VIITHE INLAND SCENERY SOUTH OF LANCASTER

"For he had geten him yet no benefice."

Very interesting is it also when the ear catches the antiquatedhisanditwhere to-day we sayitandits. Often supposed to correspond with the poetical use of "his" in personifications (often found in the authorised version of Scripture), the Lancashire employment ofhisis in truth the common Shaksperean one,hisin the county palatine being the simple genitive of the old Englishhit, as inHamlet, iv. 7—

"There is a willow grows aslant the brook,That showshishoar leaves in the glassy stream."

"There is a willow grows aslant the brook,

That showshishoar leaves in the glassy stream."

So with the obsolete possessiveit. When a Lancashire woman says, "Come to it mammy!" how plain the reminder of the lines inKing John—

Do, child, go toitgrandam, child;Give grandam kingdom, anditgrandam willGive it a plum, a cherry, and a fig;There's a good grandam.

Do, child, go toitgrandam, child;

Give grandam kingdom, anditgrandam will

Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig;

There's a good grandam.

Archaic words are illustrated in many a familiar phrase. A Lancashire girl in quest of something "speers" for it (Anglo-Saxonspirian, to inquire). If alarmed, she "dithers"; if comely and well conducted, she behaves herself "farrantly"; if delicately sensitive, she is "nesh"—

It seemeth for love his herte is tendre and neshe.

So when the poor "clem" for want of food—"Hard is the choice," says Ben Jonson, "when the valiant must eat their arms or clem." Very many others which, though not obsolete in polite society, are seldom heard, help to give flavour to this inviting old dialect. To embrace is in Lancashire to "clip"; to move house is to "flit"; when the rain descends heavily, "it teems"; rather is expressed by "lief" or "liefer," as inTroilus and Cresseide—

Yet had I levre unwist for sorrow die.

Pastimes and Recreations.—The pastimesand recreations of the Lancashire people fall, as elsewhere, under two distinct heads; those which arise upon the poetic sentiment, the love of purity, order, and beauty, and those which come of simple desire to be entertained. Where poesy has a stronghold, we have never long to wait for the "touches of sweet harmony"; hence a characteristic of working Lancashire, immemorial as to date, is devotedness to music. In all Europe it would be difficult to find a province where the first and finest of the fine arts is better understood, or more reverently practised. High-class sacred music—German music in particular—fills many a retired cottage in leisure hours with solace and joy; and very generally in villages, as well as in the large towns, there are clubs and societies instituted purely for its promotion. "On the wild hills, where whin and heather grow, it is not uncommon to meet working-men with their musical instruments on their way to take part in some village oratorio many miles distant.... Up in the forest of Rossendale, between Derply Moor and the wild hill called Swinshaw, there is a little lone valley, a green cup in the mountains, called Dean. The inhabitants of this valley are so notable for their love of music that they are known all through the neighbouring country as 'Th' Deignlayrocks.'"[30]In many of the large country manufacturing establishments—the printworks, for instance—the operatives have regularly organised "bands,"—the employers giving encouragement,—the value of which, in regard to moral culture, is shown in the members being usually the trusted men.

The same primitive inclination towards the poetic would seem to underlie the boundless Lancashire love of flowers and gardens. Not that the passion is universal. The chief seat, as of the intrinsically best of the dialect, is the south-eastern part of the county: the portion abutting on Yorkshire is unfavourably cold, and though in the north occur fine examples of individual enthusiasm, there is little illustration of confederated work. Societies strong and skilful enough to hold beautiful exhibitions are dotted all over the congenial parts of the cotton district. They attend as diligently to the economic as to the decorative; one never knows whether most to admire the onions, the beans, and the celery, or the splendid asters, dahlias, and phloxes—in many parts there is ancient renown also for gooseberries. After the manner of the wise in other matters, the operative Lancashire gardeners, if they cannotgrow the things they might prefer, give their whole hearts to liking those they have at command. The rivalry and ambition in regard to gooseberries is unique. While the fruit is ripening upon the bushes it is sacrilege for a stranger to approach within a distance of many yards. On cold and hurtful nights the owner sits up to watch it, like a nurse with an invalid, supplying or removing defence according to the conditions, and on the show day the excitement compares in its innocent measure with that of Epsom. The exhibitors gather round a table: the chairman sits with scales and weights before him, calling in turn for the heaviest red, the heaviest yellow, and so on, every eye watching the balance; the end of all being a bright new kettle for the wife at home.

Many of the operative gardeners are assiduous cultivators of "alpines," the vegetablebijouterieof the mountains; others are enamoured of ferns, and these last are usually possessed of good botanical knowledge. The beginning would seem to date from the time of Elizabeth, thus from the time of Shakspere, when other immigrations of the Flemish weavers took place. Things of home too dear to leave behind them, they brought with them their favourite flowers, the tulip and the polyanthus.These early growers would doubtless for a time be shyly looked upon as aliens. Nothing is known definitely of the work of the ensuing century, but there is certain proof that by 1725 Lancashire had already become distinguished for its "florists' flowers," the cultivation lying almost entirely in the hands of the artisans, who have never for an instant slackened, though to-day the activity is often expressed in new directions.

