You apprehend me? I speak of the annual arrival of more
than three hundred thousand strangers in this island. How
will you feed them? How will you clothe them? How will you
house them? They have given up butcher's meat; must they give
up bread? And as for raiment and shelter, the rags of the
kingdom are exhausted and your sinks and cellars already swarm
like rabbit warrens.
"'Tis an awful consideration," said Egremont musing.
"Awful," said Gerard; "'tis the most solemn thing since the
deluge. What kingdom can stand against it? Why go to your
history--you're a scholar,--and see the fall of the great
Roman empire--what was that? Every now and then, there came
two or three hundred thousand strangers out of the forests and
crossed the mountains and rivers. They come to us every year
and in greater numbers. What are your invasions of the
barbarous nations, your Goths and Visigoths, your Lombards and
Huns, to our Population Returns!"
END OF THE SECOND BOOK
BOOK III
Book 3 Chapter 1
The last rays of the sun, contending with clouds of smoke that
drifted across the country, partially illumined a peculiar
landscape. Far as the eye could reach, and the region was
level, except where a range of limestone hills formed its
distant limit, a wilderness of cottages or tenements that were
hardly entitled to a higher name, were scattered for many
miles over the land; some detached, some connected in little
rows, some clustering in groups, yet rarely forming continuous
streets, but interspersed with blazing furnaces, heaps of
burning coal, and piles of smouldering ironstone; while forges
and engine chimneys roared and puffed in all directions, and
indicated the frequent presence of the mouth of the mine and
the bank of the coal-pit.
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