Above the knees, instead of a coat, they have a peculiarly fashioned tunic, a compromise between gown and jacket, by which they may be distinguished from afar: a limp bonnet tied under the chin protects the head, but never conceals the ear-rings and plaited hair. Many of these women are plainly equal to their masculine colleagues in physical power, yet they earn only two-thirds of the wages given to men. The decorum of their behaviour while at work is unimpeachable; on Sundays they do their best to dress like ladies. The Lancashire quarries are also remarkable, though little resorted to by the architect. Commercial prosperity is always most conspicuous where the buildings are principally not of stone, but of brick. [Illustration: ON THE BRIDGEWATER CANAL] Nothing does more to sustain and encourage the industry of a working population than a steady system of transit, and a well-timed delivery, alike of the natural products of the ground and of the articles manufactured. Hence the early development in Lancashire of the idea of the canal, and, sixty years afterwards, of that of the railway. The history of the Bridgewater Canal is one of the most interesting connected with the county enterprise, the more so since all other canals were imitations of it. Many, however, are not aware that the celebrated peer under whose dictation it was constructed--Francis Egerton, the third and last Duke of Bridgewater--was led to devote himself for solace sake to engineering through a disappointment in love. That women, when troubled or bereaved, should take refuge in works of charity, and that when wealthy they should found hospitals and build orphanages, is very natural, and has plenty of exemplification; but for a man to turn when similarly circumstanced to science is phenomenal, and the records of search for consolation after this manner would probably be sifted in vain for a parallel case. Several versions of the story are afloat; whichever way be the true one, it is beyond a doubt that one of the greatest industrial achievements ever witnessed in England had for its prime cause the caprice or the temper of the widowed Duchess of Hamilton,--to whom a second coronet was offered,--she who in her early days was the celebrated belle Elizabeth Gunning. There is a waterway of this description in Lancashire more remarkable in some respects even than the duke's canal--that one called the Leeds and Liverpool, the Lancashire portion of which curls round from the great seaport by way of Ormskirk, Southport, Wigan, Chorley, Burnley, and Colne, where the Yorkshire boundary is crossed. Near the towns, and especially in the south-west and south-east, these useful highways are dreary and uninteresting; but in rural districts, such as they must needs traverse, often for lengths of many miles, the borders sometimes acquire an unlooked-for picturesqueness, and are gaily dressed with wild-flowers. In any case they never fail in possession of the rude