Towards democracy

452 Towards Democracy

And as I lifted my eyes, lo! across the great wearied © throbbing city the far unblemished hills,

Hills of thick moss and heather,

Coming near in the clear light, in the recent rain yet shining.

And over them along the horizon moving, the gorgeous procession of shining clouds,

And beyond them, lo! in fancy, the sea and the shores of other lands,

And the great globe itself curving with its land and its sea and its clouds in supreme beauty among the stars.

A LaAnNcaASHIRE MILL-HAND

HE died at the age of sixty-three, mother of a family of | four children, and having during that time worked for » fifty-three years in a Lancashire cotton-mill!

You know the scene: the great oblong ugly factory, in | five or six tiers, all windows, alive with lights on a dark winter's morning, and again with the same lights in the : evening ; and all day within, thesthump and scream of the*: machinery, and the thick smell of hot oil and cotton fluff, | and the crowds of drab-faced drab-dressed men and women | and children—the mill-hands—going to and fro or serving ; the machines ;

And, outside, the sad smoke-laden sky, and rows of dingy streets, and waste tracks where no grass grows, and tall | chimneys belching dirt, and the same same outlook for miles.