aler and cooler in its tints than ours, here seems to be turned
into a leaden canopy; tall chimneys belch forth gloom and confusion;
houses, factories, fences, even trees and grass, look grim and sooty.

It is true that people with immense wealth can live in such regions in
cleanliness and elegance; but how must it be with the poor? I know of no
one circumstance more unfavorable to moral purity than the necessity of
being physically dirty. Our nature is so intensely symbolical, that
where the outward sign of defilement becomes habitual, the inner is too
apt to correspond. I am quite sure that before there can be a universal
millennium, trade must be pursued in such a way as to enable the working
classes to realize something of beauty and purity in the circumstances
of their outward life.

I have heard there is a law before the British Parliament, whose
operation is designed to purify the air of England by introducing
chimneys which shall consume all the sooty particles which now float
about, obscuring the air and carrying defilement with them. May that day
be hastened!

At Newcastle-on-Tyne and some other places various friends came out to
meet us, some of whom presented us with most splendid bouquets of
hothouse flowers. This region has been the seat of some of the most
zealous and efficient antislavery operations in England.

About night our cars whizzed into the depot at Birmingham; but just
before we came in a difficulty was started in the company. "Mr. Sturge
is to be there waiting for us, but he does not know us, and we don't
know him; what is to be done?" C---- insisted that he should know him by
instinct; and so after we reached the depot, we told him to sally out
and try. Sure enough, in a few moments he pitched upon a cheerful,
middle-aged gentleman, with a moderate but not decisive broad brim to
his hat, and challenged him as Mr. Sturge; the result verified the truth
that "instinct is a great matter." In a few moments our new friend and
ourselves were snugly encased in a fly, trotting off as briskly as ever
we could to his place at Edgbaston, nobody a whit the wiser. You do not
know how snug we felt to think we had done it so nicely.

The carriage soon drove in upon a gravel walk, winding among turf,
flowers, and shrubs, where we found opening to us another home as warm
and kindly as the one we had just left, made doubly interesting by the
idea of entire privacy and seclusion.

After retiring to our cha