190 INTRODUCTION OP RAILWAYS. 



loss, and more temptation to drink. Such is the 

 process still going- on. Having reached this pass, 

 it is clearly best that it should go on till the 

 primitive population, having lost its safety of 

 isolation and independence, and kept its ignorance 

 and grossness, shall have given place to a new set 

 of inhabitants better skilled in agriculture, and in 

 every way more up to the times. It is mournful 

 enough to meet the remnants of the old families 

 in a reduced and discouraged condition : but if they 

 can no longer fill the valleys with grain, and cover 

 the hill-sides with flocks, it is right that those who 

 can should enter upon their lands, and that know- 

 ledge, industry, and temperance should find their 

 fair field and due reward. 



We have no fear of injury, moral and economical, 

 from the great recent change, — the introduction 

 of railways. The morals of rural districts are 

 usually such as cannot well be made worse by any 

 change. Drinking and kindred vices abound wher- 

 ever, in our day, intellectual resources are absent : 

 and nowhere is drunkenness a more prevalent and 

 desperate curse than in the Lake District. Any 

 infusion of the intelligence and varied interests of 

 the towns-people must, it appears, be eminently 

 beneficial : and the order of work-people brought 

 by the railways is of a desirable kind. And, as to 

 the economical effect, — it cannot but be good, 

 considering that mental stimulus and improved 

 education are above every thing wanted. Under 

 the old seclusion, the material comfort of the 

 inhabitants had long been dwindling ; and their 

 best chance of recovery is clearly in the widest 

 possible intercourse wich classes which, parallel in 



