Chapter X: Part 10

Lincolnshire is not a picturesque county; both the wet half and the dry half, both the Fen district and the Wold district, are treeless; and the Wolds are only a line of molehills, of great utility, but no special beauty. But it is the greatest producing county in England, and the produce, purely agricultural, is the result of the industry and intellect of the men who till the soil. In Devonshire and Somersetshire we are charmed by the scenery, and amazed by the rich fertility of the soil, while we are amazed by the stolidity of the farmers and their labourers--nay, sometimes of the landlords--whose two ideas are comprised in doing what their forefathers did, and in hating every innovation. There fences, guano, pair-horse ploughs, threshing machines, and steam-engines, are almost as much disliked as cheap bread and Manchester politics. But on the Wolds of Lincolnshire a race of agriculturists are to be found who do not need to be coddled and coaxed into experiments and improvements by the dinners and discourses of dilettanti peers; but who unite the quick intelligence of the manufacturer with the hearty hospitality for which the English used to be famous. Among the Lincolnshire farmers rural life is to be seen in its most agreeable aspect. The labourers are as superior to the southern peasantry as their employers to the southern tenantry. Books, newspapers, and music may be found in the farm-houses, as well as old ale and sound port wine. At Aylsby, six miles from Great Grimsby, Mr. William Torr has a fine herd of short horns and a flock of pure Leicester sheep, well worth a visit. The celebrated Wold farmers are about ten miles distant. Any one of them is worth six Baden barons.

After crossing from Hull, if a visit to these Wold Farms be intended, Grimsby is the best resting-place, a miserable town of great antiquity, which, after slumbering, or rather mouldering, for centuries on the profits of Parliamentary privileges and a small coasting trade, has been touched by the steam-enchanter's wand, and presented with docks, warehouses, railways, and the tools of commerce. These, aided by its happy situation, will soon render it a great steam-port, and obliterate, it is to be hoped, the remains of the squalid borough, which traces back its foundation to the times of Saxon sea- kings. We must record, for the credit of Great Grimsby, that it evinced its improved vitality by subscribing a larger sum to the Exhibition of Industry than many towns of ten times its population and more than ten times its wealth.

The execution of the railway and dock works, which will render Great Grimsby even more important than Birkenhead, has been mainly due to the exertions of the greatest landowner in the county, the Earl of Yarborough, who has wisely comprehended the value of a close connexion between a purely agricultural and manufacturing district.

His patriotic views have been ably seconded by Mr. John Fowler, the engineer of the Manchester and Lincolnshire Railways, and Mr. James J. M. Rendel, the engineer of these docks as well as of those at Birkenhead.

The Grimsby docks occupy thirty-seven acres, cut off from the sea. The work was courageously undertaken, in the midst of the depression which followed the railway panic, by Messrs. Thomas, Hutchins, & Co., contractors, and has been carried through in an admirable manner, in the face of every kind of difficulty, without an hour's delay. They will open in March next. The first stone was laid by Prince Albert in May 1849, when he electrified the audience at dinner by one of those bursts of eloquence with which the events of the Great Exhibition have made us familiar. It was on the occasion of his ride to Brocklesby that Lord Yarborough's tenantry rode out to meet the Prince, and exhibited the finest farmers' cavalcade for men and horses in England.

Lord Yarborough has done for Lincolnshire what the Duke of Bridgwater did for Lancashire; and, like the Duke, he has been fortunate in having for engineering advisers gentlemen capable of appreciating the national importance of the task they undertook. It is not a mere dock or railway that Messrs. Fowler and Rendel have laid out--it is the foundation of a maritime colony, destined not only to attract, but to develop new sources of wealth for Lincolnshire and for England, as any one may see who consults a map, and observes the relative situation of Great Grimsby, the Baltic ports, and the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire.

For the sake of the future it may be well worth while to visit these great works. It may be a pleasant recollection for the man who, in some ten or twenty years, beholds the docks crowded with steamers and coasters, and the railway busy in conveying seaborne cargoes, to recall the fact that he saw the infancy, if not the birth, of that teeming trade; for it is not to every man that it is given to behold the commencement of such a future as seems promised to gloomy, swampy Great Grimsby.

At Great Grimsby we are in a position to take a large choice of routes. We may go back to London by Louth, famous for its church, spire, and comical coat of arms; {209} by Boston and Peterborough; or take our way through the ancient city of Lincoln to Nottingham and the Midland Counties, where the famous forest of Robin Hood and the Dukeries invite us to study woodland scenery and light-land farming; but on this occasion we shall make our way to Sheffield, over a line which calls for no especial remark--the most noticeable station being East Retford, for the franchise of which Birmingham long and vainly strove. What delay might have taken place in our political changes if the M.P.'s of East Retford had been transferred to Birmingham in 1826, it is curious to consider.

SHEFFIELD.

The approach to Sheffield from Lincolnshire is through a defile, and over a long lofty viaduct, which affords a full view of the beautiful amphitheatre of hills by which it is surrounded.

The town is situated in a valley, on five small streams--one the "Sheaf," giving the name of Sheffield, in the southern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, only six miles from Derbyshire.

The town is very ugly and gloomy; it is scarcely possible to say that there is a single good street, or an imposing or interesting public building,--shops, warehouses and factories, and mean houses run zigzagging up and down the slopes of the tongues of land, or peninsulas, that extend into the rivers, or rather streamlets, of the Porter, the Riveling, the Loxley, the Sheaf, and the Don. Almost all the merchants and manufacturers reside in the suburbs, in villas built of white stone on terraces commanding a lovely prospect.

