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told me that he was quite surprised by the fine physical qualities 
of our Lancashire race, so long as it kept to the hills, and to 
rural occupations ; but so soon as it got down into the mills, its 
fine qualities were diminished. I will not dwell any longer upon 
this painful and somewhat delicate subject. Let us hope that a 
wise care for health both public and private, better sanitary 
arrangements, and better habits amongst the population, may, 
in course of time, render the factory system compatible with the 
preservation of human strength and beauty; and let me assure 
you that, besides being infinitely precious in themselves, the 
strength and beauty of a race have much to do with its possibili- 
ties in the fine arts. The influence of coal-smoke upon art is 
very direct in the case of architecture. The whole subject of 
architecture is discouraging in modern England, on account of 
coal-smoke, and that not merely in places like Burnley, Oldham, 
or Rochdale, but even in the capital itself. You cannot really see 
a public building in London, because it is so blackened with soot 
in patches, that its relations of light and shade are utterly 
falsified and contradicted. Take St. Paul's, for example, or 
Somerset House. The parts which have been particularly 
exposed to the rain and wind are washed white, and kept so by 
successive tempests year after year; the sheltered parts are as 
black as the inside of a chimney. Nobody can see architecture 
under such conditions. On the continent a fine building simply 
mellows with age. In Paris the stone is, when first cut, almost 
as white and soft as plaster, so that it is easily sawn and carved, 
and presents, when perfectly new, an appearance of dazzling 
freshness and cleanliness. I recollect an Englishman who 
denied that it was stone at all, but said that it was a sort of 
stucco. Stone it is, however, and the effect of the Parisian 
atmosphere upon it is simply to harden the surface—to case- 
harden it, as one would say of a metal; and at the same time 
to change its colour gradually from white to a beautiful golden 
grey, infinitely agreeable to the eye; and this is the present tint 
of the old court of the Louvre. You can see architecture under 
such conditions; but it is no use making beautiful buildings 
when all the relations of form and light and shade are to be 
falsified by soot in the sheltered parts, and violently contrasting 
white in the exposed parts. I believe, however, that a kind of 
architecture may be ultimately perfected which will be suitable 
for the manufacturing districts ; a kind of architecture depending 
more for its beauty upon the decoration of flat surfaces in coloured 
tiles and marbles and mosaics, than upon projections and recesses. 
Coal-smoke interferes much less with the decoration of interiors, 
and there is no reason why Lancashire interiors should not be 
models of artistic taste. Painting is always the most popular 
of the fine arts in manufacturing districts, to the comparative 
