Yet the aspect of Keighley promises well for future stateliness,
if not picturesqueness. Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built
of it have a kind of solid grandeur connected with their uniform and
enduring lines. The frame-work of the doors, and the lintels of the
windows, even in the smallest dwellings, are made of blocks of stone.
There is no painted wood to require continual beautifying, or else
present a shabby aspect; and the stone is kept scrupulously clean by the
notable Yorkshire housewives. Such glimpses into the interior as a
passer-by obtains, reveal a rough abundance of the means of living, and
diligent and active habits in the women. But the voices of the people
are hard, and their tones discordant, promising little of the musical
taste that distinguishes the district, and which has already furnished a
Carrodus to the musical world. The names over the shops (of which the
one just given is a sample) seem strange even to an inhabitant of the
neighbouring county, and have a peculiar smack and flavour of the place.

The town of Keighley never quite melts into country on the road to
Haworth, although the houses become more sparse as the traveller journeys
upwards to the grey round hills that seem to bound his journey in a
westerly direction. First come some villas; just sufficiently retired
from the road to show that they can scarcely belong to any one liable to
be summoned in a hurry, at the call of suffering or danger, from his
comfortable fireside; the lawyer, the doctor, and the clergyman, live at
hand, and hardly in the suburbs, with a screen of shrubs for concealment.

In a town one does not look for vivid colouring; what there may be of
this is furnished by the wares in the shops, not by foliage or
atmospheric effects; but in the country some brilliancy and vividness
seems to be instinctively expected, and there is consequently a slight
feeling of disappointment at the grey neutral tint of every object, near
or far off, on the way from Keighley to Haworth. The distance is about
four miles; and, as I have said, what with villas, great worsted
factories, rows of workmen's houses, with here and there an old-fashioned
farmhouse and out-buildings, it can hardly be called "country" any part
of the way. For two miles the road passes over tolerably level ground,
distant hills on the left, a "beck" flowing through meadows on the right,
and furnishing water power, at certain points, to the factori