The picturesqueness, the wild solitude of the immediate neighbourhood of Sheffield, amply compensates for the grimy gloom in which the useful and disagreeable hardware trade is carried on. All around, except where the Don opens a road to Doncaster, great hills girdle it in, some of which at their summit spread out into heath-covered moorlands, where the blackcock used lately to crow. Almost in sight of the columns of factory smoke, others of the surrounding ridge are wood-crowned, and others saddlebacked and turfed; so that a short walk transports you from the din of the workshop to the solitude of "the eternal hills." We do not remember any manufacturing town so fortunately placed in this respect as Sheffield. For an excellent and truthful description of this scenery, we may turn to the poems of Ebenezer Elliott, who painted from nature and knew how to paint in deep glowing colours.

"Hallamshire, which is supposed by antiquarians to include the parish of Sheffield, forms a district or liberty, the importance of which may be traced back to even British times; but Sheffield makes its first appearance as a town some time after the Conquest. In the Domesday Book the manor of Sheffield appears as the land of Roger de Busk, the greater part held by him of the Countess Judith, widow of Waltheof the Saxon. In the early part of the reign of Henry I. it is found in the possession of the De Levetot family, and the site of their baronial residence. They founded an hospital, called St. Leonard's (suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII.), upon an eminence still called Spital Hill, established a corn mill, and erected a bridge there, still called the Lady's Bridge, from the chapel of the Blessed Lady of the Bridge, which had previously stood near the spot; and their exertions and protection fixed here the nucleus of a town. The male line of the Levetots became extinct by the death of William de Levetot, leaving an infant daughter, Maud, the ward of Henry II. His successor, Richard, gave her in marriage to Gerard de Furnival, a young Norman knight, who by that alliance acquired the lordship of Sheffield. There is a tradition that King John, when in arms against his barons, visited Gerard de Furnival (who espoused his cause), and remained for some time at his Castle of Sheffield.

"On the 12th of November, 1296, Edward I. granted to Lord Furnival a charter to hold a market in Sheffield on Tuesday in every week, and a fair every year about the period of Trinity Sunday. This fair is still held on Tuesday and Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, and another on the 28th of November. The same Lord Furnival granted a charter to the town, the provisions of which were of great liberality and importance at that period, viz., that a fixed annual payment should be substituted for the base, uncertain services by which they had previously held their lands and tenements, that Courts Baron should be held every three weeks for the administration of justice, and that the inhabitants of Sheffield should be free from the exaction of toll throughout the entire district of Hallamshire, whether they were vendors or purchasers."

About this time Sheffield began to be famous for the manufacture of falchion heads, arrows, files, and whittles. Chaucer tells us of the miller that

"A Sheffield thwytle bare he in his hose,
Round was his face, and camysed was his nose."

The ample water-power, the supply of iron ore close at hand, and in after times, when its value for smelting was discovered, the fields of coal--all helped Sheffield.

"Another only daughter, and another Maud, transferred by her marriage the lordship of Sheffield to the more noble family of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. William Lord Furnival died 12th April 1383, in his house in Holborn, where now stands Furnival's Inn, leaving an only daughter, who married Sir Thomas Nevil, and he in 1406 died, leaving an only daughter, Maud, who married John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. George, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, built the lodge, called Sheffield Manor, on an eminence a little distance from the town, and there he received Cardinal Wolsey into his custody soon after his apprehension. It was on his journey from Sheffield Manor up to London, in order to attend his trial, that the Cardinal died at Leicester Abbey. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, who had been committed to the custody of George, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, after being confined in Tutbury Castle, was removed in 1570 first to Sheffield Castle, and then to Sheffield Manor House, where she spent fourteen years. It was for the alleged intention of moving her hence that Thomas Duke of Norfolk, an ancestor of the ducal family, still closely connected with Sheffield, suffered on the scaffold. The grandson of this Duke of Norfolk, at whose trial the Earl of Shrewsbury presided as High Steward, afterwards married the granddaughter of the Earl, and thereby became possessed of this castle and estate." And now, in 1851, another son of Norfolk is about to acquire a large fortune by a Talbot.

During the reign of Elizabeth, the Duke of Alva, whose persecutions did more for extending and improving the manufactures of this country than any amount of parchment protection, drove over, in addition to the weavers of linen and fullers of cloth, artizans in iron and steel. These, according to the wise rule of settling all one craft in one spot, were by the advice of the Queen's Chamberlain, the Earl of Shrewsbury, settled on his own estate at Sheffield, and the neighbourhood thenceforward became known for the manufacture of shears, sickles, knives of every kind, and scissors.

About this time (1613), according to a survey, Sheffield contained about 2207 inhabitants, of whom the most wealthy were "100 householders, which relieve the others, but are poore artificers, not one of whom can keep a team on his own land, and above ten have grounds of their own, which will keep a cow." In 1624, an act of the incorporation of cutlers was passed, entituled "An act for the good order and government of the makers of sickles, shears, scissors, and other cutlery wares in Hallamshire and parts near adjoining."

Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury, the last of the male line of the house of Talbot, who inherited the Hallamshire estates, died on the 8th May 1616, leaving three daughters, co-heiresses. The Lady Alethea Talbot, the youngest, married the Earl of Arundel, and the other two, dying without issue in 1654, the whole estates descended to her grandson, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who was restored to the title of Duke of Norfolk by Charles II., on his restoration, and in that family a considerable property in Sheffield remains to this day--not without narrow escapes of extinction. Charles James Fox's friend, Jockey of Norfolk, was one of a family which seems to afford every contrast of character in possession of the title.

In the great civil wars, Sheffield was the scene of more than one contest. In 1644, on the 1st August, after the battle of Marston Moor, the castle was besieged by twelve thousand infantry dispatched by the Earl of Manchester, compelled to surrender in a few days, and demolished by order of parliament.

The manor was dismantled in 1706 by order of Thomas Duke of Norfolk, and the splendid park, shaven of its great trees, was converted into building land, or accommodation land, part of which is still known by the name of the Park.

During the eighteenth century the Sheffield trade was entirely confined to the home market, and chiefly conducted by pack horses. In 1751 a step toward extension was made by the completion of works, which rendered the Don navigable up to Tinsley. In 1819 the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal was completed; and now Manchester, Leeds, Hull, and Liverpool, are all within a morning's ride.

The art of silver-plating was invented at Sheffield by Thomas Bolsover, an ingenious mechanic, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and extensively applied by Mr. Joseph Hancock. This trade has been seriously affected by the invention of electro-plating, which has transferred much of the Sheffield trade to Birmingham. The invention of Britannia metal speedily followed that of plating.

In 1750 a direct trade to the continent was opened by Mr. Thomas Broadbent. The example was soon followed. The first stage-coach to London, started in 1760, and the first bank was opened in 1762.

At present the population can be little short of 120,000. The passing of the Reform Bill gave to Sheffield two representatives. The constituency is one of the most independent in the kingdom. No "Man in the Moon" has any room for the exercise of his seductive faculties in Sheffield.

What is still more strange, until after the enactment of the Municipal Corporation Bill, Sheffield had no local authorities. The Petty Sessions business was discharged by county magistrates, and the Master Cutler acted as a sort of master of the ceremonies on occasions of festivity, without any real power. That honorary office is still retained, although Sheffield has now its aldermen and common councillors.

There is a "Royal Free Grammar School" founded in 1649, with an income from endowments of about 150 pounds a-year. Free to thirty boys, as regards classics, subject to a charge of four guineas per annum for instruction in the commercial department. In 1850 there were eighty-one scholars.

Manufactures.--Sheffield, through every change, has deservedly retained its reputation for the manufacture of razors, surgical instruments, and the highest class of cutlery, and a considerable number of carpenters' and other steel tools.

In the coarser steel articles Birmingham does a considerable and increasing business, and Sheffield workmen settling in Germany and in the United States have, from time to time, alarmed their native town by the rivalry of their pupils; nevertheless, it may confidently be asserted, that with its present advantages Sheffield can never lose her pre-eminence in cutlery if her sons are only true to her and themselves.

The steel consumed in England is manufactured chiefly from iron imported from Sweden and Russia. It has not been exactly ascertained whence arises the superiority of this iron for that purpose. But all foreign iron converted into steel is composed of magnetic iron ore, smelted with charcoal. This kind of ore is found in several countries, particularly in Spain. In New Zealand, at New Plymouth it is said to be found in great quantities; but from the two countries first mentioned we obtain a supply of from 12,000 to 15,000 tons, of which about 9000 come from Sweden. The celebrated mines of Danemora produce the finest Swedish iron, and only a limited quantity is allowed to be produced each year. All the steel-iron used in England is imported into Hull. Bar-steel is manufactured by heating the iron, divided into lumps, in pots, with layers of charcoal, closely covered over with sand and clay, for several days. By this means the iron is carbonized and converted into what is commonly called blistered steel. The heat is kept up a longer or shorter time according to the hardness required.

Bar-steel, as it comes from the furnace, is divided and sorted, and the pieces free from flaws and blisters are rolled out and converted into files, knives, coach-springs, razors, and common implements, according to quality. It will be seen that there is a good deal of science and judgment required to manufacture the best steel.

Sheer steel is made from bar-steel by repeated heating, hammering, and welding.

Cast steel, a very valuable invention, which has in a great degree superseded sheer steel for many purposes, was first made in 1770 by Mr. Hunstman, at Allercliff, near Sheffield. It is made by subjecting bar-steel, of a certain degree of hardness, to an intense heat, for two or three hours, in a crucible, and then casting it in ingots.

The Indian Wootz steel, of which such fine specimens were exhibited in the Exhibition, and from which extraordinary sabres have been made, is cast steel, but, from the rudeness of the process, rarely obtained perfect in any quantity. Whenever we have the good fortune to intersect India with railroads, steel-iron will be among the number of our enlarged imports.

The hard and elastic qualities of steel, known as "temper," are obtained by heating and then cooling rapidly. For this purpose baths of mercury and of boiling oil are used. Some waters are supposed to have peculiar virtues for tempering steel.

Case-hardening, a process much used for tools and plough-shares, consists in superficially hardening cast iron or wrought iron by heating it in a charcoal crucible, and so converting it into steel.

