eir volumes of smoke from huge
factories, telling their tales of human skill and genius triumphing over
the powers of earth, air, and water, bringing into subjection the sinews
of rock and veins of ore, and training them, by the aid of invisible and
subtle fluids, to yield obedience to the will of man, and minister to the
wants and luxuries of his being; windmills spreading out their giant arms
to stay the very winds of heaven in their path till they have done their
work; waters checked in their onward course till their rebellious force
has been turned to profit; all speak of matter visible and invisible,
made subject to spirit power, and ministering to the will and wants of
man. Tales, too, of human toil and suffering, of wasting labour, spent
in the service of luxury and indolence, burthen the air breathed forth
from groaning engine-houses, and rising up from hidden nests of poverty
that lie sheltered beneath the eaves of rich men's habitations, whose
fair frontings to modern streets or road-ways, too often form but outer
coatings of decency to masses of corruption hidden away in close yards,
courts, and alleys, at their back--church towers, and spires, and turrets
in manifold variety and abundance; and prominent among the host, stands
out in all the glory of hale old age, fine old St Peter's, looking down
from his proud eminence in solemn dignity, and smiling at all the feeble
efforts of the mushrooms clinging to his very base to hide his fair
proportions; far and wide may we look to find his peer, even among such
gems of beauty as the patron saints so lavishly have scattered among the
lanes and thoroughfares of this very garden of churches. Such are the
city features of the panoramic see; turning to another point of view,
away, beyond the foreground of the sheep and cattle pens that bespeak the
conversion of the ancient inner ballium into a modern market-place for
live stock, and across the deep running channel laden with crafts not yet
wholly superseded in their labours by steam--that infant Hercules, whose
leading-strings are compassing the surface of the globe--we catch a
glance of the hanging woods of the fairest village our Norfolk scenery
may boast, whose Richmond-like gardens skirting the pathway of the
winding river, and meadow lands beyond, dotted here and there by the
alder cars that once gave a name to the Benedictine convent close by,
form a landscape of mingled animation and quiet rural beauty, not often