disappear with them.

The beauty of our English scenery has in many parts of the country
entirely vanished, never to return. Coal-pits, blasting furnaces,
factories, and railways have converted once smiling landscapes and
pretty villages into an inferno of black smoke, hideous mounds of
ashes, huge mills with lofty chimneys belching forth clouds of smoke
that kills vegetation and covers the leaves of trees and plants with
exhalations. I remember attending at Oxford a lecture delivered by the
late Mr. Ruskin. He produced a charming drawing by Turner of a
beautiful old bridge spanning a clear stream, the banks of which were
clad with trees and foliage. The sun shone brightly, and the sky was
blue, with fleeting clouds. "This is what you are doing with your
scenery," said the lecturer, as he took his palette and brushes; he
began to paint on the glass that covered the picture, and in a few
minutes the scene was transformed. Instead of the beautiful bridge a
hideous iron girder structure spanned the stream, which was no longer
pellucid and clear, but black as the Styx; instead of the trees arose
a monstrous mill with a tall chimney vomiting black smoke that spread
in heavy clouds, hiding the sun and the blue sky. "That is* what you
are doing with your scenery," concluded Mr. Ruskin--a true picture of
the penalty we pay for trade, progress, and the pursuit of wealth. We
are losing faith in the testimony of our poets and painters to the
beauty of the English landscape which has inspired their art, and much
of the charm of our scenery in many parts has vanished. We happily
have some of it left still where factories are not, some interesting
objects that artists love to paint. It is well that they should be
recorded before they too pass away.

*Transcriber's Note: Original "it".