except for the
factories, its sides are formed by low one and two-storied houses. Here,
as everywhere, the older part of the town is especially ruinous and
miserable. A dark-coloured body of water, which leaves the beholder in
doubt whether it is a brook or a long string of stagnant puddles, flows
through the town and contributes its share to the total pollution of the
air, by no means pure without it.

There is Stockport, too, which lies on the Cheshire side of the Mersey,
but belongs nevertheless to the manufacturing district of Manchester. It
lies in a narrow valley along the Mersey, so that the streets slope down
a steep hill on one side and up an equally steep one on the other, while
the railway from Manchester to Birmingham passes over a high viaduct
above the city and the whole valley. Stockport is renowned throughout
the entire district as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes, and looks,
indeed, especially when viewed from the viaduct, excessively repellent.
But far more repulsive are the cottages and cellar dwellings of the
working-class, which stretch in long rows through all parts of the town
from the valley bottom to the crest of the hill. I do not remember to
have seen so many cellars used as dwellings in any other town of this
district.

A few miles north-east of Stockport is Ashton-under-Lyne, one of the
newest factory towns of this region. It stands on the slope of a hill at
the foot of which are the canal and the river Tame, and is, in general,
built on the newer, more regular plan. Five or six parallel streets
stretch along the hill intersected at right angles by others leading down
into the valley. By this method, the factories would be excluded from
the town proper, even if the proximity of the river and the canal-way did
not draw them all into the valley where they stand thickly crowded,
belching forth black smoke from their chimneys. To this arrangement
Ashton owes a much more attractive appearance than that of most factory
towns; the streets are broad and cleaner, the cottages look new, bright
red, and comfortable. But the modern system of building cottages for
working-men has its own disadvantages; every street has its concealed
back lane to which a narrow paved path leads, and which is all the
dirtier. And, although I saw no buildings, except a few on entering,
which could have been more than fifty years old, there are even in Ashton
streets in which the cottages are getting bad, whe