text: " These passages point us to the time when man and nature met to rejoice together on May-day: to the time before the days of the workhouse and factory; when the length and breadth of the land rung to the joyaunce and glee of the holiday-rejoicing nation and the gay sounds careered on fresh breezes even where now the dense atmosphere of Manchester or Ashton glooms over the dens of torture in which withered and debauched children are forced to their labour and the foul haunts under the shelter of which desperate men hatch plots of rapine and slaughter