These had been set up by a company about eighteen years before, much
against all our wills. With Lord Erymanth at our head, we had
opposed with all our might the breaking up of the beautiful moorland
that ran right down into Mycening, and the defilement of our pure and
rapid Lerne; but modern progress had been too strong for us. Huge
brick inclosures with unpleasant smoky chimneys had arisen, and
around them a whole colony of bare, ugly little houses, filled with
squalid women and children, little the better for the men's wages
when they were high, and now that the Company was in a languishing
state, miserable beyond description. We county people had simply
viewed ourselves as the injured parties by this importation, bemoaned
the ugliness of the erections, were furious at the interruptions to
our country walks, prophesied the total collapse of the Company, and
never suspected that we had any duties towards the potters. The
works were lingering on, only just not perishing; the wages that the
men did get, such as they were, went in drink; the town in that
quarter was really unsafe in the evening; and the most ardent hope of
all the neighbourhood was, that the total ruin constantly expected
would lead to the migration of all the wretched population.
Mr. Yolland, who attended most of their sicknesses, used to tell
fearful things of the misery, vice, and hardness, and did acts of
almost heroic kindness among them, which did not seem consistent with
what, to my grief and dismay, was reported of this chosen companion
of Harold--that physical science had conducted him into materialism.
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