I do not know just
the measure of the Black Country in England, or where Sheffield
begins to be perhaps the blackest spot in it; but I am sure that
nothing not surgically clean could be whiter than the roads that,
almost as soon as we were free of Manchester, began to climb the
green, thickly wooded hills, and dip into the grassy and leafy
valleys. In the very heart of the loveliness we found Sheffield
most nobly posed against a lurid sunset, and clouding the sky,
which can never be certain of being blue, with the smoke of a
thousand towering chimneys. From whatever point you have it, the
sight is most prodigious, but no doubt the subjective sense of
the great ducal mansions and estates which neighbor the mirky
metropolis of steel and iron has its part in heightening the
dramatic effect.
I
The English, with their love of brevity and simplicity, call
these proud seats the Dukeries, but our affair was not with them,
and I shall not be able to follow the footmen or butlers or
housekeepers who would so obligingly show them to the reader in
my company.
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