Louis, which, even from the
literary attics of New York, we should not exactly allow
ourselves to spit upon. Practically, I know nothing about society
in Manchester, or rather, out of it; and I can only say of the
general type, of richer or poorer, as I saw it in the streets,
that it was uncommonly good. Not so many women as men were
abroad in such weather as we had, and I cannot be sure that the
sex shows there that superiority physically which it has long
held morally with us. One learns in the north not to look for the
beautiful color of the south and west; but in Manchester the
average faces were intelligent and the figures good.
III
With such a journal as the Manchester _Guardian_ still
keeping its high rank among English newspapers, there cannot be
question of the journalistic sort of thinking in the place. Of
the sort that comes to its effect in literature, such as, say,
Mrs. Gaskell's novels, there may also still be as much as ever;
and I will not hazard my safe ignorance in a perilous conjecture.
I can only say that of the Unitarianism which eventuated in that
literature, I heard it had largely turned to episcopacy, as
Unitarianism has in our own Boston.
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