society,
where its produce permitted them to be annual competitors. In every
street there was a well: behind the factory were the public baths; the
schools were under the direction of the perpetual curate of the church,
which Mr Trafford, though a Roman Catholic, had raised and endowed. In
the midst of this village, surrounded by beautiful gardens, which
gave an impulse to the horticulture of the community, was the house of
Trafford himself, who comprehended his position too well to withdraw
himself with vulgar exclusiveness from his real dependents, but
recognized the baronial principle reviving in a new form, and adapted to
the softer manners and more ingenious circumstances of the times.

And what was the influence of such an employer and such a system of
employment on the morals and manners of the employed? Great: infinitely
beneficial. The connexion of a labourer with his place of work, whether
agricultural or manufacturing, is itself a vast advantage. Proximity to
the employer brings cleanliness and order, because it brings observation
and encouragement. In the settlement of Trafford crime was positively
unknown: and offences were very slight. There was not a single person in
the village of a reprobate character. The men were well clad; the women
had a blooming cheek; drunkenness was unknown; while the moral condition
of the softer sex was proportionately elevated.

The vast form of the spreading factory, the roofs and gardens of the
village, the Tudor chimneys of the house of Trafford, the spire of the
gothic church, with the sparkling river and the sylvan hack-ground, came
rather suddenly on the sight of Egremont. They were indeed in the
pretty village-street before he was aware he was about to enter it. Some
beautiful children rushed out of a cottage and flew to Sybil, crying
out, "the queen, the queen;" one clinging to her dress, another seizing
her arm, and a third, too small to struggle, pouting out its lips to be
embraced.

"My subjects," said Sybil laughing, as she greeted them all; and then
they ran away to announce to others that their queen had arrived.

Others came: beautiful and young. As Sybil and Egremont walked along,
the race too tender for labour, seemed to spring out of every cottage
to greet "their queen." Her visits had been very rare of late, but they
were never forgotten; they formed epochs in the village annals of the
children, some of whom knew only by tradition the golden age when Syb