The evening sky, glowing red, threw out the bold outline of the castle, and the quaint old edifices as they seemed to look down on us silently from their rocky heights, and the figure of Salisbury Crags marked itself against the red sky like a couchant lion.

The time of our sojourn in Scotland had drawn towards its close.  Though feeble in health, this visit to me has been full of enjoyment; full of lofty, but sad memories; full of sympathies and inspirations.  I think there is no nobler land, and I pray God that the old seed here sown in blood and tears may never be rooted out of Scotland.

LETTER X.

MY DEAR H.:—­

It was a rainy, misty morning when I left my kind retreat and friends in Edinburgh.  Considerate as every body had been about imposing on my time or strength, still you may well believe that I was much exhausted.

We left Edinburgh, therefore, with the determination to plunge at once into some hidden and unknown spot, where we might spend two or three days quietly by ourselves; and remembering your Sunday at Stratford-on-Avon, I proposed that we should go there.  As Stratford, however, is off the railroad line we determined to accept the invitation, which was lying by us, from our friend Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, and take sanctuary with him.  So we wrote on, intrusting him with the secret, and charging him on no account to let any one know of our arrival.

Well in the rail car, we went whirling along by Preston Pans, where was fought the celebrated battle in which Colonel Gardiner was killed; by Dunbar, where Cromwell told his army to “trust in God and keep their powder dry;” through Berwick-on-the-Tweed and Newcastle-on-Tyne; by the old towers and gates of York, with its splendid cathedral; getting a view of Durham Cathedral in the distance.

The country between Berwick and Newcastle is one of the greatest manufacturing districts of England, and for smoke, smut, and gloom, Pittsburg and Wheeling bear no comparison to it.  The English sky, always paler and cooler in its tints than ours, here seems to be turned into a leaden canopy; tall chimneys belch forth gloom and confusion; houses, factories, fences, even trees and grass, look grim and sooty.

It is true that people with immense wealth can live in such regions in cleanliness and elegance; but how must it be with the poor?  I know of no one circumstance more unfavorable to moral purity than the necessity of being physically dirty.  Our nature is so intensely symbolical, that where the outward sign of defilement becomes habitual, the inner is too apt to correspond.  I am quite sure that before there can be a universal millennium, trade must be pursued in such a way as to enable the working classes to realize something of beauty and purity in the circumstances of their outward life.

I have heard there is a law before the British Parliament, whose operation is designed to purify the air of England by introducing chimneys which shall consume all the sooty particles which now float about, obscuring the air and carrying defilement with them.  May that day be hastened!