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Page 138:-
path is trodden over the hills; and the spot becomes a place
of human resort. While nature is thus working
transformations in her deeper retreats, the generations of
men are more obviously busy elsewhere. They build their
houses, and plant their orchards on the slopes which connect
the mountains with the levels of the valleys: they encroach
upon the swamps below them, and plough among the stones on
the uplands,- here fencing in new grounds, there throwing
several plots into one: they open slate quarries, and make
broad roads for the carriage of the produce: they cherish
the young hollies and ash, whose sprouts feed their flocks,
thus providing a compensation in the future for the past
destruction of the woods. Thus, while the general primitive
aspect of the region remains, and its intensely rural
character is little impaired, there is perhaps scarcely a
valley in the district which looks the same from one
half-century to another.
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The changes among the people proceed faster: and some of
these changes are less agreeable to contemplate, however
well aware we may be that they are to issue in good.
Formerly, every household had nearly all that it wanted
within itself. The people thought so little of wheaten bread
that wheat was hardly to be bought in the towns. Within the
last few years, an old man of eighty-five was fond of
talking how, when a boy, he wanted to spend his penny on
wheaten bread; and he searched through Carlisle from morning
to evening before he could find a penny roll. The cultivator
among the hills divided his field into plots,
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