There is an architecture of manufacture, dreary and shabby as its setting almost invariably is, which in its solemnity, strangeness of outline, pathos and dignity, quite rivals, if it does not surpass, the more heralded forms of the world--its cathedrals, parthenons, Moorish temples and the like. I have seen it often in America and elsewhere where a group of factory buildings, unplanned as to arrangement and undignified as to substance, would yet take on an exquisite harmony of line and order after which a much more pretentious institution might well have been modeled. At Stockport, near Manchester, for instance, on the Mersey, which here is little more than a rivulet, but picturesque and lovely, I saw grouped a half-dozen immense mills with towering chimneys which, for architectural composition from the vantage point of the stream, could not have been surpassed. They had the dignity of vast temples, housing a world of under-paid life which was nevertheless rich in color and enthusiasm. Sometimes I fancy the modern world has produced nothing more significant architecturally speaking, than the vast manufactory. Here in Oldham they were gathered in notable clusters, towering over the business heart and the various resident sections so that the whole scene might well be said to have been dominated by it. They bespeak a world of thought and feeling which we of more intellectual fields are inclined at times to look on as dull and low, but are they? I confess that for myself they move me at times as nothing else does. They have vast dignity--the throb and sob of the immense. And what is more dignified than toiling humanity, anyhow--its vague, formless, illusioned hopes and fears? I wandered about the dull rain-sodden thoroughfares, looking in at the store windows. In one I found a pair of gold and a pair of silver slippers offered for sale--for what feet in Oldham? They were not high in price, but this sudden suggestion of romance in a dark workaday world took my fancy.