Silvertown, where the pleasant meadows are at their pleasantest:
doubtless they were once slums, and wretched enough."

The names grated on my ear, but I could not explain why to him. So I
said: "And south of the river, what is it like?"

He said: "You would find it much the same as the land about
Hammersmith. North, again, the land runs up high, and there is an
agreeable and well-built town called Hampstead, which fitly ends
London on that side. It looks down on the north-western end of the
forest you passed through."

I smiled. "So much for what was once London," said I. "Now tell me
about the other towns of the country."

He said: "As to the big murky places which were once, as we know,
the centres of manufacture, they have, like the brick and mortar
desert of London, disappeared; only, since they were centres of
nothing but 'manufacture,' and served no purpose but that of the
gambling market, they have left less signs of their existence than
London. Of course, the great change in the use of mechanical force
made this an easy matter, and some approach to their break-up as
centres would probably have taken place, even if we had not changed
our habits so much: but they being such as they were, no sacrifice
would have seemed too great a price to pay for getting rid of the
'manufacturing districts,' as they used to be called. For the rest,
whatever coal or mineral we need is brought to grass and sent whither
it is needed with as little as possible of dirt, confusion, and the
distressing of quiet people's lives. One is tempted to believe from
what one has read of the condition of those districts in the