Pilgrim Street : a story of Manchester life / [Hesba Stretton].

  • Hesba Stretton
Date:
[1867]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pilgrim Street : a story of Manchester life / [Hesba Stretton]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    spent with lavish costliness. The squalid child came to a standstill, and seemed to be gazing up at it with a feeling of awe from the broad terrace in fiont oi it, upon which he did not venture to set his bare feet, until he had cast a timid glance at the policemen who guarded each entrance. He slunk under the palisade, and threw back his head to look up at the walls and towers which seemed to rise up almost to the sky, and every window there, and every arched doorway, and the niches in the towers, were decorated with carved wood-work, and coloured glass, and chiselled masonry, after a very different fashion of archi- tecture to the damp and dark cellar from which he had crept into the daylight. Every point of the building bore some ornament strange to his sight, and the longer he gazed at them the more his feeling of wonder and awe increased. High up overhead, in the very centre of the grand fiont, and at the top of the higiiest tower, which he could only see with difficulty, there bent over him a great image of a man—or more likely of one of the giants of whom he had felt a vague but chilling fear whenever he had to steal alone through the streets at night; and this image held an immense stone in his hand, as if he would hull it down from his great height and crush any miserable creature who should venture to enter into the grand portico below.
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