HOME.

Following that plan of contrasts which travellers generally find most

agreeable, we should advise that tourists, taking their route southward, will

avail themselves of the North Staffordshire lines to visit two of the most

beautiful mansions, if they were foreign we should say palaces, in

England--Alton Towers, the seat of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Trentham Hall,

the seat of the Duke of Sutherland, and conclude by investigating the

Porcelain Manufactories, which, founded by Wedgwood, are carried on with

excellent spirit and taste by a number of potters, among whom Alderman

Copeland and Mr. Herbert Minton are pre-eminent.

Alton Towers stand near Cheadle, on the Churnet Valley Line; Trentham Hall

not far from Stoke.

A day may be pleasantly spent in examining the elaborate gardens of Alton,

which are a magnificent specimen of the artificial style of landscape

gardening. Mr. Loudon gives a very elaborate description of them in his

large work on the subject of gardens to great houses.

At Cheadle the Earl of Shrewsbury has erected at his own expense, Mr. Pugin

being his architect, a small Roman Catholic Church, which is a magnificent

specimen of that gentleman's taste in the "decorated" style. "Heraldic

emblazonments, and religious emblems, painting and gilding, stained glass,

and curiously-wrought metal work, imageries and inscriptions, rood loft and

reredos, stone altar and sedilia, metal screenwork, encaustic paving, make up

the gorgeous spectacle."

The doors of the principal entrance are painted red, and have gilt hinges

fashioned in the shape of rampant lions spreading over nearly their entire

surface.

In one of the canopied niches is a figure, representing the present Earl of

Shrewsbury kneeling, with a model of the church in his hand as the founder,

with his "patron," St. John the Baptist, standing behind him.

This Cheadle Church, in which Mr. Pugin has had full scope on a small scale

for the indulgence of his gorgeous faith and fancies, reminds us that at

Oscot College, within sight of the smoke of Birmingham and Wolverhampton,

towns where the best locks, clasps, hasps, bolts, and hinges can be made; the

doors and windows, in deference to Mr. Pugin's mediaeval predilections, are of

the awkward clumsy construction with which our ancestors were obliged to be

content for want of better. On the same principle the floors ought to have

been strewed with rushes, the meat salt, the bread black rye, and manuscript

should supersede print. But it is not so, there is no school in the kingdom

where the youth are better fed, or made more comfortable than at Oscot.

TRENTHAM has a delicious situation on the Trent, which forms a lake in the

park, inhabited by swans and monstrous pike. The Hall used to be one of the

hideous brick erections of the time of pigtails and laced waistcoats,--the

footman style of dress and architecture. But the genius of Barry (that great

architect whom the people on the twopenny steamboats seem to appreciate more

than some grumbling members of the House of Commons) has transformed, without

destroying it, into a charming Italian Villa, with gardens, in which the

Italian style has been happily adapted to our climate; for instance, round-

headed laurels, grown for the purpose, taking the place of orange trees.

This Trentham Hall used to be one of the magical pictures of the coach road,

of which the railway robbed us. For miles before reaching it, we used to

look out for the wooded park, with its herds of mottled deer, and the great

lake, where the sight of the swans always brought up that story of the big

pike, choked like a boa, with a swan's neck. A story that seems to belong to

every swan-haunted lake.

But what one railway took from us another has restored much improved. So we

say to all friends, at either end of the lines, take advantage of an

excursion, or express train, according to your means, and go and see what we

cannot at this time describe, and what exceeds all description. For the

hour, you may enjoy Trentham Hall as much as if it were your own, with all

the Bridgwater Estates, Mines, Canals, and Railways to boot. And that is the

spirit in which to enjoy travelling. Admiration without envy, and pity

without contempt.

From Trentham you may proceed through the Potteries. You will find there a

church built, and we believe endowed, by a manufacturer, Mr. Herbert Minton.

And then you may have a choice of routes. But to London the most direct will

be by Tamworth and Lichfield, on the Trent Valley line.

To those who look below the surface, who care to know something about the

workman as well as the work, such a tour as we have traced could not fail to

be of the deepest interest. It embraces the whole course of the emigration

from low wages to higher that is constantly flowing in this country. New

sources of employment daily arising in mines, in ports, in factories, demand

labour; to supply that labour recruits are constantly marching from the

country lane to the paved city.

The agricultural districts of Staffordshire have a population of under two

hundred souls per square mile. The pottery and iron districts of the same

county of over seven hundred. These swarms of men are not had where they

labour, they are immigrants. Take another instance, in Kent and Devonshire,

the wages of farm labourers are eight to nine shillings a-week. In North

Cheshire they are fifteen. The cost of living to the labourer in both places

is about the same; fuel is cheap in Cheshire. What makes the difference in

the demand for labour in Cheshire but the steam-engines?

Towns must be prepared to lodge decently, and educate carefully, children of

rural immigrants, or woe betide us all. It is education that has saved the

United States from the consequences of the tide of ignorant misery daily

disembarking on the Atlantic shores.

Sometimes we hear fears for the condition of farmers under manufacturer

landlords. Those who express these fears must have travelled with their ears

shut. More than seventy per cent. of the great landowners in the great

travelling counties are manufacturers, or merchants, or lawyers, by one or

two descents. In Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, or Warwickshire, examine

closely, and you will find it so. As a general rule, a rich pawnbroker

retired will make a better landlord than a poor baronet. But in this country

two generations will make one of the baronet's sons a successful shopkeeper,

and the pawnbroker's a baronet, or even a peer.

"I tell you what, sir," said a talkative stud groom once, in charge of race

horses for Russia, and travelling first class, "I've been in Petersburg, in

Vienna, and in Berlin, and I lived ten years with the Earl of ----. For all

the points of blood our aristocracy will beat any of these foreign princes,

counts, and dukes, either for figure or for going; but it won't do to look

into their pedigree, for the crosses that would ruin a race of horses, are

the making of the breed of English noblemen."

Here our irregular imperfect guidance ceases. Perhaps, although deficient in

minuteness of detail, this pot pourri of gossip, history, description,

anecdote, suggestion, and opinion, may not only amuse the traveller by

railway, but assist him in choosing routes leading to those scenes or those

pursuits in which he feels an interest.