pleasant, and we so refreshed, that we resolved to walk to Manchester, and watch the sinking of the summer twilight among the woods and fields by the way. Our route led by the edge of Dunham Park, and through Bowdon, where we took a peep at the church, and the expansive view from the churchyard. There is a remarkably fine old yew tree in Bowdon churchyard, seated around. The road from Bowdon to Manchester passes through a country which may be truly characterised as the market-garden of Manchester. We went on, through the villages of Altrincham, Sale Moor, and Stretford, thinking of the meaning of his words who said "One impulse from a vernal wood Will teach thee more of man, Than all the sages can." It was midnight when I got to bed, and sunk pleasantly into a sound sleep, to wake in the morning to careful thought among quite other scenes than those I had wandered in the previous day; but I feel that while I live, I shall not easily lose the sweet remembrance of 66 the tranquil charm of little Rostherne Mere." HIGHWAYS AND BYEWAYS FROM ROCHDALE TO THE TOP OF BLACKSTONE EDGE. WELL may an Englishman cherish the memory of his forefathers, and love his native land. It has risen to its present power among the nations of the world through the ceaseless efforts of many generations of heroic people; and the firmament of its biography is illumined by stars of the first magnitude. What we know of its history previous to the conquest by the Romans, is clouded by much conjecture and romance; but we have sufficient evidence to show, that, even then, this island gem of ours, "set in the silver sea," was known in distant regions of the earth, and prized for its abundant natural riches; and was inhabited by a brave and ingenious race of people. During the last two thousand years, the masters of the world have been fighting to win it, or to keep it. The woad-stained British savage, ardent, imaginative, and brave, roved through his native woods and marshes, hunting the wild beasts of the island. He sometimes herded cattle, but was little given to tillage. He sold tin to the Phoenicians, and knew something about smelting iron ore, and working it into such shapes as were useful in a life of wild, wandering insecurity and warfare, such as his. In the slim coracle, he roamed the island's waters; and scoured its plains fiercely in battle, in his scythed car, a terror to the boldest foe. He worshipped, too, in an awful, mysterious way, in sombre old woods, and in colossal Stonehenges, under the blue, o'erarching sky. On lone wastes, and moorland hills, we still have the rudely-magnificent relics of these ancient temples, frowning at time, and seeming to say, as they look with lonely solemnity on nature's ever-returning green, in the words of their old Druids :— "Everything comes out of the ground, but the dead." But destiny had other things in store for these islands. The legions of imperial Rome came down upon the wild Celt, who retired, fiercely contending, to the mountain fastnesses of the north and west. Four hundred years the Roman wrought and ruled in Britain; and he left the broad red mark of his way of living and governing stamped upon the face of the country, and upon its institutions, when his empire declined. The steadfast Saxon followed,-" stubborn, taciturn, sulky, indomitable, rock-made,"-a farmer and a fighter; a man of sense, and spirit, and integrity; an industrious man and a home bird. The Saxon never loosed his hold, even though his wild Scandinavian kinsmen, the sea-kings, and Jarls of the north, came rushing to battle, with their piratical multitudes, tossing their swords into the air, and singing old heroic ballads, as they slew their foemen, under the banner of the Black Raven. Then came the military Norman,- -a northern pirate, trained in France to the art of war,-led on by the bold bastard, Duke William, who landed his warriors at Pevensey, and then burnt the fleet that brought them to the shore, in order to bind his willing soldiers to the desperate necessity of victory or death. Duke William conquered, and Harold the Saxon, fell at Hastings, with an arrow in his brain. Each of these races has left its distinctive peculiarities stamped upon the institutions of the country; but most enduring of all,-the Saxon. And now, the labours of twenty centuries of valiant men, in peace and war, have achieved a matchless security, and power, and freedom for us, and have bestrewn the face of the land with "the charms which follow long history." The country of Caractacus and Boadicea, where Alfred ruled, and Shakspere and Milton sang, will henceforth always be interesting to men of intelligent minds, wherever they were born. The country is pleasant, also, to the eye, as it is instructive to the mind. Its history is written all over the soil, not only in the strong evidences of its present genius and power, but in thousands of interesting relics of its ancient fame and characteristics. In a letter, written by Lord Jeffrey, to his sister-in-law, an American lady, respecting, what Old England is like, and in what it differs most from America, he says: * * * "It differs mostly, I think, in the visible memorials of antiquity with which it is overspread; the superior beauty of its verdure, and the more tasteful and happy state and distribution of its woods. Everything around you here is historical, and leads to romantic or interesting recollections. Gray grown church towers, cathedrals, ruined abbeys, castles of all sizes and descriptions, in all stages of decay, from those that are inhabited, to those in whose moats ancient trees are growing, and ivy mantling over their mouldering fragments; and massive stone bridges over lazy waters; and churches that look as old as Christianity: and beautiful groups of branchy trees; and a verdure like nothing else in the universe; and all the cottages and lawns fragrant with sweet briar and violets, and glowing with purple lilacs and white elders; and antique villages scattering round wide bright greens; with old trees and ponds, and a massive pair of oaken stocks preserved from the days of Alfred. With you everything is new, and glaring, and angular, and withal rather frail, slight, and perishable; nothing soft, and mellow, and venerable, or that looks as if it would ever become so." This charming picture is almost exclusively compounded from the most interesting features of the rural and antique; and is, therefore, more applicable to those agricultural parts of England which have been little changed by the great events of its modern history, than to those districts which have undergone such a surprising and speedy metamorphose by the peaceful revolutions of manufacture in these latter days. But, even in the manufacturing districts, where forests of chimneys rear their tall unbending perpendiculars, upon upon the ground once covered with the plumy woodland's leafy shade, sparsely dotted with little quaint old hamlets, the venerable monuments of old English life peep out in a beautiful, refreshing, and instructive way, among the crowding evidences of modern power and population. And the influences which have so greatly changed the appearance of the country there, have not passed over the feelings and condition of the population without effect. Wherever the genius of commerce may be leading us to as a people, there is no doubt that the old controls of feudalism are breaking up; and, in the new state of things the people of South Lancashire have found greater liberty to improve their individual qualities and conditions; fairer changes of increasing their might and asserting their rights; greater power and freedom to examine and understand all questions which come before them, and to estimate and influence their rulers, than they had under the unreasoning domination which is passing away. They are not a people inclined to anarchy. They love order as well as freedom, and they love freedom for the sake of having order established upon just principles. The course of events during the last fifty years has been steadily upheaving the people of South Lancashire out of the thraldom of those orders which have long striven to conserve such things mainly as tended to their own aggrandisement, at the expense of the rights of others. But even that portion of the aristocracy of England which has not yet so far cast the slough of its hereditary prejudices as to see that the days are gone which nurtured barbaric ascendancies, at least perceives that, in the manufacturing districts, it now walks in a world where few people are disposed to accept its assumption of superiority, without inquiring into the nature of it. When a people who naturally aspire to independence, begin to know how to get it, and how to use it wisely, the methods of rule that were made for slaves, will no longer answer their purpose; and as soon as a man begins to feel that he has a trifle of " divine right" in him as well as other mortals, the pride of little minds in great places, begins |