66 gardens. Pity 'tis, 'tis true!" Leeds should bestow an inquiring glance on the three magnificent public parks at Manchester. Wool should not allow cotton to outbrave it in these matters. Leeds has the usual variety of public buildings,' though hardly, perhaps, its fair share of ornamental structures. There are hospitals and almshouses, assembly-rooms, concert-rooms, music-halls, and a theatre; infirmaries, dispensaries, houses of recovery, and so forth. Its municipal and judicial buildings, too, are of the customary character; and its barracks, like all other barracks, encroach on a very large area of ground. We must, however, make especial mention of the new Gaol, opened in 1847, perhaps the largest, most comprehensive, and most costly of all the new buildings in Leeds, always excepting the railway works, which, wherever they begin, or whithersoever they tend, take the lead of everything else as gold-eaters. Yet it is somewhat melancholy to think that the best buildings in any town should be the gaols. When shall we see the day when schools will cost more than prisons, and boy-educators receive higher remuneration than manpunishers? It was aptly observed in the Leeds Mercury,' (which can hardly be named without calling to mind the eminent services rendered to Leeds and its neighbourhood by the late editor, Mr. Edward Baines), while speaking of the Industrial Schools (described in a recent paragraph), and of certain complaints which have been made of its costliness:-"While we have spent £43,000 in the erection of a gaol, for the safe custody and discipline of 284 prisoners, it should not be thought unreasonable to spend less than one half of that sum for the purpose of so training up 400 of the youthful dependents upon parish bounty, as to prepare them to become useful and independent members of society." The Markets-such as the Central Market, the New and Old Shambles, the South or Leather Market, (see Cut, No. 4,) the Free Market, and the Corn Marketexhibit a mixture of the new and the old forms given to such places. The Central Market, about twenty years old, is a good example of the modern improvements which have been brought to bear in such matters: its Grecian front, spacious shops, galleries, and avenues of stalls, enable it to take rank among the best of modern markets. The Free Market occupies what was once the Vicar's Croft, and affords a convenient locale for the cows, pigs, fish, and vegetables that used to throng the almost impassable Briggate. The Corn Exchange is one of the best features in this last-named street: between the columns of the entrance is a statue of Queen Anne, which once occupied a place in the front of the Old Moot Hall, pulled down about twenty years ago. Of the purely commercial buildings of Leeds, by far the most important are the Cloth Halls; to be described in a later page. The Banking-houses of modern times often present rather striking architectural features; and I each end. The footpaths are on the outside of the two suspending ares, and the carriageway passes between them. Each of the suspending arcs is cast in six parts. The cast-iron transverse beams which support the road Leeds has a few such but one of the best structures at Leeds is the Commercial Buildings, (see Cut, No. 5,) situated at the southern end of Park Row. It has three fronts, to as many streets, and a fourth front adjoining a Cemetery, so as to be completely isolated. The archi-way are suspended at intervals of about five feet. The tect has selected a Grecian design. On the ground- roadway is of timber, with iron guard-plates on each. floor is an entrance-hall, in which 'Change' is held side; and upon the top of the planking are also laid daily. On the right of the entrance is a news or malleable iron bars, ranging longitudinally for the wheelreading-room, nearly seventy feet long, with a propor- tracks, and transversely for the horse-tracks. tionate width and height, divided longitudinally into three compartments by ranges of Corinthian columns. Adjoining the news-room is a committee-room, in which newspapers and maps are preserved for the inspection of the subscribers, and in which some of the business of the establishment is carried on. On the left of the entrance-hall is the coffee-room of the hotel and tavern, which is included in the building. Distributed in various parts are offices for brokers, &c. On the firstfloor are dining-rooms, concert-rooms, and various other apartments. The area of ground covered by the establishment is said to be more than 1,300 square yards, and the expense to have been nearly £35,000. The most beautiful part of the building is the staircase, which occupies a circular hall upwards of thirty feet in diameter, crowned with a panelled dome, and lighted through stained glass. We will not ask the reader to dive into the dark and dirty alleys, which lie in close proximity to the better buildings of the town; nor will we treat him as if he were a Commissioner of Sewers, destined to study the "world underground." The Leeds and Thirsk Railway will, indirectly, be the means of