Two miles off lies the body of the great workshop-city, already stretching
its begrimed arms in the direction of the Exhibition. The vast flat expanse
of brick walls, diversified by countless chimney and occasional steeples,
now and then interrupted by the insertion of a low shed or an enormous
warehouse, offers no single object upon which the eye or the imagination
can rest with pleasure. Such a view was never to be seen in the world
before this century; a city built merely by trade, built for the home of
labor, of machines, and of engines, and for the dwelling-place (one cannot
call it the home) of crowds of human beings, whose value is, for the
most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like
qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the
city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to
keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of
forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, which
waves in the wind like a pall over the city, slowly moving and settling
down upon the land. One may almost hear the roar of the continual fires,
the throb of the engines, the heavy beat of the trip-hammers, and the
rattle of the spindles, by which the work of the world is done; and their
noises, blended by the distance into one monotonous sound, seem like the
voice of the restless, hard-working, unsettled spirit of gain. Manchester
is built and is worked for profit, not for pleasure; beauty is driven away
from her as a thing at variance with practical life; and even the sky above
her and the fields around her yield only at rare moments and for short
seasons those precious and gracious shows of beauty which are the free and
blessed gift of love to all the world. Smoke, steam, coal-dust, blackened
walls, and bare fields lie outside the Exhibition; and now let us go
within.

The world could show no sharper and more affecting contrast. Outside, all
suggests the competitions and struggles of trade, the crowded street, the