Altogether it is a very primitive curious place, with several originals among the tenantry, and some beautiful natural scenery, among whom a morning may be spent with profit and pleasure.
With the town and building land an equally comprehensive system has been adopted.
The defects of the existing buildings are to be cured as soon as, and in the best manner, that circumstances will admit; while all new houses are to be built and drained on a fixed plan, and all roadside cottages to have at least a quarter of an acre of ground for a garden.
It will take some years to work out complete results; it is, however, gratifying to see a landowner placing himself in the hands of competent advisers, planning not for the profits of the hour, but for the future, for the permanent health, happiness, and prosperity of all dwelling on his property.
The pecuniary results promise to be highly satisfactory; it is already evident that increased rents will be accompanied by increased prosperity, and it is thought in the neighbourhood that in the next ten years, the property will, from the judicious expenditure of £30,000, be worth at least £300,000.
So much for employing a scientific and practical agriculturist as land agent, instead of a fashionable London attorney. [{193}]
YORKSHIRE.
From Manchester to Leeds is a journey of forty-five miles, and about two hours. We should like to describe Yorkshire, one of the few counties to which men are proud to belong. We never hear any one say, with conscious pride, “I am a Hampshireman or an Essex man, or even a Lancashireman,” while there are some counties of which the natives are positively ashamed.
But we have neither time nor space to say anything about those things of which a Yorkshireman has reason to be proud—of the hills, the woods, the dales, the romantic streams,—above all, of the lovely Wharfe, of the fat plains, the great woods, the miles of black coal mines, where we have heard the little boys driving their horses and singing hymns, sounding like angels in the infernal regions, the rare good sheep, the Teeswater cattle, that gave us short-horns, of horses, well known wherever the best are valued, be it racer, hunter, or proud-prancing carriage horse; hounds that it takes a Yorkshire horse to live with; and huntsmen, whom to hear tally-away and see ride out of cover makes the heart of man leap as at the sound of a trumpet; foxes stanch and wily, worthy of the hounds; and then of those famous dalesmen farmers, tall, broad-shouldered, with bullet heads, and keen grey eyes, rosy bloom, high cheek bones, foxy whiskers, full white-teethed, laughing mouths, hard riders, hard drinkers, keen bargainers, capital fellows; and besides those the slips, grafts, and thinnings from the farms, who in factories, counting-houses, and shops, show something of the powerful Yorkshire stamp. Everything is great in Yorkshire, even their rogues are on a large scale; in Spain, men of the same calibre would be prime ministers and grandees of the first class; in France, under a monarchy, a portfolio, and the use of the telegraph, with no end of ribands, would have been the least reward. Here the honours stop short between two dukes, as supporters arm in arm; but still we are obliged to own that no one but a Yorkshireman could have so bent all the wild beasts of Belgravia and Mayfair, from the Countess Gazelle to the Ducal Elephant, to his purpose, as an ex-king did. Our task will be confined on the present occasion to a sketch of Huddersfield and Leeds, centres of the woollen manufacture, which forms the third great staple of English manufactures, and of Sheffield, famed for keen blades.
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