providing Leeds with a new and abundant supply of water, from springs near the Bramhope Tunnel on that line. The Waterworks Company have taken up the matter; and Leeds may, perhaps, have occasion to regard this as a blessing. THE BRIDGES, THE FACTORIES, THE CHIMNEYS, THE The river Aire, we have said, winds through Leeds in a direction nearly east and west. It is crossed by bridges, which increase in number as the population and commerce of the town advance. Leeds has had the credit of introducing a bridge of very curious construction; from the plan of Mr. Leather, an engineer, whose name is connected with many public works in the same town. It is a suspension-bridge over the river Aire, at Hunslet, on what has sometimes been called the bow-and-string principle. Instead of chains being employed as the chief means of suspension, as in ordinary cases, there are two strong cast-iron arcs, which span over the whole space between the two abutments. These arcs spring from below the level of the roadway, but rise at the centre considerably above it; and from them the transverse beams which support the platform of the bridge are suspended by malleable iron rods. The suspending arch is about a hundred and fifty feet span; and there is also a small land-arch of stone at This was the second bridge of the kind; the first being the Monk Bridge at Leeds, constructed by Mr. Leather in 1827. This Monk Bridge is of greater length than the Hunslet Bridge, owing to the vicinity. of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the river Aire; but so far as regards the suspension arch itself, the Hunslet Bridge is much the larger. The Monk Bridge has a suspension arch over the river, two land-arches over the footpaths, and an elliptical arch over the canal. Since the introduction of this new system by Mr. Leather, it has been extensively adopted in bridgebuilding in various parts of the kingdom. Wellington Bridge, built of stone; Victoria Bridge, also of stone; and Crown Point Bridge, built of iron,— are three other bridges which cross the Aire in or near Leeds, and erected in modern times. But the bridge. which is more particularly associated with the history of the town, is the old or original bridge. This bridge evidently marks the site of a very ancient line of passage. Whitaker thinks that there was a Roman road along the site of the present Briggate, and that there was a ferry over the Aire where the bridge now stands. No direct notice, however, of a bridge at that spot has been met with earlier in date than 1376; at which time there was a chapel on the bridge, where mass was said. After the Reformation this chapel was used as a school-house, in which capacity it was occupied for nearly two centuries; it was converted into a warehouse in 1728; and was finally pulled down in 1760, on occasion of the widening of the bridge. The traffic on this bridge is said to be scarcely exceeded by that on any bridge out of London. Before Leeds became a centre of railway operations, the town was supplied with fuel from many places in the immediate neighbourhood. Railways have, however, opened up a new and abundant supply; and it became a question simply of relative cost, whether the near or the distant collieries shall supply most fuel for the hundreds of blazing furnaces in this busy, sooty, smoke-enveloped town. This last expression, however, reminds us that there is a little act of justice yet to be rendered to Leeds. Whether or not smoke can be banished, Leeds has at any rate been among the foremost to make the attempt; and if a dark cloud of carbon still hovers over the town, the light of modern science has not been wanting among its townsmen, so far as experiments for the removal of this cloud are concerned. That smoke is rich unconsumed carbon, ready to pour out its heat and light if properly managed, has been long known, and has been frequently elucidated by Dr. Arnott in his own incomparable manner. If smoke be such a treasure, why is it not made available? Because (say the philosophers) the fuel and the draught are not rightly proportioned to each other in quantity, nor brought to bear on each other in the proper way."How then can this be remedied?" ask the uninitiated public. "By a better arrangement of furnaces and chimneys," is the reply. Dr. Arnott, in his Essay on Warming and Ventilating,' shows that we lose seven-eighths of the heat of the coal employed in our common open fireplaces, on account of their ill-judged construction. We must not, it is true, pay the furnacefires the bad compliment of placing them on a level with open parlour fires, in respect to improvident combustion; yet it is admitted that there must be " something wrong," else we should not have the black floating masses above us-wasting the coal-store, vexing the tidy housewife, rendering the "unwashed" artizan almost unwashable, and mixing with our oxygen and nitrogen a larger dose of carbon than nature intended for the use of the lungs. as a natural effect, to obtain perfect combustion of smoke. Imperfect combustion of the fuel, by which I mean ultimate