New streets were now laid out,--to-day, so vast has been the subsequent growth, embedded in the heart of the town,--the names often taken from those of the metropolis, as Cannon Street, Pall Mall, Cheapside, and Spring Gardens, and at a little later period Bond Street and Piccadilly. Factories sprang up in not a few of the principal thoroughfares: perhaps it would be more correct to say that the building of factories often led to the formation of new streets. The kind of variety they conferred on the frontages is declared to the present day in Oxford Road. Similar buildings, though not so large, existed till very lately where now not a vestige of them remains. The "Manchester and Salford Bank" occupies the site of a once important silk-mill. Gathering round them the inferior class of the population,--the class unable to move into more select neighbourhoods when the town is relished no longer,--it is easy to understand how, in most parts of Manchester that are fifty years old, splendour and poverty are never far asunder. In London, Bath, Leicester, it is possible to escape from the sight of rags and squalor: in Manchester they are within a bow-shot of everything upon which the town most prides itself. The circumstance referred to may be accounted for perhaps in part by the extreme density of the population, which exceeds that of all other English manufacturing towns, and is surpassed only in Liverpool.[21] Manchester, it may be added, has no "court-end." When the rich took flight they dispersed themselves in all directions. They might well depart. The reputation of Manchester in respect of "smuts," that, like the rain in Shelley, are "falling for ever," is only too well deserved; and, despite of legal enactments, it is to be feared is inalienable. [21] The population per statute acre of the towns referred to, and of one or two others, which may be usefully put in contrast, is as follows: Liverpool 106 Manchester 85 Plymouth 54 London 49 Bristol 49 Birmingham 48 Salford 38 Oldham 26 Nottingham 18 Sheffield 16 Leeds 15 Norwich 12