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along the sides of the vale. From Skipton to Otley, the road is
carried up and down the corner of the steep mountain
Rombaldsmoor, when as near a one might have been conducted along
the vale beneath. The inhabitants might have carried to the
market the produce of their lands, and brought coals and manure
at a little expense, if this plan had been adopted: but the
prejudices against improvements and innovations are not easily
removed.- At Bingly we were entertained with the locks: there are
five or six of them together, where the barges ascend or descend
eighty or ninety feet perpendicular, in the distance of about an
hundred yards. They are elegant and well finished, but seem too
deep not to leak and be frequently out of repair.
About four miles before we arrived at Leeds, in our way from
Bradford, we were suddenly presented with the grand and venerable
ruins of Kirkstal Abbey, full in view from the road. We stood
some minutes looking with silent respect and reverence on the
havoc which had been made by time on this sacred edifice. How
much soever we might condemn the mistaken notions of monkish
piety, that induced the devotees to lethargic supineness, and to
forsake all the social duties of life in order to be good men;
yet we secretly revered that holy zeal which inspired them to
exert every power in erecting structures, the magnitude and
beauty of which might excite ideas worthy of the Deity to whom
they were dedicated; and also reprobated that fanatic bigotry
which suffered them to decay and go to ruin, because they were
once inhabited by a set of christians whose manner of worship was
not orthodox. While we were moralizing thus on religious
prejudices, the instability of the works of men's hands, and the
fading glories of this world, we came to Leeds.
As the largeness and extent of this thriving manufacturing town,
with all the elegant buildings in and about it are well known to
you, and as you have seen every thing worth no-
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