem to appreciate more than some grumbling members of the House of Commons) has transformed, without destroying it, into a charming Italian Villa, with gardens, in which the Italian style has been happily adapted to our climate; for instance, round-headed laurels, grown for the purpose, taking the place of orange trees.
This Trentham Hall used to be one of the magical pictures of the coach road, of which the railway robbed us. For miles before reaching it, we used to look out for the wooded park, with its herds of mottled deer, and the great lake, where the sight of the swans always brought up that story of the big pike, choked like a boa, with a swan’s neck. A story that seems to belong to every swan-haunted lake.
But what one railway took from us another has restored much improved. So we say to all friends, at either end of the lines, take advantage of an excursion, or express train, according to your means, and go and see what we cannot at this time describe, and what exceeds all description. For the hour, you may enjoy Trentham Hall as much as if it were your own, with all the Bridgwater Estates, Mines, Canals, and Railways to boot. And that is the spirit in which to enjoy travelling. Admiration without envy, and pity without contempt.
From Trentham you may proceed through the Potteries. You will find there a church built, and we believe endowed, by a manufacturer, Mr. Herbert Minton. And then you may have a choice of routes. But to London the most direct will be by Tamworth and Lichfield, on the Trent Valley line.
To those who look below the surface, who care to know something about the workman as well as the work, such a tour as we have traced could not fail to be of the deepest interest. It embraces the whole course of the emigration from low wages to higher that is constantly flowing in this country. New sources of employment daily arising in mines, in ports, in factories, demand labour; to supply that labour recruits are constantly marching from the country lane to the paved city.
The agricultural districts of Staffordshire have a population of under two hundred souls per square mile. The pottery and iron districts of the same county of over seven hundred. These swarms of men are not had where they labour, they are immigrants. Take another instance, in Kent and Devonshire, the wages of farm labourers are eight to nine shillings a-week. In North Cheshire they are fifteen. The cost of living to the labourer in both places is about the same; fuel is cheap in Cheshire. What makes the difference in the demand for labour in Cheshire but the steam-engines?
Towns must be prepared to lodge decently, and educate carefully, children of rural immigrants, or woe betide us all. It is education that has saved the United States from the consequences of the tide of ignorant misery daily disembarking on the Atlantic shores.
Sometimes we hear fears for the condition of farmers under manufacturer landlords. Those who express these fears must have travelled with their ears shut. More than seventy per cent. of the great landowners in the great travelling counties are manufacturers, or merchants, or lawyers, by one or two descents. In Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, or Warwickshire, examine closely, and you will find it so. As a general rule, a rich pawnbroker retired will make a better landlord than a poor baronet. But in this country two generations will make one of the baronet’s sons a successful shopkeeper, and the pawnbroker’s a baronet, or even a peer.
“I tell you what, sir,” said a talkative stud groom once, in charge of race horses for Russia, and travelling first class, “I’ve been in Petersburg, in Vienna, and in Berlin, and I lived ten years with the Earl of ----. For all the points of blood our aristocracy will beat any of these foreign princes, counts, and dukes, either for figure or for going; but it won’t do to look into their pedigree, for the crosses that would ruin a race of horses, are the making of the breed of English noblemen.”
Here our irregular imperfect guidance ceases. Perhaps, although deficient in minuteness of detail, this pot pourri of gossip, history, description, anecdote, suggestion, and opinion, may not only amuse the traveller by railway, but assist him in choosing routes leading to those scenes or those pursuits in which he feels an interest.