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IT is not to the manufacturing districts of England that the traveller in search of the picturesque would most naturally repair. To him they are often a region of tall chimneys and squalid-looking habitations, with a canopy of smoke above and black refuse of coal and iron on the banks of polluted rivers below. Something of this impression is due to the economy of railway companies, which, for the most part, have chosen to enter great towns by their least attractive suburbs, where land is cheapest. Hence, it is not from the carriage-windows of the train that Leeds or Sheffield, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, or Manchester should be judged. The traveller who will alight and explore may find a wealth of natural beauty which would astonish him.
Nowhere, perhaps, is the contrast—due chiefly, no doubt, to geological structure—more apparent than on the edge of the "Black Country" in Staffordshire. From Dudley Castle the views are more curiously contrasted than in almost any other part of England. By night the whole country is lighted up on one side by the flames from the furnaces, which cover the country for many miles. By day the din of hammers and the clank of wheels, the roar of traffic and the shriek of the steam-whistles surge up, through the pall of smoke, upon the ear. Descend, and between the ironworks and coalpits the ground is unsightly with refuse heaps, while its frequent inequalities, and the bending, tottering buildings, show it to be honeycombed with mines. Vegetation is rare; what there is, is blackened and stunted; black also are the outsides of churches, chapels, schools. For inhabitants of such a district to gain any sense of natural beauty, they must be able at frequent intervals to escape; and, happily, to do this is within the reach of most. Railway communication with every part of England is constant and easy; and to know the difference that a few miles' journey will make in the scene, one has only to reascend to Dudley Castle, where it lies in the midst of its fair wooded domain.. Look from it to the north, east, or south, and all is smoke and flame; but turn to the west, and though the traces of unresting labour are still discernible, they soon give way to a country of richly diversified charm: glimpses are obtained of the beautiful valley of the Severn, the Wrekin towers grandly not many miles away, and the Malvern hills are dim and blue in the distance.
In other manufacturing centres, if the contrast is not so marked, yet there is a similar accessibility to many a sequestered and lovely scene. The nearness of the wildest and grandest Derbyshire scenery to busy, unromantic Manchester has been pointed out in a previous chapter; and the neighbourhood of the great Yorkshire centres of industry is full of picturesque beauty. A little way out of Leeds, for instance, where the Liverpool Canal passes over an embankment near to the river Aire, may be found the scene of one of Turner's most charming sketches; and though the locality bears evident marks of the great industrial invasion, much of the beauty still remains. In the same valley, not far off, are the stately ruins of Kirkstall Abbey, while the broad reach of river that encloses it, and the green meadows on the bank, with the low wooded heights on either side of the valley, suggest the memories of a day when the surroundings of the old ecclesiastical building were such as the monks most dearly loved; while Esholt Hall, some few miles higher up the river, at the extremity of a noble avenue of elm trees, was, in its time, a nunnery on low-lying ground, circled by an amphitheatre of hills, in a vale even now rich and beautiful, and which once must have seemed the very abode of tranquillity and peace.
It is, indeed, no small boon to the artizans of Leeds, Bradford, and many other crowded hives of industry in this part of England, that they are within so easy a distance of scenes which, in natural beauty, may vie with almost any in the land. Ivirkstall, as we have said, is close by the former town; and its grounds are thronged on every holiday by busy workers, who, whether intent or not on learning the appropriate lesson from the mouldering walls and tower, are at least fully alive to the advantages of fresh air, and of wide scope and range for healthful amusement. The like may be said of other places, lying only a little further off. There is Roundhay Park, for instance, one of the most splendid domains in England, now, through the wise liberality of the Leeds Corporation, the property of the people; while the public parks of many other towns, as Bradford, Halifax, Barnsley, with Manchester, Liverpool, Blackburn, gratify not only the instinct for recreation, but the desire for beauty.