The Leeds Mercury is a power in the land, and everybody who reads the English language in either hemisphere knows Edward Baines by name.
As I emerged from the great, busy town on the north, I passed by the estates and residences of its manufacturing aristocracy.

The homes they have built and embellished should satisfy the tastes and ambitions of any hereditary nobility.

They need only a little more age to make them rival many baronial establishments.

It is interesting to see how the different classes of society are stepping into each other's shoes in going up into higher grades of social life.

The merchant and manufacturing princes of England have not only reached but surpassed the conditions of wealth, taste and elegance which the hereditary peers of the realm occupied a century ago; while the latter have gone up to the rich and luxurious surroundings of kings and queens of that period.