It is owing, without doubt, to the example of the operative Lancashire gardeners of the last century and a half that floriculture at the present moment holds equal place with classical music among the enjoyments also of the wealthy; especially those whose early family ties were favourable to observation of the early methods. More greenhouses, hothouses, and conservatories; more collections of valuable orchids and other plants of special beauty and lustre exist in South Lancashire, and especially in the immediate neighbourhood of Manchester, than in any other district away from the metropolis. Orchid culture was practised here, as in Macclesfield and Birmingham, long before what orchids are was even a question in many parts. The name of one of the noblest species yet discovered, theCattleya Mossiæ, commemorates an old Liverpool merchant, Mr. JohnMoss, one of the first to grow these matchless flowers; while in that of theAnguloa Clowesiiwe are reminded of the beautiful collection formed at Higher Broughton by the Rev. John Clowes, which, after the decease of the possessor, went to Kew. A very remarkable and encouraging fact is that orchids, the queenliest and most fragrant of indoor flowers, can, like auriculas, with skilful management be brought to the highest possible state of perfection in an atmosphere in which many plants can barely exist—the smoky and soot-laden one of Manchester. The proof was supplied by the late Dr. R. F. Ainsworth of Cliff Point, to whom flower-show honours were as familiar as to Benjamin Simonite of Sheffield, that astonishing old florist whose auriculas are grown where the idea of a garden seems absurd.

These very practical proofs of the life and soundness of the poetic sentiment in working Lancashire prepare us for a county feature in its way quite as interesting and remarkable—the wide-spread and very deep-seated local taste for myth, legend, and superstition, which, in truth, is no other than the poetic sentiment uncultured and gone astray. Faith in "folklore" is by no means to be confounded with inane credulity. The folk-lore of a civilisednation is thedébrisof the grand old spirit-worship—vague, but exquisitely picturesque, and figuratively significant, which, in the popular religion of the pre-Christian world, filled every sweet and romantic scene with invisible beings—Dryads, who loved the woodland; Naïads, that sported in the stream and waterfall; Oreads, who sat and sang where now we gather their own fragrantOreopteris,[31]and which assigned maidens even to the sea—the Nereids, never yet lost. "Nothing," it has been well said, "that has at any time had a meaning for mankind ever absolutely dies." How much of the primeval faith shall survive with any particular race or people—to what extent it shall be transformed—depends upon their own culture, spiritual insight, and ideas of the omnipresence of the Almighty, of which the fancies as to the nymphs, etc., declared a dim recognition: it is affected also very materially by the physical character and complexion of their country. This has been illustrated in the completest manner as regards the eastern borders of Lancashire by the accomplished author ofScarsdale[32]already named: the influence of the daily spectacle of the wild moor, the evening walk homewards throughthe shadowy and silent ravine, the sweet mysteries of the green and ferny clough, with its rushing stream, all telling powerfully, he shows us with perennial grace, upon the imagination of a simple-hearted race, constitutionally predisposed towards the marvellous, and to whom it was nourishment. Nobody is really happy without illusions of some kind, and none can be more harmless than belief in the mildly supernatural. The local fairy tales having now been pretty well collected and classified,[33]it remains only to recognise their immense ethnographical value, since there is probably not a single legend or superstition afloat in Lancashire that, like an ancient coin, does not refer the curious student to distant lands and long past ages. Lancashire, we must remember, has been successively inhabited, or occupied, more or less, by a Celtic people,—by Romans, Danes, and Anglo-Saxons,—all of whom have left their footprints. No one can reside a year in Lancashire without hearing of its "boggarts"—familiar in another form in the Devonshire pixies, and in the "merry wanderer of the night," Titania's "sweet Puck." Absurd to the logician, the tales and the terrors connected with the boggarts carrywith them, like all other fables, a profound interior truth—the truth for which, as Carlyle says, "reason will always inquire, while half-reason stands indifferent and mocking." The nucleus of the boggart idea is, that the power of the human mind, exercised with firmness and consistency, triumphs over all obstacles, and reduces even spirits to its will; while, contrariwise, the weak and undetermined are plagued and domineered over by the very same imps whom the resolute can direct and control. So with the superstitions as to omens. When in spring the anglers start for a day's enjoyment, they look anxiously for "pynots," or magpies,onebeing unlucky, whiletwoportend good fortune. The simple fact, so the ornithologists tell us, is that in cold and ungenial weather prejudicial to sport with the rod, one of every pair of birds always stays in the nest, whereas in fine weather, good for angling, both birds come out. Illustrations of this nature might be multiplied a hundred-fold, and to unabating advantage. Time is never ill-spent upon interpretation of the mythic. The effort, at all events, is a kindly one that seeks—

To unbind the charms that round slight fables lie,And show that truth is truest poësy.

To unbind the charms that round slight fables lie,

And show that truth is truest poësy.

The dialect itself is full of metaphor,images of great beauty not infrequently turning up. Some of them seem inherited from the primevals. That light and sound are reciprocally representative needs, for instance, no saying. From the earliest ages the idea of music has always accompanied that of sunrise. Though to-day the heavens declare the glory of God silently, in the beginning "the morning stars sang together":—old Homer's "rosy-fingered morn" is in Lancashire the "skryke" or cry "of day."

