accompaniment to the scene, disposing the contemplative mind to calm and serious reflection. Man here, as almost every where else, seems to be the only object which prevents the philosopher and the Christian from crying out All is good!'

"The grinders are nearly the only inhabitants of the valley, and they do not reside in it. There is scarcely a dwelling-house throughout the whole length of it. They are a rough half-civilized class. Removed thus from the restrictions of society, and the observation of all authority, they associate only with each other. In summer, when the mountain streams, which feed their infant river, are almost dried up, they have not a supply of water to employ them half their time. As, however, it is uncertain when the uppermost dam will be sufficiently filled to enable the wheel to work, and to dismiss the fluid element to the expecting wheels below, they are under the necessity of being almost constantly upon or near the place, to take advantage of the supply when it does arrive. At those times groups of human beings may be seen, near every wheel, which, taken with the surrounding scenery, form such subjects as are well fitted for the pencil of a Salvator. Athletic figures, with brown paper turbans, the sleeves of their shirts rolled high up, exposing their brawny arms bare almost to their shoulders, their short jackets unbuttoned, and their shirt collars open, displaying their broad dark hairy chests; their short leathern aprons, their breeches'-knees unbuttoned, and their stockings slipped down about their ankles, the whole tinged with ochre-coloured dust, so as to leave the

different colours and materials faintly discoverable, form a figure, even when taken singly, sufficiently picturesque; when grouped, as they generally are, they become strikingly so. You there see them, some seated on the stone-raised turf-covered bench at the door, with their copious jug and their small pots, handing round the never-cloying English beer; others reared up against the large round grinding-stones supported by the walls of the building; others, again, seated on the same kind of stones lying upon and against each other on the ground, whilst some are stretched at their length dozing or contemplating on the verdant sloping bank of the mill dam; some are amusing themselves with athletic exercises, and others are devising or slyly engaged in executing some rude practical jokes. At times you may perceive, as an exception to the general habits, a solitary wandering ruminator with a book, but much oftener with a pipe." The original drawing which we present of such a grinding-wheel as is here described by a distinguished Sheffield artist, Mr. H. P. Parker, (cut 3) will give a new value to Mr. Roberts's vivid description.

Another day! The mist is gone from the hills. We have peeps of the light green woods and the dark distance from elevated spots of the smoky town. It is said that there is not a street in Sheffield from which the country may not be seen. This circumstance arises from the very peculiar position of the townan eminence surrounded on every side by bolder eminences. "The Don, the Sheaf and the Porter

X-VOL. I.

stands the greater part of the town. The apex of this area is the confluence of the Sheaf, and the Don; on each side of it, but more gently towards the Sheaf and the Porter than in the direction of the Don, the apex rises into a boldly swelling hill, the ridge of which passes through the centre and the western portions of the town, and beyond even its remotest suburbs. From the confluence of the Sheaf and the Porter rises a similarly beautiful hill. On the north side of the Don, the scenery is perhaps still more imposing; the steep declivity is clothed by the forest trees of the Old Park Wood, over which appears a portion of the pleasant village of Pitsmoor. The summits and sides of all these hills are, in the vicinity of the town, studded with neat and elegant villas-the residences of the gentry and the leading manufacturers and merchants. On the eastern side of the Sheaf, near its junction with the Don, the Park, covered with dwellings, rises like an amphitheatre above the rest of the town, to a ridge not inaptly termed Sky Edge, from which point, under favourable circumstances, almost the whole of Sheffield, and its surrounding villages for a considerable distance, may be discerned." (Dr. Holland.)

The eastern side of Sheffield, known as the Park,' was once the seat of the Manor' of the Earls of Shrewsbury, surrounded with noble woods, and looking down with a secluded grandeur upon the little busy town beneath. The hill has lost its old sylvan character. It is in parts bare, with clusters of small houses in the more accessible parts, and a few villas on the summits. On an eminence planted with trees is a monument to the memory of those who died of the fearful pestilence with which many parts of England were visited in 1832. The number smitten in Sheffield and here buried, was 339. It is called The Cholera Mount,' by Montgomery; who thus celebrates the plantations with which the monument is surrounded:

"With statelier honours still, in time's slow round,
Shall this sepulchral eminence be crown'd,
Where generations long to come shall hail
The growth of centuries waving in the gale,
A forest land-mark on the mountain head,
Standing betwixt the living and the dead."