The successful operations for converting steel into various kinds of instruments, depends very much upon manual skill. The mechanics are united in trades' unions of great power, and have exercised an influence over the manufacturers of the town of a very injurious nature. At one period, the razor-grinders and superior mechanics in several branches, were able to earn as much as five and six, and even ten, pounds a-week. At that period, when they had almost a monopoly of the cutlery trade, on a very trifling excuse they would decide on taking a holiday, or, as it is termed, "playing." Strikes for higher wages generally took place whenever any good orders from foreign markets were known to have reached the town. By these arbitrary proceedings, arising from an ignorance of the common principles of political economy, which it is to be hoped that the spread of education will remove, the Sheffield cutlery trade has been seriously injured. A few years ago large numbers of the cutlers emigrated.

Further depression was produced by the rivalry of Birmingham in the electrotype process, which has, to a considerable degree, superseded the Sheffield plate and other trades, the latter town being better placed for the foreign trade, while the workmen are less turbulent.

Beside cutlery and Sheffield plate, Britannia metal, and other similar ornamental and domestic articles, a good deal of heavy ironware is made in Sheffield. We may notice the fire-grates, stoves, and fenders, of which all the best, wherever sold and whatever name and address they bear, come from Sheffield. In this branch of manufacture a great deal of artistic taste has been introduced, and many scientific improvements for distributing and economizing heat.

The firm of Stuart and Smith, Roscoe Place, distinguished themselves at the Great Exhibition, by producing a series of beautiful grates, at prices between two pounds and one hundred guineas.

There are some establishments for the manufactory of machinery.

Within the last year or two Sheffield has enjoyed a revival of prosperity, especially in the article of edge tools.

The mechanics of Sheffield are a very remarkable and interesting set of people, with a more distinct character than the mechanics of those towns which are recruited from various parts of the country. They are "Sheffielders."

A public meeting at Sheffield is a very remarkable scene. The rules of public business are perfectly understood and observed; unless in periods of very great excitement, the most unpopular speaker will receive a fair hearing. A fair hearing does not express it. The silence of a Sheffield audience, the manner in which they drink in every word of a stranger, carefully watching for the least symptom of humbug, and unreduced by the most tempting claptrap, is something quite awful.

A man with a good coat on his back must dismiss all attempts at compliments, all roundabout phrases, and plunge into the middle of the business with the closest arguments he can muster, to produce any effect on the Sheffield blades. Although they look on all gentlemen with the greatest distrust, and have a most comical fear of imaginary emissaries from Government wandering to and fro to seduce them, they thoroughly understand and practise fair play. The sterling qualities of these men inspire one with respect, and regret that they should be imposed upon by such "blageurs" as Feargus O'Connor and his troop. Perhaps they are wiser now.

The Sheffielders, by way of relaxation, are fond of gardening, cricket, dog fighting, and formerly of hunting. They are very skilful gardeners,--their celery is famous. A few years ago, one of the trades hired land to employ their unemployed members. Many possess freehold cottages.

Cricket and similar amusements have been encouraged by the circumstance that, in summer droughts, the water-power on which the grindstones depend often falls short, and then there is a fair reason for turning out to play or to garden, as the case may be, according to taste.

Sheffield bulldogs used to be very famous, and there are still famous ones to be found; but dog fighting, with drinking, is going out of fashion.

But, although other towns play at cricket, and love good gardening and good dogs, we presume that the Sheffielders are the only set of mechanics in Europe who ever kept their own pack of hounds. Such was the case a few years ago, when we had the pleasure of seeing them; and, if they are still in existence, they are worth going a hundred miles to see. The hounds, which were old English harriers, slow and deep-mouthed, were quartered at various cottages in the suburbs. On hunting mornings, when the men had a holiday, the huntsman, who was paid by a general subscription, took his stand on a particular hill top and blew his horn.

In a few minutes, from all quarters the hounds began to canter up to him, and he blew and blew again until a full complement, some ten or twelve couples, had arrived.

The subscribers came up in twos and threes on the hacks of the well known "Shanks," armed with stout sticks; and then off they set, as gay and much more in earnest than many dozen who sport pink and leathers outside on hundred guinea nags.

Music is a good deal cultivated among all classes in Sheffield. There are two scientific associations, but of no particular mark. Sheffield has produced two poets of very different metal, James Montgomery and Ebenezer Elliott, both genuine; and a sculptor, Chantrey, who was apprenticed there to a wheelwright.

The railway communications of Sheffield were long imperfect,--they are now excellent. The clothing districts of Yorkshire are united by two lines. The North Midland connects it with Derbyshire, and affords a short road by Derby and through Leicestershire to London on one side, and by Burton to Birmingham on the other. The Lincolnshire line has shortened the distance to Hull, whence the steel-iron comes, and fat cattle; the Manchester line carries away the bars converted into cutlery, and all the plated ware and hardware, by Liverpool, to customers in America, North or South.

We must not forget that there are coal-pits close to the town, of extensive workings, which are extremely well suited for the visit of an amateur. Even a courageous lady might, without inconvenience, travel underground along the tramways in the trucks, if she did not mind the jolting.

The miners are not at all like our Staffordshire friends, but are very decent fellows. There are a good many Wesleyan Methodists among them, and hymns may be heard sometimes resounding along the vaulted galleries, and rising from behind the air-doors, where children sit all day on duty,--dull work, but not hard or cold.

A well managed coal mine is a very fine sight.

DERBYSHIRE.

From either Sheffield or Manchester a most delightful journey is open through Derbyshire to a good pedestrian, or to a party of friends travelling in a carriage with their own horses. For the latter purpose an Irish outside car, fitted either with a pole or outrigger for a pair of horses, is one of the best conveyances we know. The front seat holds the driver; two ladies and two gentlemen fill up the two sides. The well contains ample space for the luggage of sensible people; umbrellas and waterproof capes can be strapped on the intermediate cushion, and then, if the horses are provided with military halters and nosebags, you are prepared for every eventuality. To other impedimenta it is not amiss to add a couple of light saddles, so that, if necessary, some of the party may ride to any particular spot.

This mode of travelling is particularly well suited for Derbyshire, Wales, Devonshire, and all counties where there are beautiful spots worth visiting to which there are no regular conveyances, and which, indeed, are often only accidentally discovered. By this mode of travelling you are rendered perfectly independent of time and taverns, so long as you reach an inn in time to go to bed; for you can carry all needful provant for both man and beast with you.

Derbyshire is in every respect one of the most beautiful counties in England, and deserves a closer investigation than can be obtained from the outside of a coach, much less from the windows of a flying train, whenever the promised railway line, which we propose to traverse, shall be completed.

Derbyshire possesses two kinds of scenery totally distinct in character, but both remarkably picturesque, several natural curiosities of a very striking character, two very pleasant bath towns,--Buxton and Matlock; beside the antiquarian glories of Hardwicke and Haddon, and the palatial magnificence of Chatsworth, with its porticoes, its fountains, its pleasure grounds, its Victoria Regia, and the House of Glass that has been the means of making Joseph Paxton famous all over the civilized world.

While the country round the Peak is wild, bare, and rugged, the line of valleys and dales on which lies the road from Matlock to Burton and Manchester, presents the most charming series of pictures of undulating woodland scenery, adorned by mansions and cottages, that it is possible to imagine. The high road continually runs along the steep side of valleys,--on one side are thick coverts climbing the rocky hill-sides, all variegated with wild flowers, briars, and brushwood; on the other side, sometimes on a level with the road, sometimes far below, a river winds and foams and brawls along; if lost for a short distance, again coming in sight of the road, enlivening and refreshing the scene.

In the main avenue of the Crystal Palace, Mr. Carrington exhibited a model which represented with extraordinary accuracy all this country, and which gave a very exact picture of Derbyshire, with all the undulations of its hills and rivers worked to a scale. Those who have never been in the county should endeavour to see it, as it will teach them that we have a Switzerland in England of which they knew not.

One charm of this part of Derbyshire is the intermixture of cultivation and wild nature, or woods so planted as to well emulate nature. On bits of level space you meet a cottage neatly built of stone, all covered with roses and woodbines, which flourish wonderfully on the loose soil in the showery atmosphere. The cottages of Derbyshire are so pretty that you are at first inclined to imagine that they are for show,--mere fancy buildings. But no; the cheapness of good building stone, the suitability of the soil for flowering shrubs, and perhaps something in the force of example, create cottage after cottage fit for the dwellings of Arcadian lovers. And every now and then the landscape opens on a villa or mansion so placed that there is nothing left for the landscape gardener to do.

The farm buildings, and corn mills, and silk mills, are equally picturesque: game abounds. Early in the morning and in the evening you may often see the pheasants feeding close to the roadside, and, in the middle of the day, the sudden sharp noise of a detonating ball will set them crowing in the woods all around.

We cannot say that the streams now swarm with trout and grayling as they did when honest Isaac Walton sung their praises in quaint poetical prose, although they still twine and foam along their rocky beds all overhung with willows and tufted shrubs; but, where the waters are preserved, there good sport is to be had.

The roadside inns are not bad. The half-mining, half-farming people are quaint and amusing. The caverns of the Peak and the lead mines, afford something strange and new. Altogether we can warmly commend a trip through Derbyshire, as one affording great variety of hill and dale, wood and stream, barren moors, and rich cultivation, fine parks and mansions, and beautiful hamlets, cottages, and roadside gardens, where English peasant life is to be seen under most favourable aspects.

* * * * *

HARDWICKE.--Supposing that we proceed from Sheffield, we would take the railway to Chesterfield, which is not a place of any interest. Thence make our way to Hardwicke, on the road to Mansfield.

Hardwicke Hall is a good specimen of the style of domestic architecture in the time of Queen Elizabeth, which has remained unaltered since that period. Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned here, and some remains of tapestry worked by her are exhibited, as well as furniture more ancient than the house itself. It belongs to the Duke of Devonshire.

From Hardwicke we proceed to Matlock, which may be reached by an unfinished railway, intended to traverse the vales, and thence run into Manchester.

The village and baths are in the centre of a dale through which the river Derwent flows, along between overhanging trees, except where, in some parts, its course lies through the narrow gut of perpendicular rocks. On either side rise hills, for the most part adorned with wood, to the height of three hundred feet.

The waters, which are supplied to several small and one large swimming bath, have a temperature of from 66 to 68 degrees of Fahrenheit. They are not now much in fashion, therefore the village has continued a village, and is extremely quiet or dull according to the tastes of the visitor. At the same time, there are a number of delightful expeditions to be made in the neighbourhood, on foot or horseback, and on donkeys,--hills to be ascended and caves to be explored.

By permission of Sir Richard Arkwright of Willersley Castle, close to Matlock and several other river preserves, good fishing may be obtained.

From Matlock, the next halt should be at Bakewell, where there is an excellent inn, which is a good encampment for visiting both Chatsworth and Haddon Hall.

