old or young, congregated in groups which, dealing in a common
type of goods, kept the same places till, toward three o'clock,
they were lost in the mass which covered the floor. Even then
there was no uproar, no rush or push, no sharp cries or frenzied
shouting; but from the crowd, which was largely made up of
elderly men, there rose a sort of surd, rich hum, deepening ever,
and never breaking into a shriek of torment or derision. It was
not histrionic, and yet for its commercial importance it was one
of the most moving spectacles which could offer itself to the eye
in the whole world.

[Illustration: THE MANCHESTER SHIP-CANAL]

I cannot pretend to have profited by my visit to that immensely
valuable deposit of books, bought from the Spencer family at
Althorp, and dedicated as the Rylands library to the memory of a
citizen of Manchester. Books in a library, except you have time
and free access to them, are as baffling as so many bottles in a
wine-cellar, which are not opened for you, and which if they were
would equally go to your head without final advantage. I find,
therefore, that my sole note upon the Rylands Library is the very
honest one that it smelt, like the cathedral, of coal-gas. The
absence of this gas was the least merit of the beautiful old
Chetham College, with its library dating from the seventeenth
century, and claiming to have been the first free library in
England, and doubtless the world. In the cloistered
picturesqueness of the place, its mediaeval memorials, and its
ancient peace, I found myself again in those dear Middle Ages
which are nowhere quite wanting in England, and against which I
rubbed off all smirch of the modernity I had come to Manchester