But the western side of Sheffield is a suburb to which nothing that we have seen in the neighbourhood of large English towns can be compared in beauty. As we ascend for nearly two miles-and there are several roads-villa after villa, with spacious gardens and plantations, built in good taste, of the finest coloured stone, present themselves; not jealously shut in with sullen walls, but open to the highway, and commanding the fine prospect of the opposite hills, or of the more distant eminences mingling with the sky. The view of Sheffield from the Park embraces the greater part of the town. That from the western hill, at the pretty village of Crookes, is more confined, but contains all the elements of the picturesque. The engraving from Mr. Parker's spirited and faithful sketch (Cut, No. 1) will convey a better notion of the landscape beauties of the suburbs of Sheffield than any de

the town, is called Wincobank. Around it winds the Don, before its union with the Sheaf. That portion of the town which the Sheaf waters, lies hidden in the valley to the right of the picture. Mr. Hunter has justly said, describing the peculiar situation of Sheffield, "It is in a country like this that we look for the beautiful in landscape. The grander and more august features of nature are to be sought in regions decidedly mountainous, where the artificial creations of man have not intruded to break the harmony of the scene. But the softer graces of landscape are chiefly to be found in a district uneven, but not mountainous, and may be contemplated with not less pleasure because among them may be found some of the works of human hands." James Montgomery whom Sheffield honours not more than the pure of heart admire, wherever English literature is known-has well described the effect produced upon a feeling mind by the association of man with the quiet beauties of natural scenery:"He who retires, as I have often done, on a bright summer evening, into the depth of one of our Hallamshire woods, while he saunters along in the dream-like repose of a brown study, or leans against an old oak in the fine abstraction of severer thought, might imagine himself alone and in silence, merely because his eye and his ear were unobservant of motions and murmurs perceptible on every hand. But were he to pause at one of those cheerful openings, where, from a small patch of ground, beneath a hand-breadth of blue sky, in a little amphitheatre of trees, the great world seems hermetically excluded, he would soon find himself in the very midst of the joy and activity, the labour, fatigue, and anxiety of life. At first, the dazzling dance of insects in the sunshine, and their musical drone in the shade, might surprise him into a feeling of sympathetic delight; but the flitting forms and richer melody of birds would quickly charm away his attention, to hearken to the sweetest inarticulate tones in creation. If he were not startled from this entrancement by a shrew-mouse suddenly running across his foot, or the glittering undulations of a snake among the withered leaves across his pathway, his eye would be unconsciously drawn off, and carried out of the forest, by discovering green glimpses of adjacent fields, and shining tracks of the river-here, a spire of one of the churches; there, the tower of another; clusters of house-tops; steam-engine chimneys, like obelisks; and distant hills, cultivated or barren,-through the loop-holes of intermingling boughs and broken foliage around him. Presently, voices and sounds of all kinds would assail him, rising in Babylonish confusion from the populous valleys and village-crowned eminences; but gradually distinguished, if his ear nicely observed them, through their innumerable varieties, harmonious and dissonant, loud and low, mournful and lively-the rustling of winds among the leaves, the gush of waters down the Weir, the barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, the cries of children, the chimes of the church clock, or the knoll of a death-bell-a gun, a drum, a

bugle-horn, a flourish of trumpets from the barracks, the whistling of carters, the rumbling of carriages, the ringing of anvils, the reverberating thumps of tilthammers-with an indistinct, but deep, perpetual, under-sound, like a running bass, composed of all those blended noises, covering the whole, and constituting the busy hum of men' thronging the streets of the town below, or travelling on the numerous high roads branching from it. These would form altogether a concert inexpressibly captivating, by the associations which they would awaken in the mind of him who could listen to them as one of the millions of sentient beings, whether brute or intelligent, that inhabit the little locality, exquisitely picturesque, and genuinely English, within the precincts of Sheffield. Though in solitude himself, his delight would not be solitary, but social in the highest and purest degree. Though not a living creature within the circuit of the horizon were thinking of him at that moment, he would be thinking of them, of them all, and all together. His joy would be a mysterious sympathy with all their joys, an ineffable interest in all their occupations, and a cordial good-will to every thing that lived, and moved, and breathed within his sensorium."

A pleasant ride is it to Beauchief Abbey, by the Baslow and Bakewell road. A very few miles beyond Beauchief, and the traveller is in the solitudes of the Derbyshire moors, where

all is sapphire light and gloomy land,
Blue, brilliant sky above a sable sea
Of hills."

