PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. I CANNOT allow the issue of the present volume to take place without acknowledgment of the favour with which it has been received, and of the generous criticism that has so largely contributed to its success. "Abel Drake's Wife" has been reprinted in America and Germany, and is now under process of translation in France. I hope yet to show that I do not misconceive this friendly welcome. That is all I can or dare say in connection with the work on which I am engaged, and which I hope to produce in the Spring. LONDON, September, 1863. We are so used to think of a mill or factory as necessarily , forming part of a great ugly conglomerate of similar buildings, as situated in towns where the sooty atmosphere above is only in too complete a harmony with the muddy streets below,-as washed by foul "becks," (or streams,) and surrounded by a stricken vegetation, that it is not easy to make the reader, who may happen to have no personal knowledge of the district in question, understand how numerous are the exceptions to so depressing a view of our manufacturing industry. Yet one might undertake to show, within a very few miles of Manchester itself, scenes of picturesque, romantic, and almost sublime beauty, the qualities of which seem to have been first appreciated by that very mill-owner whose doings so often give us the impression that, through some strange cala B mity, beauty is with him but a lost sense. Between Manchester and Sheffield, and again between Manchester and Leeds, including the future classic land of Ebenezer Elliott,-who lived to see a tunnel, some three miles long, driven through his beloved "Stannedge, tipped with fire," --many are the factories scattered about in individual dignity of isolation; and each occupying a site that, at first glance, would seem to have been chosen with a most poetic disregard of any other consideration than its extreme loveliness. But as they appear before you in rapid succession (supposing you to be a traveller by the rail), you cannot fail to note one common characteristic which explains all, the little streams in front, which formed originally, and in many cases, we believe, still form, the moving power of the machinery, and which everywhere supply the indispensable element of purification. Hence the reservoirs, with their grassy, lawn-like margins, so carefully preserved round the base of the factory; hence the selection of those solitary and picturesque valley bot toms. Hence, too, occasionally occurs a felicitous mingling on the same spot of the two oldest and most necessary of industrial arts, those relating to the growth of our food and to the preparation of our clothing. The single factory will not spoil the air for cultivation, but it will quicken the cultivator's industry by its demands, and diffuse new life into the rustic mind by its own vital energy, |