In the country it is otherwise; there the master-manufacturer may be, and often is, a fatherly friend and guardian of his people. And where he is so, it is in general fully acknowledged. The character which each manufacturer bears as an employer, even in Manchester, is perfectly well known. People mention with precision the good, the worthless, or the wicked master. I visited factories belonging to some of these various characters, but perceived a more marked difference in the manners and appearance of the masters themselves, than in the appearance and condition of the work-people. At the present moment the difference could not be very perceptible, because the general demand for hands causes the circumstances of the lower classes to be generally good. But, as before remarked, the patriarchal connection between master and servant, with its good, as well as its evil consequences, no longer exists in the manufacturing towns of England. Employer and employed stand beside each other, or rather opposed to each other, excepting through the requirements of labor. The whole end and aim of the Manchester manufacturer—when he is not subjected to machinery, and lives merely as a screw, or portion of it—is, to get out of Manchester. He spins and makes use of all means, good or bad, to lay by sufficient money to live independently, or to build himself a house at a distance from the smoky, restless town, away from the bustle—away from the throng of restless, striving work-people. His object is to arrive at quiet in the country, in a comfortable home; and having attained this object, he looks upon the noisy, laboring hive, out of which he has lately come, as a something with which he has no concern, and out of which he is glad to have escaped with a whole skin. Such is the case with many—God forbid that we should say, with all! Two subjects of conversation occupied the people of Manchester very much at this time. The one was the question—a vital question for the whole of England—of popular education. The people of Manchester had begun to take the subject into serious consideration, and had come to the conclusion that there might at once be adopted a simple system of education by which, as in the United States, every one should receive in the people’s school practical and moral instruction, and that religious instruction should be left for the home or for the Sunday teaching. The willingness to thus act in concert which has been shown by the clergy of the Established Church in Manchester, is a good omen to the various religious sects united in this work. All things considered, it seems to me that there is at this moment in England the most decided movement toward a new development, a new life as well in theoretic as in practically popular respects; and it is more apparent in the Established Church than in any other religious body.