Chatsworth is three miles from Bakewell. The present building occupies the site of that which was long occupied by Mary Queen of Scots during her captivity, and which was taken down to make room for the present structure at the close of the seventeenth century.

The park is ten miles in circumference, and is intersected by the river Derwent, which flows in front of the mansion.

This place has long been celebrated for its natural and artificial beauties, but within the last few years the Duke of Devonshire has largely added to its attractions, by alterations carried on at an immense expense, under the direction of Mr. Joseph Paxton, which, among other things, include the largest greenhouse in the world--the house where the Victoria Regia was first made to flower, and a fountain of extraordinary height and beauty.

These grounds, with the house, containing some fine pictures, are open to the visits of all well-behaved persons. Indeed, from the arrangements made for the convenience of visitors, it would seem as if the Duke of Devonshire has as much pleasure in displaying, as visitors can have in examining, his most beautiful domains, which is saying a great deal.

Haddon Hall, one of the most perfect specimens of a mansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, is situated on the left bank of the Wye, at a short distance from Bakewell. The "interiors" of Mr. Joseph Nash have rendered the beauties of the architecture of Haddon Hall well known, but it also enjoys the advantage of a very fine situation, backed by old trees. It is the property of the Duke of Rutland, uninhabited, but perfectly preserved. Good fishing is to be obtained near Bakewell, through the landlord of the hotel.

BUXTON may be the next halt, the Leamington of Manchester, but although more picturesquely situated, it has not enjoyed anything like the tide of prosperity which has flowed for the Warwickshire watering place. The thermal waters of Buxton have been celebrated from the time of the Romans.

The town is situated in a deep basin, surrounded by bleak hills and barren moors, in strong contrast to the verdant valley in which the village of Matlock lies. The only entrance to and exit from this basin is by a narrow ravine, through which the river Wye flows on its way to join the Derwent toward Bakewell.

The highest mountains in Derbyshire are close at hand, one of which is one thousand feet above the valley in which Buxton stands, and two thousand one hundred feet higher than the town of Derby. From this mountain four rivers rise, the Wye, the Dove, the Goyt, and the Dean.

Buxton consists of a new and old town. In the old town is a hall, in which Mary Queen of Scots lodged whilst visiting the Buxton waters for her health, as a prisoner under charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury. A Latin distich, a farewell to Buxton, scratched on the window of one of the rooms, is attributed to the hand of that unhappy princess.

The new part of the town commences with the Crescent, which contains two houses, a library, an assembly-room, a news-room, baths, and other buildings, and is one of the finest structures of the kind in the kingdom. The stables, on a magnificent scale, contain a covered ride, a hundred and sixty feet long. This immense pile was built by the late Duke of Devonshire in 1781, and cost 120,000 pounds.

The public baths are very numerous and elegant; and indeed every comfort and luxury is to be obtained there by invalids and semi-invalids, except that perpetual atmosphere of amusement, without form, or fuss, or much expense, which forms the great charm of German watering places.

We cannot understand why at the present moderate price of all kinds of provisions in England, a tariff of prices, and a set of customs of expense are kept up, which send all persons of moderate fortune to continental watering places, or compel them to depart at the end of a fortnight, instead of staying a month.

Why do we English,--after dining at a table d'hote, all the way from Baden- Baden to Boulogne, for something not exceeding half-a-crown a-head, without drinking wine, unless we like,--find ourselves bound, the moment we set our foot in England, to have a private or stereotyped dinner at five or six shillings a-head, and no amusement. In London, for gentlemen only, there are three or four public dinners at a moderate figure. When will some of our bell-wethers of fashion, to whom economy is of more consequence than even the middle classes, set the example at Leamington, Tunbridge Wells, Buxton, and Cheltenham, of dining with their wives and daughters at the public table? How long are we to be slaves of salt soup, fried soles, and fiery sherry?

The decayed watering places, ruined by the competition of the continent, should try the experiment of commercial prices, as an invitation to idlers and half-invalids to stay at home.

Another great help to our watering places and farmers, would be the repeal of the post-horse tax. It brings in a mere trifle. The repeal would be an immense boon to places where the chief attraction depends on rides and drives. It would largely increase the number of horses and vehicles for hire, and be a real aid to the distressed agricultural interest, by the increased demand it would make for corn, hay, and straw. Besides, near a small place like Matlock, or Ilfracombe, in Devonshire, farmers would work horses through the winter, and hire them out in summer. It is a great tax to pay four shillings and sixpence as a minimum for going a mile in any country place where flies and cabs have not been planted.

The environs of Buxton afford ample room for rides, drives, picnics, and geological and botanical explorations. Beautifully romantic scenes are to be found among the high crags on the Bakewell road, overhanging the river Wye. Among the natural curiosities is a cave called Poole's Hole, five hundred and sixty yards in length, with a ceiling in one part very lofty, and adorned with stalactites, which have a beautiful appearance when lighted up by Roman candles or other fireworks. As Buxton is only twenty-two miles from Manchester, travellers who have the time to spare should on no account omit to visit one of the most romantic and remarkable scenes of England.

