310 A Walk from 



a century ago; while the latter have gone up to the 

 rich and luxurious surroundings of kings and queens of 

 that period. The upward movement has reached the 

 very lowest strata of society. Not only have the small 

 tradesmen and farmers ascended to the comfortable 

 conditions of large merchants and landowners of one 

 hundred years ago, hut common day laborers are lifted 

 upward by the general uprising. I should not wonder 

 if all the damp, low, cellarless cottages they now fre- 

 quently inhabit should be swept away in less than fifty 

 years and replaced by as comfortable buildings as the 

 great middle class occupied in the childhood of the 

 present generation. 



I found comfortable quarters for the night in the 

 little village of Bramhope, about five miles from Leeds. 

 The next day I walked to Harrowgate, passing through 

 Otley and across the celebrated Wharf Vale. The scenery 

 of this valley, as it opens upon you suddenly on descend- 

 ing from the south into Otley, is exceedingly beautiful ; 

 not so extensive as that of Belvoir Yale, but with all 

 the features of the latter landscape compressed in a 

 smaller space ; like a portrait taken on a smaller scale. 

 As you look off from the southern ridge or wall of the 

 valley, you seem to stand on the cord of a segment of 

 a circle, the radius of which touches the horizon at 

 about five miles to the north. This crescent is filled 



