IN PRAISE OF THE PROVINCIAL SUBURB.
[TO TIM EDITOR Or THi: "SrECTATOR."] SIR,—Surely the writer of the above in your last issue writes from Rochdale, near Manchester, for one of the most delightful holidays I ever spent was there, and his description tallies closely. In half-an-bour from my friend's house on foot I was on the moors. I specially remember one showery, sunny, breezy day in August. The wet and the sun and the wind on the withered stems of the moorland grasses maim- factured ozone at a rate that I never felt paralleled at the seaside or anywhere else, and the view over the country was one of the finest I bare ever seen, and the smoke of each eight or ten (or more) little towns visible added mystery, and the great chimney-stalks gave dignity, like Potupey's Pillar or Cleopatra's Needle, or as Tennant's and ToWnsend's four- hundred-and-sixty-foot "stalks" give dignity to Glasgow. I live in the most vulgar of London subarbs —the rateable value is only 23 16s. 4d. per head—but even there we have Cheshunt with its woods, and Walthamstow, and Epping, and Nazing, delightful Nazing, all within walking distance, and I know where in them to find at least one of the most beautiful and rarest of wild flowers ; but I will not tell.—I tun, Sir, &c.,
LONDON SUBURBANITE.
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