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MACCLESFIELD.--From Buxton it will not be a bad plan to proceed to Macclesfield, and again in Cheshire, on the borders of Derbyshire, take advantage of the rail. The turnpike road to that improving seat of the silk manufacture is across one of the highest hills in the district, from the summit of which an extensive view into the "Vale Royal" of Cheshire is had. The hills and valleys in the vicinity of Whaley and Chapel-en-le-Frith are equally delightful. Macclesfield has one matter of attraction--its important silk manufactories. In other respects it is externally perfectly uninteresting. The Earl of Chester, son of Henry III., made Macclesfield a free borough, consisting of a hundred and twenty burgesses, and various privileges were conferred by Edward III., Richard II., Edward IV., Elizabeth, and Charles II.

One of the churches, St. Michael's, was founded by Eleanor, Queen of Edward I., in 1278. It has been partly rebuilt, but there are two chapels, one the property of the Marquis of Cholmondeley, which was built by Thomas Savage, Archbishop of York, whose heart was buried there in 1508. The other belongs to the Leghs of Lyme. A brass plate shows that the estate of Lyme was bestowed upon an ancestor for recovering a standard at the battle of Cressy. He was afterwards beheaded at Chester as a supporter of Richard II. Another ancestor, Sir Piers Legh, fell fighting at the battle of Agincourt. We do not know what manner of men the Leghs of Lyme of the present generation are, but certainly pride is pardonable in a family with an ancestry which took part in deeds not only recorded by history, but immortalized by Shakspeare.

There is a grammar school, of the foundation of Edward VI., with an income of 1500 pounds a-year, free to all residents, with two exhibitions of 50 pounds per annum, tenable for four years. But there must be some mismanagement, as it appears from Parker's useful Educational Register, that in 1850 only twenty-two scholars availed themselves of these privileges; yet Macclesfield has a population exceeding thirty thousand.

The education of the working classes is above average, and music is much cultivated. We abstain from giving the figures in this as in several other instances, because the census, which will shortly be published, will afford exact information on all these points.

The establishment of silk factories on the river Bollen brought Macclesfield into notice in the beginning of this century. Unhampered by the restrictions which weighed upon the Spitalfields manufacturers, and nurtured by the monopoly accorded to English silks, the silk weaving trade gradually attained great prosperity between 1808 and 1825. At that period the commencement of the fiscal changes, which have rendered the silk trade quite open to foreign competition, produced a serious effect on the prosperity of Macclesfield.

In 1832 the number of mills at work had diminished nearly one-half, and the number of hands by two-thirds. Since that period, after various vicissitudes, the silk trade has acquired a more healthy tone, and we presume that the inhabitants do not now consider the alterations commenced by Huskisson, and completed by Peel, injurious to their interests; since, at the last election, they returned one free-trader, a London shopkeeper, in conjunction with a local banker and manufacturer.

Macclesfield has now to contend with home as well as foreign competition, for silk manufactories have been spread over the kingdom in many directions.

We may expect to see in a few years, as the result of the universal extension of railway communication, a great distribution and transplantation of manufacturing establishments to towns where cheap labour and provisions, or good water or water-power, or cheap fuel, offer any advantages, There is something very curious to be noted in the manner in which certain of our principal manufactures have remained constant, while others have been transplanted from place to place, and in which ports have risen and fallen.

The glory of the Cinque Ports seems departed for ever, unless as harbours of refuge, while Folkestone, by the help of a railway, has acquired a considerable trade at the expense of Dover. The same power which has rendered Southampton great has reduced Falmouth and Harwich to a miserably low ebb. The sea-borne trade of Chester is gone for ever, but Birkenhead hopes to rise by the power of steam.

No changes can seriously injure Hull, although railways will give Great Grimsby a large share of the overflowings of the new kind of trade created by large steam boats and the repeal of duties on timber; and so we might run through a long list of commercial changes, past, present, and to come.

Macclesfield has shared largely in these influences. Having acquired its commercial importance as one of the glasshouses in which, at great expense, we raised an artificial silk trade, when it lay at a distance of at least three hours from Manchester for all heavy goods, and at least three days from London; it has now communication with London in five hours, and with the port of Liverpool, through Manchester, in two hours if needful. Thus it enjoys the best possible means of obtaining the raw material and sending off the manufactured article.

In the time of Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III., it was contrary to the laws of the palace for any servant to wear a silk gown; but extended commerce and improved machinery have rendered it almost a matter of course for the respectable cook of a respectable lawyer or surgeon, to afford herself a black silk gown without extravagance or impertinence,--which is so much the better for the weavers and sailors.

We shall not attempt to describe the silk manufacture, which is on the same principles as all other textiles, except that less work can be done by machinery. But it is one of the most pleasant and picturesque of all our manufacturing operations. The long light rooms in which the weaving is conducted are scrupulously clean and of a pleasant temperature,--no dust, no motes are flying about. The girls in short sleeves, in the course of their work are, as it were, obliged to assume a series of graceful attitudes. The delicacy of their work, and the upward position in which they hold them, render their hands white and delicate, and the atmosphere has something of the same effect on their complexion. Many of the greatest beauties of Belgravia might envy the white hands and taper fingers to be found in a silk mill.

Unfortunately this trade, which in factory work is healthy and well paid, is, more than any other, subject to the vicissitudes of fashion. The plain qualities suffer from such changes less than the rich brocades and fancy patterns.

It must be remarked that, although the repeal of protective duties to eighteen per cent. produced a temporary depressing effect on the trade of Macclesfield, the general silk trade has largely increased ever since 1826, and has spread over a number of counties where it was before unknown, and has become an important article of export even to France.

