SUMMER RAMBLES ROUND MANCHESTER.*
THOMAS DE QIIINCEY, looking back on his childhood, declared that if, "after the manner of the Emperor Aurelius, he should return thanks to Providence" for all the blessings of his early situation, he would single out as worthy of special considera- tion, the circumstance that he lived in rustic solitude, and that this solitude was in England. The brilliant essayist was born in 1785, and the "rustic solitude" in which he spent his boy- hood lies now almost in the heart of modern Manchester. The lifetime of a generation has passed away since De Quincey died, and during that period, the city which Mr. Gladstone once called the "centre of the modern life of the country," has extended its boundaries far beyond Greenheys, where the author of The Confessions of an English Opium Eater passed his imaginative childhood.
Within easy reach of Manchester there are many beautiful and romantic spots, and when once those who are in search of the picturesque have escaped from the region of warehouse and mill, it is not long before they find themselves in wooded valleys or on breezy uplands, with here and there a scattered hamlet, a lonely farmhouse, or an ancient hall rich in historical association. Mr. Rimmer is well known as joint-author with the late Dean Howson of a pleasant book on Chester As It Was, and other works, in which his love of a country life as well as his knowledge of the highways and byways of rural England are vividly reflected. In his Summer Rambles Round Manchester, Mr. Rimmer has explored many nooks and corners of Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire. The country round Marple, a place within a few miles of Manchester, is extremely beautiful and romantic, and the view from the high ridges known as the Coombs Rocks is magnificent. John Bradshaw, who presided at the trial of Charles I., lived at Marple Hall; it is a quaint, old- fashioned building, and there is some fine stained glass in the windows. The record of the baptism of the distinguished lawyer may be seen at the neighbouring town of Stockport, and runs as follows : "Sixteen hundred and two, John, the sonne of Henry Bradshaw of Marple, baptised the tenth December ;" in the margin another hand has written the ominous word, "traitor." President Bradshaw was a be- liever in popular education, for he bequeathed the sum of seven hundred pounds towards the maintenance of a free school in his native village.
The history of the half-timbered architecture of England still remains to be written, and the old black-and-white houses of Lancashire and Cheshire are only now beginning to attract the attention they deserve. The ancient halls of Speake, Worsley, Moreton, and Bramhall are all in the immediate neighbourhood of Manchester, and they are among the best examples in the kingdom of sixteenth-century domestic archi- tecture. Royton Hall, near Oldham, recalls the connection of the Byron family with that district ; they were lords of the manor as far back as the early part of the fourteenth century. John Byron fought at Bosworth Field, and so distinguished himself for valour that he was knighted after the battle
• Summer Rambles Round Manchester. By Alfred Manner. Illustrated. Manchester and London : John Heywood. by Henry VII. The first Lord Byron was a vigorous supporter of Charles I., and led the King's horse at the battle of Newbury. This gallant Cavalier is said to have died "oppressed with the sad thoughts of the murther of his sacred Majesty." Mr. Rimmer describes Royton Hall as one of the best examples of an unaltered black- and-white house in the realm. "Yet it is not kept at all as a show-house, but is in daily use, with its wonderful carvings, and broad fireplaces with fire-dogs, and all its antiquities simply adapted without change to suit the uses of modern refinement." Lord Byron visited this cradle of his race before setting forth on his foreign travels ; and the forlorn aspect of the house is said to have suggested the familiar lines in the first canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Amongst other places of interest described by Mr. Rimmer in these pages, are Knuts- ford and Mobberley, Addlington and Eccles, Wilmslow and Capesthorne, and such beautiful Cheshire meres as those of Rostherne and Tatton.
Mr. Rimmer is an enthusiastic pedestrian, and a year or two ago he walked from London to Chester along the old coaching road. He declares that if an Englishman of the beginning of the century could see the highways as they now are, be would probably rush to the conclusion that his country had been overrun by foreign foes and depopulated. The lanes of England are much more deserted now than they were when Isaak Walton wrote his Angler, or Shakespeare his Henry IV. Fifty years ago, as Dr. Wells has just shown in his admirable book on Recent Economic Changes, one-third of the working classes of the -United Kingdom were agricultural labourers ; at present less than one-eighth of the number are so employed ; there is, in fact, an exodus from the soil throughout the whole of Great Britain, and in spite of better wages and improved cottages, the supply of farm-labour is rapidly diminishing. We share the surprise which Mr. Rimmer expresses that English people of culture and leisure are content to re- main in ignorance of the beauties of their own country, though we are certainly not prepared to endorse the state- ment by which it is followed : "I am sure that if Gaze or Cook, or any of the tourists' guides, were to conduct an English expedition into any county, they would find much more to interest them than in all the trips to Paris, Italy, or Egypt." We do not imagine that Mr. Rimmer can seriously mean what he says, for interesting and neglected though many parts of rural England undoubtedly are, Italy and Egypt—to leave Paris for the moment out of the question—abound in historical memorials and far-reaching associations, as well as possess in the one case a loveliness, and in the other an impressive grandeur, of natural scenery to which our (Alm country can lay no claim. Moreover, no man at all likely to care for the quiet charms and mild delights of a tour through the sequestered districts of England, would appreciate in such a connection the rather demonstrative attentions of Messrs. Gaze and Cook.
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