Though much that is deplorably brutal occurs among the lowest Lancashire classes, the character of the popular pastimes is in general free from stain; and the amusements themselves are often eminently interesting, since in honest andbona fiderustic sports there is always archæology. The tales they tell of the past now constitute in truth the chief attraction of the older ones. The social influences of the railway system have told no less upon the village-green than on the streets of cities; any picture that may now be drawn must needs owe its best colours to the retrospective. Contemplating what remains of them, it is pleasant, however, to note the intense vitality of customs and ceremonials having their root in feelings ofreverence; such, for example, as the annual "rush-bearing" still current in many parts, andnot unknown even in the streets of modern Manchester. That in the olden time, prior to the introduction of carpets, the practice was to strew floors and indoor pavements with green rushes every one knows. Among the charges brought against Cardinal Wolsey was his extravagance in the too frequent and ostentatious spreading of clean ones. Employed also in churches and cathedrals on the anniversary of the feast of the saint to whom the building was dedicated, when renewed it was with special solemnity. In an age when processions full of pomp and splendour were greatly delighted in, no wonder that the renewal became an excuse for a showy pageant; and thus, although to-day we have only the rush-cart, the morris-dancers, the drums and trumpets, and the flags—the past, in association, lives over again. Small events and great ones are seldom far asunder. In the magnificent "rush-bearing" got up for the delectation of James I. when at Hoghton Tower, Sunday, 17th August 1617, lay one of the secret causes of the Stuart downfall. Sports on the Sabbath day had been forbidden by his predecessor. James, admitting as argument that the cause of the reformed religion had suffered by the prohibition, gave his "good people of Lancashire" leave to resume them. The Puritans took offence; thewound was deepened by Charles; and when the time of trial came it was remembered.

"Pace-egging" (a corruption of Pasche or Pasque-egging) is another immemorial Lancashire custom, observed, as the term indicates, at Easter, the egg taking its place as an emblem of the Resurrection. Perverted and degraded, though in the beginning decorous, if not pious, the original house-to-house visitation has long had engrafted upon it a kind of rude drama supposed to represent the combat of St. George and the Dragon—the victory of good over evil, of life over death. So with "Simnel-Sunday," a term derived from the Anglo-Saxonsymblian, to banquet, orsymbel, a feast, a "simnel" being literally "banquet-bread."[34]This corresponds with the Midlent-Sunday of other counties, and, particularly in Bury, is a time of special festivity. The annual village "wakes" observed everywhere in Lancashire, and equivalent to the local rush-bearings, partake, it is to be feared, of the general destiny of such things. Happily the railway system has brought with it an inestimable choice of pleasure for the rational. The emphatically staple enjoyment of the workingLancashire population to-day consists in the Whitsun-week trip to some distant place of wonder or wholesome gratification, the seaside always securing the preference. In Lancashire it is not nearly or so much Whitsun-Monday or Whitsun-Tuesday as the whole of the four following days. In the south-eastern part of the county, Manchester particularly, business almost disappears; and very delightful is it then to observe how many little parties of the toiling thrifty are away to North Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and even to France. The factory system always impliesmasses. The people work in masses, and suffer in masses, and rejoice in masses. In Whitsun-week, fifty miles, a hundred miles away, we find in a score of places five hundred, perhaps a thousand. There are salutary home-pleasures ready besides. Manchester does wisely in holding its principal flower-show during this great annual holiday, drawing, in fair weather, some 50,000 visitors. The example is a good one, since with the growing disposition of the English people to enjoy their holidays, it behoves all those who have the management of places of healthy recreation to supply the most humanising that may be possible, and thus mitigate the influence of the hurtful ones. The staple game of muscular Lancashire was formerly that of bowls.A history of Manchester would be incomplete without plenty of lively chat about it; and in regard to the more modern pastime, the cricket match, it is no vaunt to add that while the chief cricketing in England lies in the hands of only nine out of its forty counties, the premiership has once at all events, say in 1879, been claimed as fairly by Lancashire as by its great rival on the banks of the Trent. Nottinghamshire, moreover, had held its position without half the difficulties in the way that Lancashire had to contend with.

Scenery more diversified than that of Lancashire, taking the Duddon as its northern boundary, does not exist in any English county. For the present we shall keep to the portion south of the Lune, deferring the Lake District to the next chapter, to which may also be left the little that has to be said concerning the shore south of that river. The eastern parts have attractions quite as decided as those of the north, though of a character totally different. Every acknowledged element of the picturesque may be discovered there, sometimes in abundance. The only portion of the county entirely devoid of landscape beauty is that which is traversed by the Liverpool and Southport Railway, not unjustly regarded as the dullest in the kingdom. The best that can be said of this dreary district is, that at intervals it is relieved by the cheerful hues of cultivation.

BLACKSTONE EDGE

From Liverpool northwards to the banks of the Ribble, excepting at some distance from the sea, and eastwards to Manchester, the ground is nearly level. Nothing must be expected where it borders upon the Mersey above the estuary. To quote the precise terms employed by Pennant, "The Mersey is by no means a pleasing water." The country bordering upon it, he might have added, appeals very slenderly to the imagination; and most assuredly, since the old topographer passed along, Nature has made no change for the better as regards the river, while man has done his best to efface any pretty features it may once have owned. But we have not to go far from the modern Tyre in order to find hills and the picturesque. Newborough and the vicinity present a remarkable contrast to the plains beneath. Here the country begins to grow really beautiful, and thenceforward it constantly improves. Some of the slopes are treeless, and smooth as a lawn; others are broken by deep and wooded glades, with streamlets bound for the Douglas (an affluent of the Ribble), one of the loveliest dells of the kind in South Lancashire occurring near Gathurst. On the summits, at Ashurst particularly, a sweet and pleasant air never fails to "invite our gentle senses." Here too weget our first lesson in what may be truly said, once for all, of Lancashire—that wherever the ground is sufficiently bold and elevated we are sure not only of fine air and an extensive prospect, but a glorious one. At Ashurst, while Liverpool is not too far for the clear discerning of its towers and spires, in the south are plainly distinguished the innumerable Delamere pines, rising in dark masses like islands out of the sea; and far away, beyond the Dee, the soft swell of the hills of North Wales, Moel Vamma never wanting. This celebrated eminence, almost as well known in South Lancashire as in Denbighshire, may be descried even at Eccles, four or five miles from the Manchester Exchange.