We are pedestrians, and will stretch no further than Beauchief. The road is very beautiful on this grey spring morning. When we are fairly in the country, we rejoice in the green meadows and the thinly-clad hedges, where the hawthorn-flower is not yet disclosed. We are gradually approaching the wooded upland under which Beauchief Abbey is placed-the beau-chef, or beautiful head, as some topographers divine. There is the Abbey. At first it has a lumpish and somewhat ungainly look. The tower is stunted and robbed of its battlements and pinnacles. The ruin has been patched up into a church for modern times. All the old grandeur is departed; but the venerable and the beautiful still remain. How strenuously the ivy and the ash have seized upon the walls, to clothe them with loveliness, whilst they eat into their very substance. One by one the stones that have stood for six centuries are loosened by the parasite roots. But man destroys faster than the silent instruments which time employs for levelling the works of man with the dust. The Abbey flourished for three hundred years; in 1536 the last Abbot surrendered the house to the Crown. A century later the buildings were in ruin, and the adjoining Beauchief Hall was built in 1671, out of its fallen stones and timber. Mutilated as the Abbey is yet it is still picturesque. Those trees which mingle so gracefully with the little monastic relic, shall they prematurely perish? We shuddered to see a white circle round each of their trunks. Chantrey, in the

'Peak Scenery ;' and Creswick, in this our unpretending 'Sketch-Book,' (Cut, No. 4,) have preserved their memories. If they should fall by the axe, a bitter and an angry lament will be heard in places far distant from the valley of the Sheaf.

We ascend the hill which leads to Norton. As we look back upon the Abbey, its eastern end composes well with the surrounding landscape. Gradually the distance enlarges. Hills rise o'er hills; snug farms and trim cottages dot the road-side. We are at length at the commencement of the pretty village of Norton. Norton Hall is finely situated in a park commanding views of singular beauty. In a farm-house a little out of the village was Francis Chantrey born. The house was inhabited by the great sculptor's mother, who clung to the home where her husband died, and her child was born. Her celebrated son made the old house as comfortable as he could-but it was still a low-roofed tenement, with humble sheds and mean offices; yet commanding a wide expanse of prospecta healthful and a pleasant spot. Here grew the Sheffield milk-boy, who struggled with difficulties till he had made himself the most prosperous and famous of the artists of his age. His father, who here farmed a little land which he had inherited from respectable ancestors, sustained heavy losses; his little property melted away; he died in the prime of his years, broken in spirit, leaving a widow and one child, Francis, then about twelve years old. The mother was in straitened circumstances, but she persevered in the cultivation of her farm. The supply of milk to Sheffield was an important addition to her means. The great manufacturing town draws its milky tribute from every hill by which it is surrounded; and the legion of milk-boys who pour into her streets at morn and eve, with kegs and cans slung on the docile asses which they ride, form a peculiar feature in the picturesque of her highways. (Cut, No. 2) Elliott has described the inspiration of the milk-boy of Norton with some of those minute touches of observation which distinguish the true poet from the shallow generalizer :

"The worm came up to drink the welcome shower;
The red-breast quaff'd the rain-drop in the bower;
The flaskering duck through freshen'd lilies swam;
The bright roach took the fly below the dam;
Ramp'd the glad colt, and cropp'd the pensile spray;
No more in dust uprose the sultry way;
The lark was in the cloud; the woodbine hung
More sweetly o'er the chaffinch while he sung;
And the wild rose, from every dripping bush,
Beheld on silv'ry Sheaf the mirror'd blush:
When, calmly seated on his pannier'd ass,
Where travellers hear the steel hiss as they pass,
A milk-boy, shelt'ring from the transient storm,
Chalk'd on the grinder's wall an infant's form;
Young Chantrey smil'd; no critic prais'd or blam'd
And golden promise smil'd, and thus exclaim'd,—
Go, child of genius; rich be thine increase,—
Go, be the Phidias of the second Greece."

The young milk-boy who sketched on the grinder's wall was apprenticed to a carver and gilder in Sheffield. He thought such a trade was one of the portals of the fine arts. His master refused that he should pass the portal. At his few leisure hours the boy drew and modelled in a room which he hired weekly for a few

gleaming in the sun. At Wadsley we cross the Rivelin; a hundred yards onward and we cross the Loxley; and at a short distance below Wadsley the streams unite, before their junction with the Don. Of the scenery of the Rivelin we have given a slight notion, in the extract from 'The Two Grinders.' The Loxley flows by Loxley Chase, which is held to be the Locksley of the old ballads, where Robin Hood is said to have been born. Here may be seen Robin Hood's Well,' included within the romantic grounds called 'Little Matlock.' As we ascend the hill we have a fine view of the Don, losing itself in the valley in which Sheffield is built; and by and by the grand wooded summits of Wharncliffe continue to indicate the course of the river for several miles. We walk on to Worral upon an elevated table-land; and as we descend towards Oughty bridge we cross a considerable ravine by a small bridge, and hear the waterfall brawling many feet beneath us, whilst the tall tops of the ash which spring from the bed of the stream are level with the road. The cottages of these villages are the dwellings of cutlers and file-makers. Their communication with the town is carried on by boys on donkeys, who bring out the steel rods to be forged into tools, and carry back the blades, or the file, or the complete knife. These are a simple race; in morals far above the town dwellers. Their houses are models of cleanliness; and the stranger who asks to rest awhile is invited to share the crisp oat-cake. At Oughty bridge we cross the Don; and turning out of the turnpikeroad, we are soon within the precincts of Wharncliffe Chase.

