y living men. And, as I have intimated before, it is in
giving thought and labour, that we may often make the greatest and the
most profitable sacrifices for the good of others. But to go back to
mere embellishment--it is very apt to go hand in hand with material
improvements. Besides, it raises a higher standard. It declares that
there is something besides food and clothing. It may create, perhaps,
the love of beauty and order in minds that now seem sunk in sense. At
any rate it may do so in a coming generation. And it is not a little
matter if it attach the wealthier classes to these towns. This naturally
brings me to a subject of which I think the reader will, on
consideration, see the importance. I have heard it said, and thought, it
a far-seeing remark, that one of the greatest benefits which could be
conferred on manufacturing towns, would be to purify them from smoke, on
the ground that the wealthier classes would then have less objection to
reside in their vicinity: and, especially, that those who constitute the
natural aristocracy of the place, would not be so much tempted to remove
themselves from the spot where their fortunes had grown up.

Dr. Cooke Taylor, in his letters to the Archbishop of Dublin, speaking of
the parts of Manchester which "have been abandoned to the poorest grade
of all," says,

"Your Grace is aware that to some extent Dublin is similarly divided
into the city of the rich and the city of the poor; but I know that
many respectable and wealthy manufacturers reside in the liberties of
Dublin, while the smoke-nuisance drives every body from the township
of Manchester who can possibly find means of renting a house
elsewhere."

Now is the doing away of this smoke a sort of chimerical and Quixotic
undertaking? Not in the least. The experiments appear to be decisive
upon this point; and had there been a reasonable care for the health,
beauty, and cleanliness of the towns where their work is carried on, the
manufacturers would long ago have contrived, I believe, that there should
be no such thing as opaque smoke issuing from their chimneys. Count
Rumford says in his essays,

"I never view from a distance, as I come into town, this black cloud
which hangs over London without wishing to be able to compute the
immense number of chaldrons of coals of which it is composed; for
could this be ascertained, I am persuaded so striking a fact would