Eastwards of the great arterial line of railway which, running from Manchester to Lancaster through Bolton and Preston, almost exactly bisects the county, the scenery is rich in the eloquent features which come of wild and interminable surges of broad and massive hill, often rocky, with heights of fantastic form, the irregularities giving token, in their turn, of deep chasms and clefts, that subdivide into pretty lateral glens and moist hollows crowded with ferns. The larger glens constitute the "cloughs" so famous in local legend, and the names of which recur so frequently in Lancashire literature. As Yorkshire is approached, the long succession of uplands increases in volume, rising at last in parts to a maximum altitude of nearly 1900 feet. Were a survey possible from overhead, the scene would be that of a tempest-ruffled ocean, the waves suddenly made solid.

THE LAKE AT LITTLEBOROUGH

Very much of this vast hill-surface consists of desolate, heathery, unsheltered moorland. The amount of unreclaimed land still existing in Lancashire, and which must needs remain for ever as it is, constitutes in truth one of the striking characteristics of the county. Not merely in the portion now specially under notice are there cold and savage wastes such as laugh the plough to scorn. The "fells" of the more northern districts present enormous breadths of similar character, incapable of supporting more than the poorest aboriginal vegetation, affording only the scantiest pasturage for a few scattered mountain-sheep, thus leaving the farmer without a chance. In itself the fact of course is in no degree remarkable, since there are plenty of hopeless acres elsewhere. The singular circumstance is the association of so much barrenness with the stupendous industries of the busiest people in the world. It is but in keeping after all with the general idea of old England,—

"This precious gem, set in the silver sea,"—

the pride of which consists in the constant blending of the most diverse elements. If we have grim and hungry solitudes, rugged and gloomy wildernesses, not very far off, be sure there is counterpoise in placid and fruitful vale and mead. Lancashire may not supply the cornfield: the soil and climate, though good for potatoes, are unfriendly to the cerealia; there is no need either to be too exacting; if the sickle has no work, there is plenty for the scythe and the spade.

A few miles beyond Bolton the hills begin to rise with dignity. Here we find far-famed and far-seen Rivington Pike, conspicuous, like Ashurst, through ascending almost immediately out of the plain. "Pike" is in Lancashire, and in parts of the country closely adjacent, the equivalent of "peak," the highest point of a hilly neighbourhood, though by no means implying an exactly conical or pyramidal figure, and very generally no more than considerable elevation, as in the case of the "Peak of Derbyshire." Rivington well deserves its name, presenting from many points of view one of those beautiful, evenly swelling, and gently rounded eminences which the ancient Greeks were accustomed to callτιτθοίandμαστοί, as in the case of the classic mound at Samos which Callimachus connects so elegantly with thename of the lady Parthenia. There are spots, however, where the mamelon disappears. From all parts of the summit the prospect is delightful. Under our feet, unrolled like a carpet, is a verdant flat which stretches unbrokenly to the sea-margin, twenty miles distant, declared, nevertheless, by a soft, sweet gleam of silver or molten gold, according to the position of the sun in the heavens. The estuary of the Ribble, if the tide be in, renews that lovely shining; and beyond, in the remote distance, if the atmosphere be fairly clear, say fifty or sixty miles away, may be discerned the grand mountains that cast their shadows into Coniston. Working Lancashire, though it has lakes of its own, has made others! From the summit of Rivington we now look down upon half a dozen immense reservoirs, so located that to believe them the work of man is scarcely possible. Fed by the inflow of several little streams, and no pains taken to enforce straight margins, except when necessary, these ample waters exemplify in the best manner how art and science are able at times to recompense Nature—

WATERFALL IN CLIVIGER

"Leaving that beautiful which always was,And making that which was not."

"Leaving that beautiful which always was,

And making that which was not."

After heavy and continuous rain, the overflow gives rise to musical waterfalls. Up in theglen called Deanwood there is also a natural and nearly permanent cascade.[35]

The eastern slopes of the Rivington range descend into the spacious valley which, beginning just outside Manchester, extends nearly to Agricola's Ribchester, and in the Roman times was a soldiers' thoroughfare. In this valley lie Turton, Darwen, and Blackburn. The hills, both right and left, again supply prospects of great extent, and are especially attractive through containing many fine recesses, sometimes as round as amphitheatres. Features of much the same kind pertain to the nearly parallel valley in which Summerseat nestles, with the pleasurable additions that come of care to preserve and to compensate in case of injury. By this route we may proceed, for variety, to Whalley, the Mecca of the local archæologist; thence on to Clitheroe, and to the foot of famous Pendle. At Whalley we find "Nab's Hill," to ascend which is pastime enough for a summer's evening. Inconsiderable in comparison with some of its neighbours, this favoured eminence gives testimony once again to the advantages conferred by situation and surroundings, when therival claims consist in mere bulk and altitude. Lord Byron might have intended it in the immortal lines:

"Green and of mild declivity, the last,As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,Save that there was no sea to lave its base,But a most living landscape."

"Green and of mild declivity, the last,

As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,

Save that there was no sea to lave its base,

But a most living landscape."

Westwards, from the summit the eye ranges, as at Rivington, over a broad champaign, the fairest in the district, the turrets of princely Stonyhurst rising amid a green throng of oaks and beeches. In the north it rests upon the flanks of airy Longridge, the immediate scene accentuated by the ruined keep of the ancient castle of the De Lacys. On the right towers Pendle itself, most massive of English mountains, its "broad bare back" literally "upheaved into the sky"; and completing the harmonious picture,—since no landscape is perfect without water,—below runs the babbling Calder. Whalley Nab has been planted very liberally with trees. How easy it is for good taste to confer embellishment!

