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unable to keep his children at home; and they went off to
the manufacturing towns, leaving home yet more cheerless -
with fewer busy hands and cheerful faces - less social
spirit in the dales - greater certainty of continued loss,
and more temptation to drink. Such is the process still
going on. Having reached this pass, it is clearly best that
it should go on till the primitive population, having lost
its safety of isolation and independence, and kept its
ignorance and grossness, shall have given place to a new set
of inhabitants, better skilled in agriculture, and in every
way more up to the times. It is mournful enough to meet
everywhere the remnants of the old families in a reduced and
discouraged condition: but if they can no longer fill the
valleys with grain, and cover the hillsides with flocks, it
is right that those who can should enter upon their lands,
and that knowledge, industry and temperance should find
their fair field and due reward.
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We have no fear of injury, moral or economical, from the
great recent change,- the introduction of railways. The
morals of rural districts are usually such as cannot well be
made worse by any change. Drinking and kindred vices abound
wherever, in our day, intellectual resources are absent: and
nowhere is drunkenness a more prevalent and desperate curse
than in the Lake District. Any infusion of the intelligence
and varied interests of the townspeople must, it appears, be
eminently beneficial: and the order of workpeople brought by
the railways is of a desirable kind. And, as to the
economical effect,- it cannot but be good, considering that
mental stimulus and
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