An example of the readiness with which, in these railroad days, a manufacture can be transplanted, was exhibited at Tewkesbury four years ago. The once- fashionable theatre of that decayed town was being sold by auction; it hung on the auctioneer's hammer at so trifling a sum that one of the new made M.P.'s of the borough bought it. Having bought it, for want of some other use he determined to turn it into a silk mill. In a very short space of time the needful machinery was obtained from Macclesfield, with an overseer. While the machinery was being erected, a bevy of girls were acquiring the art of silk weaving, and, in less than twelve months, five or six hundred hands were as regularly engaged in this novel process, as if they had been so engaged all their lives. Without railroads, such an undertaking would have been the work of years, if possible at all.

Raw silk is obtained from Italy, from France in small quantities, as the exportation of the finest silk is forbidden, from China, from India in increasing quantities, and from Brusa in Asia Minor through Constantinople.

The raw silk, imported in the state in which it is wound from the cocoons, has to be twisted into thread, after being dyed, so as to approach the stage of yarn in the cotton manufacture. This twisting is technically called throwing, and is one of the departments in which the greatest improvements have been introduced, as shown by silk throwers from Macclesfield in the machine department of the Great Exhibition; and, by the improvements, the cost of throwing, or twisting, has been reduced from 10s. per lb. to 3s.

It takes about twelve pounds of cocoons to make one pound of reeled silk, and that pound will produce from fourteen to sixteen yards of gros de Naples.

Many attempts have been made to naturalize the silk-worm in this country, but, after rather large sums have been expended on it, it is now quite clear that, although it be possible to obtain large quantities of silk of a certain quality, the undertaking cannot be made to pay: the climate is an obstacle.

For centuries the silk-worm was only known to the Chinese,--the Greeks and Romans used the substance without knowing from what it was produced or whence it came. In the sixth century, in the reign of Justinian, the eggs of the silk-worm were brought secretly to Constantinople from China by the Nestorian monks in a hollow cane, hatched, and successfully propagated. For six centuries the breeding of silk-worms was confined to the Greeks of the Lower Empire. In the twelfth century the art was transferred to Sicily, and thence successively to Italy, Spain, and France.

Great efforts were made in the reign of James I. to promote the rearing of silk-worms in England, and mulberry trees were distributed to persons of influence through many counties. The scheme failed. But in 1718 a company was incorporated, with a like purpose, and planted trees, and erected buildings in Chelsea Park. This scheme also failed. Great efforts were made to plant the growth of silk in the American colonies, and the brilliant prospects of establishing a new staple of export formed a prominent feature in the schemes for American colonization, of which so many were launched in the beginning of the eighteenth century. But up to the present time no progress has been made in it in that country, although silk-worms are found in a natural state in the forests of the Union. Indeed, it seems a pursuit which needs cheap attentive labour as well as suitable climate. Some attempts have been made in Australia, but there again the latter question presents an insurmountable obstacle. If the mulberry would thrive in Natal, where native labour is cheap, it would be worth trying there, although we cannot do better than develop the resources of the silk-growing districts of India, where the culture has been successfully carried on for centuries.

At the Great Exhibition an extremely handsome banner was exhibited, manufactured from British silk, cultivated by the late Mrs. Whitby of Newlands, near Southampton, who spent a large income, and many years in the pursuit, solely from philanthropic motives, and carried on an extensive correspondence with parties inclined to assist her views; but, although to the last she was sanguine of success in making silk one of the raw staples of England, and a profitable source of employment for women and children, we have seen no commercial evidence of any more real progress than that of gardeners in growing grapes and melons without glass-houses.

Almost every country in Europe has made the same attempts, but with very moderate success. Russia has its mulberry plantations, so has Belgium, Austria Proper, Hungary, Bavaria, and even Sweden; but Lombardy and Cevennes in France bear away the palm for excellence, and there is an annual increase in the quantity and quality of silk from British India. But no matter where it grows, we can buy it and bring it to our own doors nearly as cheap as the natives of the country, often cheaper.

In Macclesfield every kind of silk article is produced, including ribbons, narrow and richly-ornamented satin, velvet, silk embroidered for waistcoats and gown pieces.

FROM CHESHIRE TO NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE.

On leaving Macclesfield we are, as usual, embarrassed by a choice of routes, due to the perseverance of Mr. Ricardo, one of the members for the Potteries, who has endowed his constituents with a set of railways, which cut through their district in all manner of ways. These North Staffordshire lines, Tria juncta in uno, form an engineering continuation of the Trent Valley, and are invaluable to the manufacturers of porcelain and pottery in that district. To the shareholders they have proved rather a disappointment. The ten per cent. secured to the Trent Valley Company, by the fears of the London and North- Western, has not yet rewarded the patriotism of the North Staffordshire shareholders. But to our route, we may either make our way by Leek, Cheadle, Alton, and Uttoxeter to Burton, famous for the ale of Bass and game of cricket nourished on it, and through Burton to Derby. (The learned and lively author of the "Cricket Field" remarks, that the game of cricket follows malt and hops--no ale, no bowlers or batsmen. It began at Farnham hops, and has never rolled further north than Edinburgh ale.) Or by Congleton, Burslem, Hanley, and Stoke upon Trent (the very heart of the Potteries), then either pushing on to Uttoxeter to the north, or keeping the south arm past Trentham to Norton Bridge, which will convey you to the Trent Valley Line, the shortest way to London.

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