Pendle, the most distinguished and prominent feature in the physical geography of Mid-Lancashire, is not, like mountains in general, broken by vast defiles, but fashioned after the manner of the Dundry range in Somersetshire, presenting itself as a hugeand almost uniform green mound, several miles in length, and with a nearly level sky-line. Dundry, however, is much less steep. The highest point is at the upper or north-east extremity, stated by the Ordnance Survey to be 1850 feet above the sea. The superficial extent is estimated at 15,000 statute acres, or about 25 square miles, including the great gorge upon the southern side called Ogden Clough—a broad, deep, and mysterious-looking hollow, which contributes not a little to the fine effect of this gigantic hill as seen from the Yorkshire side.

The slope which looks upon Yorkshire marks the boundary of the famous "forest of Pendle," a territory of nearly 25,000 acres—not to be understood as now or at any former period covered with great and aged trees, but simply as a tract which, when the property was first apportioned, layad foras, or outside the lands deemed valuable for domestic purposes, and which was left undisputed to the wild animals of the country. Immense breadths of land of this description existed in England in early times, and in no part was the proportion larger than in Lancashire, where many of the ancient "forests" still retain their primitive appellation, and are peculiarly interesting in the marked survival among the inhabitantsof the language, manners, and customs of their ancestors. Generally speaking, these ancient "forests" are distinguished also by dearth of primitive architecture and of rude primeval fences, the forest laws having forbidden all artificial hindrances to the chase, which in the refuges thus afforded to "deer," both large and small, had its most ample and enjoyable scope.

From the summit of Pendle, all that is seen from Whalley Nab, now diminutive, is renewed on a scale quite proportionate to its own nobleness. The glistening waters of the Irish Sea in the far west; in the north the mountains of Westmoreland; proximately the smiling valleys of the Ribble, the Hodder, and the Calder; and, turning to the east, the land as far towards the German Ocean as the power of the eye can reach. When the atmosphere is in its highest state of transparency even the towers of York Minster become visible. Well might the old historian of Whalley commend the prospect from mighty Pendle as one upon which "the eye, the memory, and the imagination rest with equal delight." To the same author we owe the showing that the common Lancashire term Pendle-hillis incorrect, seeing that the sense of "hill" is already conveyed, as in Penmanmawr and Penyghent. "Nab's Hill" wouldseem to involve a corresponding repetition, "nab" being a form of the Scandinaviannebbéornibba, a promontory—as in Nab-scar, near Rydal, and Nab-crag, in Patterdale.

All these grand peaks belong essentially to the range reached another time by going from Manchester to Littleborough, ascending from which place we find ourselves upon Blackstone Edge, so lofty (1553 feet), and, when climbed, so impressive in all its circumstances, that we seem to be pacing the walls of an empire. All the topmost part is moorland; below, or upon the sides, there is abundance of the picturesque; precipitous crags and rocky knolls, receding dells and ravines, occurring frequently. Many of the dells in summer bear witness to the descent in winter of furious torrents; the broad bed of the now tiny streamlets that fall from ledge to ledge being strewed with stones and boulders, evidently washed down from the higher channel by the vehement water, heedlessly tossed about and then abandoned. The desolate complexion of these winter-torrent gullies (in Lancashire phrase "water-gaits") in its way is unique, though often mitigated by the innumerable green fern-plumes upon the borders. The naturalist's enjoyment is further quickened by the occurrence, not infrequently, of fragments of calamites and other fossils. Theascent to the crest is by no means arduous. Attaining it, provided the atmosphere is free from mist, the prospect—now an old story—is once again magnificent, and, as at Rivington, made perfect by water. Nowhere perhaps in England has so much landscape beauty been provided artificially and undesignedly by the construction of great reservoirs as in the country of twenty miles radius around Manchester. The waters at Lymm and Taxal belong respectively to Cheshire and Derbyshire. Independently of those at Rivington, Lancashire excels both of them in the romantic lake below Blackstone Edge, well known to every pleasure-seeker as "Hollingworth." The measurement round the margin is quite two miles; hills almost completely encircle it, and, as seen from the edge, near Robin Hood's crags, so utterly is it detached from all that pertains to towns and cities as to recall the remotest wilds beyond the Tweed. Hollingworth Lake was constructed about ninety years ago with a view to steady maintenance of the Rochdale Canal. Among the hills upon the opposite or north-western side of the valley, Brown Wardle, often named in story, is conspicuous; and adorning the lofty general outline may be seen—best, perhaps, from near "Middleton Junction"—another mamelon—this onebelieved in local story to be a haunt of the maidens of theMidsummer Night's Dream.

IN THE BURNLEY VALLEY

Looking westward from the Robin Hood pinnacles, the prospect includes the valleys of the Roch and the Spodden—the last-named stream in parts wild and wilful. At Healey its walls of rock appear to have been riven at different times. Here, struggling through a lengthened and tortuous cleft, and forming more than one lively cascade before losing itself in the dingle below, so plainly does the water seem to have forced a passage, asserting mastery over all impediments, that in the vernacular this spot is called the "Thrutch." The first phrase heard in a Lancashire crowd is, "Where are you thrutching?" The perennial attrition of the broken and impending rocks causes many of them to terminate in sharp ridges, and in one part has given birth to the "Fairies' Chapel." The streams spoken of have their beginning in the lofty grounds which intervene between Rochdale and Cliviger, and include aspiring Thieveley Pike. Thieveley in the bygones served the important use of a station for beacon-fires, signalling on the one hand to Pendle, on the other to Buckton Castle. The prospect from the top, 1474 feet above the sea, comprehends, to the north, almost the whole of Craven, with Ingleborough,and the wilds of Trawden Forest. The nearer portions of the Lake District mountains, now familiar, are discernible; and on sunny evenings, when the river is full, once more the bright-faced estuary of the Ribble. The view reaches also to North Wales and Derbyshire, the extremities of this great map being quite sixty miles asunder.

