supporters arm in
arm; but still we are obliged to own that no one but a Yorkshireman could
have so bent all the wild beasts of Belgravia and Mayfair, from the Countess
Gazelle to the Ducal Elephant, to his purpose, as an ex-king did. Our task
will be confined on the present occasion to a sketch of Huddersfield and
Leeds, centres of the woollen manufacture, which forms the third great staple
of English manufactures, and of Sheffield, famed for keen blades.

* * * * *

HUDDERSFIELD, twenty-six miles from Manchester, is the first important town,
on a road studded with stations, from which busy weavers and spinners are
continually passing and repassing. It is situated in a naturally barren
district, where previously to 1811 the inhabitants chiefly lived on oaten
cake, and has been raised to a high degree of prosperity by the extension of
the manufactures, a position on the high road between Manchester and Leeds,
intersected by a canal, uniting the east and west, or inland navigation, and
more recently by railroads, which connect it with all the manufacturing towns
of the north. An ample supply of water-power, with coal and building stone,
have contributed to this prosperity, of which advantage has been taken to
improve the streets, thoroughfares, and public buildings. The use of a light
yellow building stone for the houses has a very pleasant appearance after the
bricks of Manchester and Liverpool.

The Huddersfield Canal, which connects the Humber and Mersey, is a very
extraordinary piece of work. It is carried through and over a backbone of
hills by stairs of more than thirty locks in nine miles, and a tunnel three
miles in length. At one place it is 222 yards below the surface, and at
another 656.5 feet above the level of the sea.

When we examine such works, so profitable to the community, so unprofitable
to the projectors, how can we doubt the capability of our country to hold its
own in any commercial race? Men make a country, not accidents of soil or
climate, mines or forests. For centuries California and Central America have
been in the hands of an Iberian race, fallow. A few months of Anglo-Saxon
rule, and land and sea are boiling with fervid elements of cultivation,
commerce, and civilization. With time the dregs will disappear, and churches
and schools, cornfields and fulling-mills, will supersede grizzly bears and
wandering Indians.

All the land in Huddersfield belongs to the Ramsden family, by w