| "She cries, a thousand types are gone, |
| I care for nothing, all shall go." |
| Tennyson. |
How is the whole face of the country changed! The stately elms and beeches, with the rooks' nests lodging in their branches, have been cut down to satisfy the greed of this utilitarian age. The land has been bought up in our time by a railway company, and crowded trains, with their screeching railway whistle, rush over the very site of this ancient hostelry, whose walls once resounded with the songs and applause of our friends of the "Wonder Club." Not even the picturesque old church of Littleborough has been spared. Being pronounced unsafe, it was pulled down, and on its site erected a modern Baptist chapel, in all that unsightly ugliness of style so cherished by dissenters. How strange that religious bodies should have such execrable taste. Telegraph lines cross and recross each other in every direction, and railway bridges, tunnels and aqueducts abound on all hands.
The town of Muddleton-upon-Slush, once little more than a village, has swelled to the proportions of a prosperous factory town, with its smoky chimneys, its gasometers, its rows upon rows of jerry-built houses, its new town hall, its salvation army barracks, its police station, its chapels of every conceivable denomination, to say nothing of its numerous public-houses, young men's Christian association, its baths and wash-houses, its low theatre, where questionable pieces are represented by indifferent actors to pander to the modern taste. Then its placards and pictorial advertisements, who shall tell? But, enough. As for the old fashioned honest English rustic of the past, with his sturdiness of character and devout unquestioning faith in matters of religion, his genus is quite extinct; you may possibly stumble upon his fossil in a stratum of London blue clay. He has been superseded by quite a distinct species—the modern blackguard, with his blatant scepticism and blasphemous irreligion.
It might have been some forty years ago since the author, who was travelling on a matter of urgent business on this line, was roused in the midst of a reverie by the guard calling out, "Muddleton-upon-Slush! Any passengers for Muddleton?" As this was my destination I descended, and was about to cross the railway bridge when I observed an aged and reverend looking individual, whose low crowned hat with its broad brim, and the severe cut of whose sad coloured clothes proclaimed him a member of the "Society of Friends," a genuine quaker of the true old fashioned stamp, long since extinct. He was in earnest discourse with the porter, and as I passed him I caught these words, uttered in tones deliberate and slow, as one who has the whole day before him, and sees no necessity for hurry, and which contrasted strangely with the bustle and confusion going on around him.
"Prithee, friend, canst thou direct me to the ancient hostel of the 'Headless Lady'?"
"The what? The ''Eadless Lady.' No, sir. There ain't no public 'ouse about 'ere of that name," was the porter's curt reply. "But if it's a glass of hale you want, sir, there's the 'Hangel and the Heagle,' the 'Helephant and Castle,' and the——"
"Doubtless, friend," interrupted the reverend individual, "there are enough and to spare of those abominations, those dens of iniquity that the lost sheep of the house of Israel denominate public houses; but know, friend, that it is not ale I seek, seeing that I am a follower of one Rechab, who, as doubtless thou wilt have read in Holy Writ, indulged neither in wine nor strong drink."
The porter's face throughout this sententious speech was a study. His eyes and mouth gradually opened till they reached their utmost limit. Then suddenly recollecting that his manner might appear rude, he broke in with: