MR. RUSKIN AND WAKEFIELD.
Reprinted by permission from the 'Saturday Review' of 4th March, 1876.
Mr. Ruskin is the Don Quixote of the nineteenth century, who makes war against chimneys and manufactories instead of windmills. In the Fors Clavigera of last September and in several succeeding numbers the town of Wakefield has been the subject of unfavourable comment, and a correspondent goes so far as to hint that an accession of trade has its drawbacks as well as its, advantages. In looking back to the old account of the town—unless, indeed, we are to suppose that each historian merely copied the words of his predecessor—Wakefield seems to have given the impression that it was a pleasant place to live in. 'There be few towns in the inward parts of Yorkshire that hath a fairer site or soil about it.' says Leland, and he adds that a right honest man shall fare well there for twopence a meal. Two hundred years passed over it, and left it very much the same. There is an engraving of it in Thoresby's Leeds, about 1715, 'as it appears from London road.' The chief features are, in the foreground, the river Calder with its weir and rushing waters, the long line