production of smoke, must in all cases, I presume, depend upon the convenience or the ignorance of the user-the manufacturer. In large fires, like those of steam-engines, and other large manufactories where coal is used, it depends more, I think, upon his ignorance than his convenience; inasmuch as if he were obliged to burn his smoke, he would in a very short time be able to do so, by the ingenuity and philosophy which is now in activity, without any loss to himself in a pecuniary point of view." We must apologise to the reader for thus plunging him, with or without his consent, among factory chimneys and their exhalations; but, in good truth, these chimneys, and their significant mode of " emancipating the blacks," in such a town as Leeds, will make themselves noticed; we cannot avoid them without avoiding the town altogether; and we may as well, therefore, treat them as part and parcel of the town's notabilities. Among the arrangements which either contribute to To find out what was this "something," and to devise or result from the manufactures of Leeds, a word must a probable method of cure, were two objects of an be said for the Bramley stone quarries. They are Association formed at Leeds a few years ago. The situated at Bramley Fell, about three miles from Leeds, Association called before it, by advertisement, such on the line of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. They scientific and practical men as seemed fitted to offer occupy a slanting spot of ground, covered with stunted valuable opinions on the matter: a day was fixed, an trees. The excavations are numerous rather than examination took place, and a report of the proceedings large or deep. If we remember rightly, the balustrades was published. Although it was found that no one of of New London-bridge are formed of stone taken from the proposed amendments was decidedly efficacious as this quarry; the stone is of excellent quality, and is a cure, many of them certainly introduced improvements. quarried with remarkable facility. There are some So earnestly was this matter taken up, that no fewer useful sandstone quarries, also, at Wodehouse, about a than ten patented inventions, or methods, for the pre- mile to the north of Leeds. vention of smoke, were employed by the various manufacturers of Leeds; so that if this dusky enemy still hovers over the town, it is not for want of hard fighting to repel him. One of the witnesses who gave evidence on an enquiry into this subject in 1843, before a Committee of the House of Commons, put a scrap of philosophy into a very few and intelligible words, when he said that "Englishmen are so fond of having their own way." True: Englishmen do love to stir their fires, and to heap coals on them, and to kindle a blaze -in "their own way;" and there are some manufacturers who love to have a fine voluminous cloud of sooty particles pouring forth from their factory shafts, as a sort of advertisement of the amount of business doing below. They go through a sort of logical process, as thus:—when the smoke rises, it shows that the furnace-fires are burning; when the fires are burning, there is work doing; when there is work doing, the firm maintains its status among the townsmen; consequently when no smoke rises, the chain of inductions leads to a result of an anti-commercial character. As to the philosophy of the matter, Professor Faraday has said:"The principles upon which smoke, that is the visible part, proceeding from the combustion of coal, may be entirely burned, is very plain and clear; it can be done by completing to the end that combustion which has been began. There can be no difficulty, The coals, the water, and the stone, are brought into Leeds from the vicinity; and when so brought, they give employment to thousands of industrious artizans. The engineering establishments of Leeds, especially, are of a first-rate character-large, comprehensive, and of wide reputation. One of the most notable at the present day is the locomotive factory of Messrs. Wilson, at Hunslet: it has grown with the startling rapidity of the locomotive itself: and on the occasion of the opening of a new "erecting shop" (said to be the largest in the kingdom) in 1847, the partners entertained no less than two thousand guests to dinner in this monsterroom. It is not the least pleasant part of the affair, that the whole of the work people employed by the firm, amounting to six or seven hundred, were present together with a right pleasant sprinkling of wives, sisters, daughters, and sweethearts-eating, drinking, speechifying, returning "thanks for the honour," &c., music, laughing, talking, dancing: they "made a night o't," which seems to live in the memory of those who took part in the festivities of the occasion. In all such establishments as this, or of the Messrs. Fairbairn, or others among our great machine-makers, the operations are in the highest degree interesting. The beautiful order and system observable, both in the machinery and in the manufacture of machinery, furnished Sir George Head with one of his quaint obser |
