re the bricks in the
house-corners are no longer firm but shift about, in which the walls have
cracks and will not hold the chalk whitewash inside; streets, whose
dirty, smoke-begrimed aspect is nowise different from that of the other
towns of the district, except that in Ashton, this is the exception, not
the rule.

A mile eastward lies Stalybridge, also on the Tame. In coming over the
hill from Ashton, the traveller has, at the top, both right and left,
fine large gardens with superb villa-like houses in their midst, built
usually in the Elizabethan style, which is to the Gothic precisely what
the Anglican Church is to the Apostolic Roman Catholic. A hundred paces
farther and Stalybridge shows itself in the valley, in sharp contrast
with the beautiful country seats, in sharp contrast even with the modest
cottages of Ashton! Stalybridge lies in a narrow, crooked ravine, much
narrower even than the valley at Stockport, and both sides of this ravine
are occupied by an irregular group of cottages, houses, and mills. On
entering, the very first cottages are narrow, smoke-begrimed, old and
ruinous; and as the first houses, so the whole town. A few streets lie
in the narrow valley bottom, most of them run criss-cross, pell-mell, up
hill and down, and in nearly all the houses, by reason of this sloping
situation, the ground floor is half-buried in the earth; and what
multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of this
confused way of building may be seen from the hills, whence one has the
town, here and there, in a bird's-eye view almost at one's feet. Add to
this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in
spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined.

But enough of these little towns. Each has its own peculiarities, but in
general, the working-people live in them just as in Manchester. Hence I
have especially sketched only their peculiar construction, and would
observe, that all more general observations as to the condition of the
labouring population in Manchester are fully applicable to these
surrounding towns as well.

Manchester lies at the foot of the southern slope of a range of hills,
which stretch hither from Oldham, their last peak, Kersallmoor, being at
once the racecourse and the Mons Sacer of Manchester. Manchester proper
lies on the left bank of the Irwell, between that stream and the two
smaller ones, the Irk and the Medlock, which here empty into th