ide, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten
pent-house roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured
creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl
from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the
ground tremble with their agonies. Dismantled houses here and there
appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others
that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but
yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan in their looks and ragged in
attire, tended the engines, fed their tributary fire, begged upon the
road, or scowled half-naked from the doorless houses. Then came more
of the wrathful monsters, whose like they almost seemed to be in their
wildness and their untamed air, screeching and turning round and round
again; and still, before, behind, and to the right and left, was the
same interminable perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in their
black vomit, blasting all things living or inanimate, shutting out the
face of day, and closing in on all these horrors with a dense dark
cloud.

But night-time in this dreadful spot!--night, when the smoke was
changed to fire; when every chimney spirited up its flame; and places,
that had been dark vaults all day, now shone red-hot, with figures
moving to and fro within their blazing jaws, and calling to one another
with hoarse cries--night, when the noise of every strange machine was
aggravated by the darkness; when the people near them looked wilder and
more savage; when bands of unemployed labourers paraded the roads, or
clustered by torch-light round their leaders, who told them, in stern
language, of their wrongs, and urged them on to frightful cries and
threats; when maddened men, armed with sword and firebrand, spurning
the tears and prayers of women who would restrain them, rushed forth on
errands of terror and destruction, to work no ruin half so surely as
their own--night, when carts came rumbling by, filled with rude
coffins (for contagious disease and death had been busy with the living
crops); when orphans cried, and distracted women shrieked and followed
in their wake--night, when some called for bread, and some for drink to
drown their cares, and some with tears, and some with staggering feet,
and some with bloodshot eyes, went brooding home--night, which, unlike
the night that Heaven sends on earth, brought with it no peace, nor
quiet, nor signs of blessed sleep--who s