Then the city will become what it ought to be; the workshop, and
not the dwelling-house, of a mighty and healthy people. The old
foul alleys, as they become gradually depopulated, will be
replaced by fresh warehouses, fresh public buildings; and the
city, in spite of all its smoke and dirt, will become a place on
which the workman will look down with pride and joy, because it
will be to him no longer a prison and a poison-trap, but merely a
place for honest labour.

This, gentlemen and ladies, is my ideal; and I cannot but hope and
believe that I shall live to see it realised here and there,
gradually and cautiously (as is our good and safe English habit),
but still earnestly and well. Did I see but the movement
commenced in earnest, I should be inclined to cry a "Nunc Domine
dimittis"--I have lived long enough to see a noble work begun,
which cannot but go on and prosper, so beneficial would it be
found. I tell you, that but this afternoon, as the Bath train
dashed through the last cutting, and your noble vale and noble
city opened before me, I looked round upon the overhanging crags,
the wooded glens, and said to myself: There, upon the rock in the
free air and sunlight, and not here, beneath yon pall of smoke by
the lazy pools and festering tidal muds, ought the Bristol workman
to live. Oh that I may see the time when on the blessed Sabbath
eve these hills shall swarm as thick with living men as bean-
fields with the summer bees; when the glens shall ring with the
laughter of ten thousand children, with limbs as steady, and
cheeks as ruddy, as those of my own lads and lasses at home; and
the artisan shall find his Sabbath a day of rest indeed, in which
not only soul but body may gather health and nerve for the week's
work, under the soothing and purifying influences of those common