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We pass a lodge to the left, and ascend a gentle hill, thick with low trees and underwood. The road is soaked with the recent rains, and now and then a marshy place craves wary walking." The hawthorns are scarcely in leaf; but the green sward is gay with the wood-anemone; and every now and then our eye is greeted with patches of the bilberry-unknown to our southern walks-whose branches of bright green are now sprinkled with the brilliant red blossom. It is the woodland favourite. We leave the wood and enter the Deer-Park—a wild and grand scene; -a plain covered here and there with large masses of gritstone rock like billows in a stormy sea-(to borrow a thought from Elliot)—and amongst which old knobby hollies have grown for generations. We pass through this solemn region, where the deer only seem to belong to the beautiful; and we are at Wharncliffe Lodge, on the edge of the far-famed Crags. We step a few yards beyond the Lodge, anxious to gaze upon the opening distance. What a prospect! Its grandeur and loveliness, seen under such a sky as this May morning, when dark clouds flitting across the sapphire heaven, clothe every hill and every valley with a checquered shade, they sink deep into the heart. Well might Lady Mary Wortley Montague write from Avignon, describing its position at the junction of the Rhone and Durance, "Last summer, in the hot evenings, I walked often thither, where I always

found a fresh breeze, and the most beautiful land prospect I ever saw, except Wharncliffe, being a view of the windings of two great rivers, and overlooking the whole country, with part of Languedoc and Provence." Come! let us leave off gazing at the wondrous landscape, and recollect something of the history of this spot.

Our old favourite, John Taylor, the Water-poet-he who made a 'Penniless Pilgrimage' into Scotland, and rode a hunting in the Highlands in days when Englishmen knew as little of them as of Timbuctoo-John Taylor came to Wharncliffe in 1639, and published a description of this Lodge in one of the rarest of his tracts; from which Mr. Hunter has copied the following passage:

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From Leeds I went to Wakefield, where, if the valiant Pinder had been living, I would have played Don Quixote's part, and challenged him; but being it was so happy that he was dead, I passed the town in peace to Barnsley, and so to Wortley, to Sir Francis Wortley's ancient house. The entertainment which himself, his good lady, and his most fair and hopeful daughter gave me there, as I never did or can deserve, so I never shall be able to requite. To talk of meat, drink, money, and free welcome for horse and man, it were but a mere fooling for me to begin, because then I should hardly find the way. Therefore, to his Worship my humble thanks remembered, and everlasting happiness wished both to him and all that is his; yet I cannot forbear to write a little of the farther favour of this Noble Knight. of this Noble Knight. Upon the 14th of September afternoon, he took horse with me, and his lady and daughter in their coach, with some other servants on horseback: where three miles we rode over rocks and cloud-kissing mountains, one of them so high that in a clear day a man may from the top thereof see both the minsters or cathedral churches, York and Lincoln, near sixty miles off us; and it is to be supposed that when the Devil did look over Lincoln, as the proverb is, that he stood upon that mountain or near it. Sir Francis brought me to a lodge, the place is called Wharncliffe, where the keeper dwells who is his man, and keeps all this woody, rocky, stony, vast wilderness under him; for there are many deer there, and the keeper were an ass if he would want venison, having so good a master. Close to the said lodge is a stone, in burthen at least a hundred cart-loads; the top of it is four-square by nature, and about twelve yards compass. It hath three seats in the form of chairs, made by art as it were ir. the front of the rock, wherein three persons may easily sit, and have a view and goodly prospect over large woods, towns, corn-fields, fruitful and pleasant pastures, valleys, rivers, deer, neat, sheep, and all things needful for the life of man; contained in thousands of acres, and all, for the better part, belonging to that Noble Knight's ancestors and himself. Behind the stone is a large inscription engraven, where in an old character is described the ancient memory of the Wortleys, (the progenitors of Sir Francis now living) for some hundreds of years, who were lords and owners