November 24.—­Breakfasted at Manchester.  Ere we left, the senior churchwarden came to offer us his services, to show us the town, principal manufactures, etc.  We declined his polite offer, pleading haste.  I found his opinion about the state of trade more agreeable than I had ventured to expect.  He said times were mending gradually but steadily, and that the poor-rates were decreasing, of which none can be so good a judge as the churchwarden.  Some months back the people had been in great discontent on account of the power engines, which they conceived diminished the demand for operative labour.  There was no politics in their discontent, however, and at present it was diminishing.  We again pressed on—­and by dint of exertion reached Kendal to sleep; thus getting out of the region of the stern, sullen, unwashed artificers, whom you see lounging sulkily along the streets of the towns in Lancashire, cursing, it would seem by their looks, the stop of trade which gives them leisure, and the laws which prevent them employing their spare time.  God’s justice is requiting, and will yet further requite those who have blown up this country into a state of unsubstantial opulence, at the expense of the health and morals of the lower classes.

November 25.—­Took two pair of horses over the Shap Fells, which are covered with snow, and by dint of exertion reached Penrith to breakfast.  Then rolled on till we found our own horses at Hawick, and returned to our own home at Abbotsford about three in the morning.  It is well we made a forced march of about one hundred miles, for I think the snow would have stopped us had we lingered.

[Abbotsford,] November 26.—­Consulting my purse, found my good L60 diminished to Quarter less Ten.  In purse L8.  Naturally reflected how much expense has increased since I first travelled.  My uncle’s servant, during the jaunts we made together while I was a boy, used to have his option of a shilling per diem for board wages, and usually preferred it to having his charges borne.  A servant nowadays, to be comfortable on the road, should have 4s. or 4s. 6d. board wages, which before 1790 would have maintained his master.  But if this be pitiful, it is still more so to find the alteration in my own temper.  When young, on returning from such a trip as I have just had, my mind would have loved to dwell on all I had seen that was rich and rare, or have been placing, perhaps in order, the various additions with which I had supplied my stock of information—­and now, like a stupid boy blundering over an arithmetical question half obliterated on his slate, I go stumbling on upon the audit of pounds, shillings, and pence.  Why, the increase of charge I complain of must continue so long as the value of the thing represented by cash continues to rise, or as the value of the thing representing continues to decrease—­let the economists settle which is the right way of expressing the process when groats turn plenty and eggs grow dear—­