At 10.20 a. m., Friday, we left for Leeds. These three places, Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds, are an epitome of English manufactures, and we can hardly pass without examining them, though we confess to a daintiness obtained from the beauties amidst which we had been passing the weeks; and we feel that we shall be glad when our tour through the manufacturing districts ends, for we are impressed anew with the proverb, "God made the country, but man made the town."
LEEDS
is situated on both sides, but chiefly on the left side, of the River Aire, and has a population of 259,212. The site was once a Roman station, and the mediæval name was Loidis. As a manufacturing town it dates back to the sixteenth century. The larger part of the city has an old look. The streets generally are narrow and crooked, but well kept. The new streets are wide and contain many fine buildings; and the tramways and omnibuses give it a Bostonian appearance. The spacious town-hall was completed in 1858. Like all the principal English cities, it has its share of statues, and a fine one of Robert Peel is in front of the court-house. It is said to have 225 places of public worship. In woollen manufactures and leather-tanning Leeds surpasses all other places in the kingdom. 12,000 persons are employed in manufacturing woollen goods alone. The city is a railroad centre. There are 200 collieries in the surrounding district. It is reported that one quarter of the inhabitants are engaged in manufactures of some kind, and yet pauperism flourishes fearfully. There is a library founded in 1768, by the renowned Dr. Priestley, of scientific as well as theologic fame. He was pastor of a church in Leeds, and gave much attention to religious subjects. After an industrious life of some years here,—a large portion of which was employed in scientific pursuits and authorship,—he removed to Birmingham, and was pastor of a church there. At length he went to America, arriving in New York, June 4, 1794, and dying at Northumberland, Pa., Feb. 6, 1804. A celebration, in honor of his discovery of oxygen, was inaugurated by American chemists at the place of his death, Aug. 1, 1874, and on the same day his statue was unveiled in Birmingham, England. In 1860 another statue was placed in the museum of Oxford University. A catalogue of his publications, prepared for the library of Congress, for the Centennial of 1876, comprises more than three hundred works on chemistry, history, theology, metaphysics, politics, and other subjects.
The markets of Leeds are large. New potatoes, May 31, were for sale, smaller than English walnuts. The fish markets are supplied with more varieties than we have seen anywhere else. The flower marts have great displays of perfect plants, especially pelargoniums and geraniums.
Kirkstall Abbey is about three miles away, on the edge of the city. Nothing can excel the beauty of this ancient place. It is situated near a country road, and slopes to the river a distance of perhaps a thousand feet. The walls are varied in outlines and heights. The tower and walls are quite complete, and the adjoining ruins are as fine as any in England. They comprise many rooms, roofless for centuries. The low-cropped grass, with its thick math, fills them, and there are ten or twelve elm-trees, full two feet in diameter, growing in the deserted apartments. In one part is the small enclosed garden, perfect as at the first. In the walls are places of burial of the pietists who once dwelt here; and on one side are rooms, opening into the garden, that once were monks' cells and their later place of sepulture. There are many stone coffins; and the apartments and the close, with the ivy-mantled walls, are of extreme beauty. The position is remarkably fine. Removed from other habitations; quietly situated at the side of the great road, and on this meadow-like lawn; the river running leisurely by, washing the borders; the old trees; its ingenuity of arrangement,—this gem is a connecting link between the old dispensation and the new. We could but wish we might do as Scott advises of Melrose Abbey, "visit it by the pale moonlight;" but we did not have that privilege. We could only see it at the close of this fine day, when the low sun sent its rays aslant the openings, and gave an indescribable tranquillity to the place.
This is one of the few spots we would again make an effort to see. As the lamented Bayard Taylor was lured from his course of travel by Longfellow's "Belfry of Bruges," and could not rest till he had been there, so this Kirkstall Abbey influences us, and will till the end of earthly journeys. Built in 1157, in the Reformation it was abandoned and unroofed, its relics destroyed, its tombs rifled, and ruin begun; and now for more than three hundred years, as if subservient to the will of Cromwell, and mute with alarm and solitary in its shame, it has stood beautiful and enduring, though dying atom by atom in its own loneliness.
On Saturday, June 1, a pleasant day, though so cool that overcoats were still comfortable, we took train for
CARLISLE.
This is another cathedral town, and the last in England we are to visit till we have passed through Scotland. We have journeyed from London northerly to Oxford; then, northwesterly to the manufacturing towns; and now we are to go from Carlisle to Glasgow, and we expect to see London again in a couple of weeks after. The places are most of them but a few hours' ride apart. The trip is quite like one from Boston, through Worcester, Springfield, Albany, to our western cities, and then southerly, via Washington and Philadelphia and New York, to Boston, and as easily performed. We arrived at 2 p. m., and were fortunate in making our visit on a market-day, when the place was full of people; for here was an opportunity to see an English market-day at its best. On hundreds of tables, and in stalls and booths, every conceivable kind of domestic article was displayed for sale,—crockery, tinware, dry-goods (such as White or Jordan & Marsh never have for sale), new and second-hand clothing, hardware, provisions of all kinds; and a happier set of people we had not seen. Both buyer and seller were in fine mood, and good cheer prevailed. These market-days are a part of the common life of the people, and to abolish them would be taken as one more sign of the near approach of the final consummation of all things.
The city is situated on the River Eden, and is a grand old place with good buildings and streets, all replete with fine specimens of English people and life. It is one of the very oldest in England and was a Roman station. Its proximity to the border made it an important place at the time of the wars between the English and the Scotch.