enough in the habits of the people, yet, in others, the causes are
so obscure, that the wisest observer would be most careful in
judging respecting them. I saw an example of this in a little bye-
street, at the upper end of Scholes--a quarter of Wigan where the
poorest of the poor reside, and where many decent working people
have lately been driven for cheap shelter by the stress of the
times. Scholes is one of those ash-pits of human life which may be
found in almost any great town; where, among a good deal of despised
stuff, which by wise treatment might possibly be made useful to the
world, many a jewel gets accidentally thrown away, and lost. This
bye-street of mean brick cottages had an unwholesome, outcast look;
and the sallow, tattered women, lounging about the doorways, and
listlessly watching the sickly children in the street, evinced the
prevalence of squalor and want there. The very children seemed
joyless at their play; and everything that met the eye foretold that
there was little chance of finding anything in that street but
poverty in its most prostrate forms. But, even in this unpromising
spot, I met with an agreeable surprise.

The first house we entered reminded me of those clean, lone
dwellings, up in the moorland nooks of Lancashire, where the sweet
influences of nature have free play; where the people have a
hereditary hatred of dirt and disorder; and where, even now, many of
the hardy mountain folk are half farmers, half woollen weavers,
doing their weaving in their own quiet houses, where the smell of
the heather and the song of the wild bird floats in at the workman's
window, blent with the sounds of rindling waters,--doing their
weaving in green sequestered nooks, where the low of kine, and the
cry of the moorfowl can be heard; and bearing the finished "cuts"
home upon their backs to the distant town. All was so bright in this
little cottage,--so tidy and serene,--that the very air seemed
clearer there than in the open street. The humble furniture, good of
its kind, was all shiny with "elbow grease," and some parts of it
looked quaint and well-preserved, like the heirlooms of a careful
cottage ancestry. The well polished fire-irons, and other metal
things, seemed to gather up the diffuse daylight and fling it back
in concentrated radiances that illuminated the shady cottage with
cheerful beauty. The little shelf of books, the gleaming window,
with its healthy pot flowers, the perfect order, and