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also on the improved condition of the dwelHngs of the poor, and 

 boast of the increased interest taken in imperial and municipal 

 matters by the body of the people. But if pressed as to the 

 characteristics of men of business in great centres of industry 

 you would be constrained to admit that individually there is 

 much feverish unrest. Trade fluctuates from causes beyond 

 control and outside any help Government can furnish, the great 

 manufacturers of thirty years ago are gone, and their places 

 know them no more — the whole personnel of the principal 

 industry in Burnley has changed in one generation. Competition 

 is more keen than ever. With many business men life is one 

 constant struggle for competency, in some instances for existence. 

 All this naturally leads to a restless anxiety, a want of proper 

 proportion — the very opposite of that quiet mind we all ought to 

 cultivate. Business engrosses all the thoughts of many of our 

 men of industry. Tiieir very recreations are apt to become mere 

 second editions of their ordinary work. Whereas it is a primary 

 law of useful recreation that its first element must be change — 

 of scene, of labour, or of thought. To men of this class 

 (among the most useful constituents of Lancashire life) a more 

 excellent way may be pointed out. You say your lives are pro- 

 saic — I offer you poetry. Your work is dull, monotonous, the 

 atmosphere in which you labour depressing — I take you into the 

 realms of sweetness and light where martial odes shall stir your 

 blood, and noble words shall speed you to high emprise. Your 

 lot is cast in a district where vegetation languishes and the sun 

 is rarely seen through the canopy of smoke which doth so much 

 encircle us — I can direct you where there are brighter skies and 

 where the sun shines in refulgent beauty : — 



" There to wander far away 

 On from island unto island at the gateways of the day 

 Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies. 

 Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise." 



Your work is too much with you — " getting and spending you 

 lay waste your powers," your mind needs recreation — I can tell 

 you where you may fill your brain with wondrous visions of 

 forests and enchantments drear, of fair women and chivalrous 

 men, " immortal shapes of bright aerial spirits, insphered in 

 regions mild of calm and serene air, above the smoke and stir of 

 this dim spot which men call earth." In this time of '• quad- 

 rumanous activity ' ' would you learn to see the trivial phenomena 

 of the world in their true relation to the whole of the great 

 universe into which they are so cunningly fitted, you must go to 

 the great poets of your own and other lands and there read of 

 "that true world within the world we see whereof our world is 

 but a bounding shore." Imaginative poetry is, as Spenser has 

 it, " the world's sweet inn from care and wearisome turmoil.' 