Cliviger, after all, is the locality which most astonishes and delights the visitor to this part of Lancashire. Soon after quitting Rochdale, the railway passes through the great "Summit Tunnel," and so into the Todmorden Valley, there very soon passing the frontier formed by the Calder,[36]and entering Yorkshire. The valley is noted for its scenery, new combinations of the most varied elements, rude but not inhospitable, rising right and left in quick succession. Turning up the Burnley Valley, we enter Cliviger proper: a district having a circuit of nearly twenty miles, and presenting an endless variety of the most romantic features possible to mingled rock and pastured slope, constantly lifted to mountain-height, the charm of the huge gray bluffs ofprojecting gritstone augmented in many parts by abundance of trees, the predominant forms the graceful ones of larch, birch, and mountain-ash. The trees are now very nearly a century old, having been planted during the fifteen years ending with 1799, yet, to appearance, still in the prime of their calm existence. A striking characteristic of this admired valley is the frequent apparent closing-in of the passage by protruding crags, which nevertheless soon give way to verdant curves. Cliviger in every part is more or less marked by crags and curves, so that we incessantly come upon vast green bowls or hemispherical cavities, the bases of which change at times into circular plateaux, at midsummer overlaid with carpets of the prettiest botanical offspring of the province,—

"In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white,Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery."

"In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white,

Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery."

For introduction to these choice bits it is needful, of course, to leave the main thoroughfares and take one of the innumerable by-paths which lead away to the lonely and impressive silence of the moors, which, though desolate and sometimes bleak, have a profoundly delightful influence upon the mind. Their interest is heightened by the portions which are vividlygreen with bog-moss, being the birthplace of important streams. No slight matter is it to stand at any time where rivers are cradled. Here the flow of water is at once both east and westwards—a phenomenon witnessed several times in the English Apennine, and always bidding the traveller pause awhile. The Ribble and the Wharf begin this way; so do the Lune and the Swale: playmates in childhood, then parting for ever. Similarly, in Cliviger Dean the two Calders issue from the same fragment of watery waste, destined immediately for opposite courses. Hard by, in a stream called Erewell, at the foot of Derply Hill, on the verge of Rossendale, may be seen the birthplace of the Manchester Irwell.

The promise given at Newborough in regard to the scenery of East Lancashire is thus perfectly fulfilled. It does not terminate either with Cliviger, being renewed, after passing Pendle, all the way to the borders of Westmoreland. Ward-stone, eight or nine miles south-east of Lancaster, part of the Littledale Fells, has an altitude exceeding even that of Pendle.

Asking for the best portions of the Lancashire river scenery, they are soon found, pertaining to streams not really its own—the Lune, approaching from Westmoreland by wayof Kirby Lonsdale, to which place it gives name; and the Ribble, descending from the high moorlands of Craven, first passing Ingleborough, then Settle, and Bolton Abbey. The only two important streams which actually rise within the confines of the county are the Wyre and the much-enduring Irwell. Lancashire is rich in home-bornminorstreams, a circumstance said to be recognised in the ancient British name of the district,—literally, according to Whitaker, the "well-watered,"[37]—and many of these, the affluents in particular, do, no doubt, lend themselves freely to the production of the picturesque, as in the case of the Darwen,[38]which glides almost without a sound beneath Hoghton Tower, joining the Ribble at Walton; and the Wenning, which, after bathing the feet of a thousand water-flags and forget-me-nots, strengthens the well-pleased Lune.Tributaries,—the little primitive streamlets which swell the affluents,—since they begin almost always among the mountains, are at all times, all over the world, wherever they run, in their youth pure and companionable. One joyous consideration there is open to us always, namely, that if we go to the beginning of things we are fairly well assured of purity; whatever may be the later history, the fountain is usually a synonym for the undefiled, as very pleasantly certified by the Erewell Springs; the beginnings of the unhappy Irwell itself are clear and limpid. Still, as regards claims to high distinction, the river scenery of Lancashire is that, as we have said, which pertains to its welcome guests, the Ribble and the Lune. When proud and wealthy Ribchester was in existence fifteen centuries ago, there is reason to believe that the Ribble, for many miles above Preston, was considerably broader and deeper than at present, or at all events that the tide came very much farther up than it does to-day. It did so as late as the time of Leland. The change, as regards the bed of the river, would thus be exactly the reverse of the helpful one to which modern Liverpool owes its harbour. England nowhere contains scenery of its kind more suave than that of the Ribble, from Ribchester upwards. In partsthe current is impetuous. Whether rapid or calm, it is the life of a peaceful dale, from which the hills retire in the gentlest way imaginable, presenting as they go, green, smooth faces fit for pasture; then, through the unexpected changefulness which is always so much more congenial to the fancy than repetition, even of the most excellent things, wooded banks and shaded recesses, followed by more green lawns and woods again, the last seeming to lean against the sky. When the outline drops sufficiently, in the distance, according to the point of observation, rises proud old Pendle, or Penyghent, or Wharnside. Near Mitton, where Yorkshire darts so curiously into Lancashire, the channel is somewhat shallow. Here, after a busy and romantic course of its own, the Hodder surrenders its waters, thus in good time to take part in the wonderful whirl, or "wheel," at Salesbury, a little lower down, an eddy of nearly twenty yards in depth, and locally known as "Sale-wheel." If a haven ever existed at the mouth of the Ribble, it has now disappeared. The sands at the bar continually shift with high tides, so that navigation is hazardous, and vessels of light draught can alone attempt the passage.

