I went next into a large establishment for dyeing, dressing, winding and packing the lace for market. It was startling to see the acres of it dyed black for mourning. Really there seemed enough of it to drape the whole valley of the shadow of death! It was an impressive sight truly. If there were other establishments doing the same thing, Nottingham must turn out weeds of grief enough for several millions of mourning widows, mothers, sisters and daughters in a year. I ascended into the dressing-room, I think they called it, in the upper story, where there was a piece containing one twenty-fifth of an acre of lace undergoing a fearful operation for a human constitution to sustain. It was necessary that the heat of the apartment should be kept at _one hundred and twenty_ degrees! There was a large number of women and girls, and a few men and boys working under this melting ordeal. And one of the proprietors was at their head, in a rather summer dress, and with a seethed and crimson face beaded with hot perspiration. It was a very delicate and important operation which he had not only to watch with his own eyes, but to work at with his own hands. I was glad to learn that he was a staunch Protestant, and did not believe in _purgatory_; but those poor girls!--could they be expected to hold to the same belief under such a test? I was told that they could get up lace so cheap that the people of the town frequently cover their gooseberry bushes with it to keep off the insects. Spider-webbing is a scarcely more gossamer-like fabric. Sixteen square yards of this lace only weigh about an ounce! If the negroes on one of the South Carolina Sea-island plantations could have been shut into that dressing-room for two whole minutes, with the mercury at 120 degrees, they would have rolled up the whites of their eyes in perfect amazement and made a rush for "Dixie" again. From Nottingham I made an afternoon walk to Mansfield. The weather was splendid and the country in all the glory of harvest. On reaching Newstead Abbey, I found, to my regret, that the entree to the public had been closed by the new proprietor, one, I was told, of the manufacturing gentry of the Manchester school. Not that he was less liberal and accommodating to sight-seers than his predecessors, but because he was making very extensive and costly improvements in the buildings and grounds. I have seen nothing yet in England to compare, for ornate carving, with the new gate-way he is making to the park. It is of the finest kind of arabesque work done in stone that much resembles the Caen. This prevention barred me from even a distant view of the once famous residence of Lord Byron, as it could not be seen from the public road.