15 



should have appeared, hut it was completely hidden from view by 

 a pall-like covering of smoke and vapour, black, impenetrable, 

 deadly, rising up from the buried town, and driving before the 

 wind in Lingering nastiness ' ' long drawn out." The day-dreams 

 of Beulah were rudely dispelled, and again Bunyan's description 

 occurred to me, though of a very different scene from the former. 

 " About the midst of the valley, I perceived the mouth of hell 

 to be, and it stood also hard by the way-side. And ever and 

 anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundances 

 with sparks and hideous noises. This frightful sight was seen 

 for several miles together. The valley itself is as dark as pitch. 

 Death also doth always spread his wings over it. In a word, it 

 is every whit dreadful, being utterly without order." Certainly, 

 though " God made the country," man makes Burnley smoke, 

 Burnley is justly proud of its local institutions, and as the smoke 

 may be assumed to be a well-established local institution, at any 

 rate for five a half days in the week, it ill becomes a comparative 

 stranger to lay, figuratively speaking, sacrilegious hands upon it. 

 Clean hands certainly he cannot. Burnley is "beautiful for 

 situation," but as for the smoke — oh the pity of it ! Euskin 

 writing in 1859, says, " Last week, I drove from Rochdale to 

 Bolton Abbey ; quietly, in order to see the country, and certainly 

 it was worth while. I never went over a more interesting twenty 

 miles th,an tliose between Eochdale and Burnley. Natm-ally, the 

 valley has been one of the most beautiful in the Lancashire hills ; 

 one of the far away solitudes, full of old shepherd ways of life. 

 At this time there are not, I think, more than a thousand yards 



of road to be traversed, without passing a furnace or mill 



Beautiful art can only be produced by people who have beautiful 

 things about them, and desire to look at them ; and unless you 

 provide some elements of beauty for your workmen to be sur- 

 rounded by, you will find that no elements of beauty can be 



invented by them Improve their minds, refine their 



habits, and you form and refine their designs : but keep them 

 illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, 

 and whatever they do will stiU be spurious, vulgar and valueless." 



What do we mean by the Beautiful ? 



In books of Philosophy, certain more or less mechanical con- 

 ditions are laid down as necessary in an object or scene, if it is 

 to commend itself to our minds as beautiful, and the attempt is 

 made to reduce the subject of Beauty to a simple matter of 

 calculation, according to specified rules, after the fashion of a 

 school-boy's table-book. On the other hand we are told that 

 Beauty is entirely a question of individual taste, that there are 

 no rules to be laid down concerning it, and that De gustibus non 

 est disputandwn. We are reminded that very divergent views 