THE RIBBLE AT CLITHEROE

The very interesting portion of the scenery on the banks of the Lune, so far as concernsLancashire, lies just above Lancaster itself. Nearly all the elements of perfect landscape intermingle in this part of the valley. If either side of the stream possesses an advantage, perhaps it will belong to the road along the southern border, or that which proceeds by way of Melon and Caton to Hornby, distant from Lancaster about nine miles. The river winds so waywardly that in many parts it seems a string of lakelets. Masses of woodland creep down to the edge, and whichever way the eye is turned, green hills form pictures that leave nothing to be desired.

The Roman Road.—The portion of Roman Road referred to at the outset as crossing Blackstone Edge presents, like all similar remains in our island, one of the most conclusive as well as interesting memorials we possess of the thorough conquest of the country by the Cæsars. Labour and skill, such as were so plainly devoted to the construction of these wonderful roads, would be expended only by conquerors determined on full and permanent possession, such as the Romans maintained for three hundred and seventy years:—the Blackstone Edge road has in addition the special interest which attaches to features not found anywhere else, at all events nowhere else in England. The roads in question were designed not more tofacilitate the movements of the troops than for the easier transport of merchandise and provisions, a purpose which this one on Blackstone Edge seems to indicate perfectly. In the district we to-day call "Lancashire" there were several roads of the principal class, these serving to connect Warrington, Manchester, Ribchester, and Lancaster, from which last place there was continuation to Carlisle, and furnishing ready access to modern "Yorkshire," thus to Ilkley—the Olicana of Ptolemy—and York, the famous city which saw the death of Severus and the birth of Constantine. Manchester and Ribchester were the two most important strongholds in Western Brigantia, standing on the direct great western line from the south to the north. There were also many branch or vicinal roads leading to minor stations; those, for instance, represented to-day by Wigan, Colne, Burnley, Kirkham, Urswick, Walton-le-Dale, and Overborough. The lines of most of these roads have been accurately determined, the chief of them having been usually straight as an arrow, carried forward with undeviating precision, regardless of all obstacles. They were formed generally in Lancashire of huge boulder stones, probably got from neighbouring watercourses, or of fragments of rock embedded in gravel, and varied in width from four yardsto perhaps fourteen. The stones have in most places disappeared—made use of, no doubt, by after-comers for building purposes; as exemplified on Blackstone Edge itself, where the materials of which the wall near the road has been constructed point only too plainly to their source. Complete remains continuous for any considerable distance are found only upon elevated and unfrequented moorlands; where also the substance of the road appears to have been more rigid. The Blackstone Edge road, one of this kind, ascends the hill at a point about two miles beyond Littleborough—an ancient Roman station, here consisting of a strip of pavement exactly sixteen feet wide. It is composed of square blocks of millstone-grit, obtained upon the spot, laid with consummate care, and presenting, wherever the dense growth of whortleberry and other coarse herbage has been cleared away, a surface so fresh and even, that for seventeen centuries to have elapsed since its construction seems incredible. The unique feature of the road consists in the middle being formed of blocks considerably larger than those used at the sides, harder, and altogether of better quality, laid end to end, and having a continuous longitudinal groove, obviously the work of the chisel. This groove, or "trough," evidently extendeddown the entire roadway where steep, beginning at the top of the hill. Nothing like it, as said above, is found anywhere else in England, for the simple reason, it would appear, that no other British Roman road descends by so steep an incline. For it can hardly be doubted that Dr. March is correct in his conjecture, that it was intended to steady the passage of wagons or other vehicles when heavily laden; brakes adjusted to the wheels retarding their progress as indicated by marks still distinguishable. In some parts there are indications also of lateral trenches cut for the downflow of water, the road itself being kept dry by a slight convexity of surface. Over the crest of the hill the descent is easy, and here the paving seems to have been discontinued. The Robin Hood rocks close by present remarkably fine examples of typical millstone-grit. Rising to the height of fifty feet and fantastically "weathered," on the summits there are basin-like cavities, popularly attributed, like so many other things they had no hand in, to the Druids; but palpably referable to a far less mythical agency—the quiet action, during thousands of years, of the rain and the atmosphere.

The coast of Lancashire has already been described as presenting, from the Mersey upwards as far as the estuary of the Kent, an almost unbroken surface of level sand. In several parts, as near Birkdale, the western sea-breeze, pursuing its work for ages, has heaped up the sand atom by atom into hills that have a romantic and attractive beauty all their own. But of overhanging rocks and crags there are no examples, except when at Heysham, in Morecambe Bay, the millstone grit cropping out so as to form a little promontory, gives pleasing change. Almost immediately after entering this celebrated bay—although the vast expanse of sand remains unaltered—the mountains begin to draw nearer, and for the rest of the distance, up to the estuary of the Duddon, where Cumberland begins, the scenery close inshore is picturesque.The peculiar feature of the coast consists, perhaps, in its estuaries. No seaside county in England has its margin interrupted by so many as there are in Lancashire, every one of the rivers which leave it for the Irish Sea, excepting the insignificant Alt (six or eight miles north of Liverpool), widening immensely as the sands are approached. Embouchures more remarkable than those of the Ribble, the Wyre, the Lune, and the various minor streams which enter Morecambe Bay, are certainly not to be found, and there are none that through association awaken interest more curious.

