In my mill， of course， there is no such uproar； nothing but the occasional shaking of the cross-pieces of the idle sails. Everything is still； and the pity of it is that everything is in almost perfect order for the day’s work. The mill one day some score years ago was full of life； the next， and ever after， mute and lifeless， like a stream frozen in a night or the palace in Tennyson’s ballad of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’. There is no decay merely inanition. One or two of the apple-wood cogs have been broken from the great wheel； a few floor planks have been rotted； but that is all. A week’s overhauling would put everything right but it will never come. And the cheerful winds that once were to drive a thousand English mills so happily now bustle over the Channel in vain.