The Bastions Are Large With Obtuse Angles,
Square Orillons, And Double Flanks Originally Casemated, And Most Of Them
Crowned With
Cavaliers." On the way to Durham, "much amused by the
discussions of two passengers, one a smooth-spoken, semi-clerical
Looking
person; the other a brusque well-to-do attorney with a Northumbrian burr.
Subject, among others, Protection. The Attorney all for 'cheap bread' -
'You wouldn't rob the poor man of his loaf,' and so forth. 'You must go
with the stgheam, sir, you must go with the stgheam.' 'I never did, Mr
Thompson, and I never will,' said the other in an oily manner, singularly
inconsistent with the sentiment." At Durham they dined with a dignitary of
the Church, and Yule was roasted by being placed with his back to an
enormous fire. "Coals are cheap at Durham," he notes feelingly, adding,
"The party we found as heavy as any Edinburgh one. Smith, indeed,
evidently has had little experience of really stupid Edinburgh parties,
for he had never met with anything approaching to this before." (Happy
Smith!) But thanks to the kindness and hospitality of the astronomer, Mr.
Chevalier, and his gifted daughter, they had a delightful visit to
beautiful Durham, and came away full of admiration for the (then newly
established) University, and its grand locale. They went on to stay with
an uncle by marriage of Yule's, in Yorkshire. At dinner he was asked by
his host to explain Foucault's pendulum experiment. "I endeavoured to
explain it somewhat, I hope, to the satisfaction of his doubts, but not at
all to that of Mr. G. M., who most resolutely declined to take in any
elucidation, coming at last to the conclusion that he entirely differed
with me as to what North meant, and that it was useless to argue until we
could agree about that!" They went next to Leeds, to visit Kirkstall
Abbey, "a mediaeval fossil, curiously embedded among the squalid brickwork
and chimney stalks of a manufacturing suburb. Having established ourselves
at the hotel, we went to deliver a letter to Mr. Hope, the official
assignee, a very handsome, aristocratic-looking gentleman, who seemed as
much out of place at Leeds as the Abbey." At Leeds they visited the flax
mills of Messrs. Marshall, "a firm noted for the conscientious care they
take of their workpeople.... We mounted on the roof of the building, which
is covered with grass, and formerly was actually grazed by a few sheep,
until the repeated inconvenience of their tumbling through the glass domes
put a stop to this." They next visited some tile and brickworks on land
belonging to a friend. "The owner of the tile works, a well-to-do burgher,
and the apparent model of a West Riding Radical, received us in rather a
dubious way: 'There are a many people has come and brought introductions,
and looked at all my works, and then gone and set up for themselves close
by. Now des you mean to say that you be really come all the way from
Bengul?' 'Yes, indeed we have, and we are going all the way back again,
though we didn't exactly come from there to look at your brickworks.'
'Then you're not in the brick-making line, are you?' 'Why we've had a good
deal to do with making bricks, and may have again; but we'll engage that
if we set up for ourselves, it shall be ten thousand miles from you.' This
seemed in some degree to set his mind at rest...."
"A dismal day, with occasional showers, prevented our seeing Sheffield to
advantage.
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