When, accordingly, the visitor to any one of the Lancashire watering-places south of the Ribble desires scenery, he must be content with the spectacle of the sea itself, and the glimpses obtained in fair weather of the mountains of maritime North Wales. At Blackpool it is possible also, on clear evenings, to descry the lofty peaks of the Isle of Man, and occasionally even Cumberland Black Combe. At Fleetwood these quite compensate the dearth of inland beauty, and with every step northwards more glorious becomes the outlook. Not to mention the noble sea in front—an ocean when the tide is in—all the higher grounds of Cartmel and Furness are plainly in view. Upon these follow the fells of Coniston,and a little more to the east the dim blue cones which mark the near neighbourhood of the head of Windermere. Everything is renewed at Morecambe, and upon a scale still more commanding: the last reflection, as one turns homeward from that favoured spot, is that the supreme seaside scenery of old England pertains, after all, to the many-sided county of the cotton-mills.

The watering-places themselves are healthful, well-conducted, and ambitious. None of them had substantial existence seventy or eighty years ago. Southport, the most important and the most advanced in all that is honourable, is a daughter of the primitive neighbouring village of Churchtown,—filia pulchriorvery emphatically. Blackpool, in 1817, was only a rabbit-warren, the sunward slopes, like those of original Birkdale and Churchtown, a playground for quick-eyed lizards, their descendants, both gray and green, not yet extinct. Fleetwood has grown up within easy recollection; Morecambe is a creation almost of yesterday. Unexcelled, in summer, for the visitor in search of health, in its cool, firm, ample sands, Fleetwood aspires to become important also commercially. Morecambe, though destitute of a deep channel, and unable to offer the security of a natural harbour, is making vigorous efforts in the samedirection. Sir J. E. Smith, in his account of the evening-primrose inEnglish Botany,a.d.1805, described the Lancashire coast as a sort ofultima Thule:—to-day, at Southport, there is the finest Winter Garden out of London; and at a couple of miles distance, reached by tram-car, a Botanical Garden, including fernery and conservatories, that puts to shame many an ancient and wealthy city. A drawback to these South Lancashire watering-places, as mentioned before, is that the water, at low tide, recedes so far, and ordinarily is so reluctant to return. But is the tide everything? When out, there is the serene pleasure of silent stroll upon the vast expanse, the inspiring solitude beyond which there is only Sea. On these smooth and limitless sands there is plenty alike for repair of body, the imagination, and the solace of the naturalist. Shells may be gathered in plenty, and in different parts, of very various kinds: solens, long and straight; mactras, dentalias, that resemble miniature elephant's tusks; the fragile pholas; tellinas, that seem scattered rose-petals; and towards Fleetwood pearly trochuses, dappled with lilac. A more delicious seaside walk for those who love the sound of the rolling surge, the sense of infinite tranquillity, total seclusion from every circumstance of town and city life, and the sight of oldocean's playthings, may be sought the world over, and not found more readily than by pursuing the five or six miles between Fleetwood and Blackpool, one's face turned all the while to the poetic west. Wanting rocks, upon these quiet sands there are no native seaweeds, though fragments lie about, torn from beaches far away, and stranded.

Very distinct interest attaches to the physical history of this part of the coast, the elevation of which was at some not very remotely distant period, almost without doubt, much higher. Mr. Joseph Dickinson, the well-known geologist, and Government Inspector of Mines, believes that in certain portions it has subsided through the solution of rock-salt in the strata below—the circumstance to which the formation of most, if not all, of the natural Cheshire meres is attributed. The existence of the rock-salt has been clearly proved by the sinking of a shaft and subsequent borings, near Preesal, a village about a mile and a half south-east of Fleetwood. The thickness of the deposit is similar to that met with in the salt districts of Cheshire, at Port Clarence, near the mouth of the Tees, and at Stoke Prior, Worcestershire. The subsidence of the shore at Blackpool is, on the northern side, very palpable. Here the path to Rossall is pursued for somedistance along the brow of an earthy, crumbling cliff, not very far from which, exposed at the lowest of low tides, there is a little insulated mound, upon which, according to well-sustained tradition, there once stood a cottage long since overwhelmed by envious Neptune.

The great rampart of sand-hills which stretches for so many leagues, and which has been calculated to have an area of twenty-two square miles, is thought by another distinguished geologist—Mr. T. Melland Reade—to have taken certainly not less than 2500 years to form, probably a much longer time. Some of the mounds, however, are manifestly quite recent, interstratifications of cinders and matter thrown up from wrecks, being found near the base. A strong westerly wind brings up the sand vehemently, and very curious then becomes the spectacle of its travel, which resembles the flow of thin waves of translucent smoke. The wind alternately heaps up the sand and disperses it, except where a firm hold has been obtained by the maram,[39]or star-grass, the roots of which bind and hold all together. Decoration of the smooth surface of the sloping sand-hills is supplied by the wind-whirling of the slender stalks half way round, and sometimes quite so, when there is room for free play: circles and semicircles are then grooved, smaller ones often inside, as perfect as if drawn with compasses. Another curious result of the steady blowing of the sea-breeze is that on the shore there are innumerable little cones of sand, originating in shells, or fragments of shells, which arrest the drifting particles, and are, in truth, rudiments of sand-hills, such as form the barrier a little further in.

Further north the shore has little to offer in the way of curiosities, nor is there any agreeable bathing-ground; not even at Grange. Never mind. The further we advance towards the county frontier, the more wonderful become the sands, these spreading, at low water, like a Sahara, with the difference, that the breath of ocean, nowhere in the world sweeter, blows across them for ever and ever. On a moonlight night, when the tide is at the full, Morecambe Bay, surveyed from Kent's Bank, presents an aspect of inexpressible fascination, the rippled lustre being such as a shallow sea, gently moving, alone can yield.

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