I04< 



WASTE LANDS. 



woful is the appearance of the avenues which 

 lead to once Merry Wakefield. 



" On one of them there frowns a Bastile s6 

 huge and terrible, and so appalling with solitary 

 cells, that in viewing it the soul of man recoils 

 within him, and he begins to doubt if he is in 

 a Christian country. Things were not so in 

 the gone-by days of once Merry Wakefield. 



" On another is seen a widely spreading 

 structure, peopled by those whom sorrow, and 

 misfortune, and want, and wretchedness, have 

 deprived of the choicest gift of Heaven to man. 

 We read in their countenances the mourn- 

 ful history of their sad destiny, and we fancy 

 that we can hear them say, ' You would have 

 seen no sights so sorrowful as these in the 

 gone-by days of once merry Wakefield.' 



" On a third avenue we behold unsightly piles 

 of buildings, — granaries high and spacious, — 

 but the workings of which are diametrically the 

 reverse of those erected by benevolent Joseph 

 in ancient Egypt. And in passing over Calder's 

 Bridge, we see a gem of olden architecture^ 

 now mouldering into dust, unheeded and unte- 

 nanted, and with its windows broken. 'Tis 

 said to have been endowed for mass, for the 



