Leo H. Grindon

“ On the contrary side are the Glossop moors; within the valley, the thriving town after which they are named; and the remarkably beautiful cone, covered with trees, called Shire Hill, an isolated mound that looks as if it might have been tossed there in pastime by the Titans. Glossop, as every one knows, has a station of its own, which should be remembered not only for the sake of Shire Hill, but for Lees–hall Dingle, Ramsley Clough, Chunal Clough, Melandra Castle, and Whiteley Nab, the climb to the brows of which last is no doubt somewhat arduous, but well repaid. ”

“ The Ashley meadows, after all, like all other places abounding in wild–flowers, are the miniature of a romantic scene. For in landscape, as in history, wherever we go, we have only the same ideas on a larger or smaller scale, the great repeated in the little, the little repeated in the great. Here is the mighty forest, clinging to the mountain–side; here the extended plain, watered by its winding river; here the terrible chasm and deep ravine,—all, however, in that delicate and reduced measure which, while it gives us the type of nature universally, enables us to see the whole at one view. ”

“ The commencement of the last–named is exceedingly delightful, the water flowing on the left, woods and pastures upon the right, in the evening sweetly enlivened by the cuckoo. Nothing in the year’s round of pleasure is more heart–soothing than an hour in these quiet fields immediately after sunset, while it is too light for the stars, but the planets peer forth in their beautiful lustre, and the darkness quickens our ears to the slightest sound. The nightingale alone is wanting to complete the effect, but we have no nightingales near Manchester. ”

“ There is not only the interest of what is witnessed on the instant, but the pleasant flow of remembrance of the various localities they lead to. As, looking at the sea, we are led in thought all round the world, so, looking at the winged train and its pearly clouds, we visit over again a thousand delicious spots, photographed on the mind, and endeared by association. Here, for instance, in the valley of the Irwell, we go on to the lakes of Cumberland, and its ancient and purple mountains, and anon to the flowered and roofless aisles of sacred Furness. ”

“ So complete, in truth, is the look–out in all directions from the summit, that to walk from end to end, is like pacing a watch–tower. The plains of Cheshire and South Lancashire lie to the west; Lyme, Marple, and Disley are seen to the south; and eastwards there are inviting bits of Derbyshire, here separated from Cheshire by the Etherowe, the opposite side charmingly clothed by the Ernocroft woods, while in the distance rise the vast moorlands of Charlesworth and Glossop. ”

“ Raphael vision, there is bijouterie;—the chaste and tender arabesque given to rock and aged bough by green moss and grey and golden lichen, gems of nature that when the trees are leafy are apt to be skipped, but when all else is cold and bare, like faithful affection, “make glad the solitary place.”
Between Alderley and Chelford, pushing still further along the Congleton road, we find yet another of the Cheshire meres, this one, in itself in the time of water–lilies, worth all the travel. ”

“ During the five or six years he devoted to the botany of Bredbury, Reddish, and the banks of the Tame generally, he added no fewer than twenty–five species to the Manchester Flora, many of them belonging to the difficult genera Rubus and Carex. His walks were not often solitary. What a broiling day was that on which we first gathered in the Reddish valley the great white cardamine!—what a sweet forenoon that vernal one when we stood contemplating the thousand anemones! Nature seems to delight again in upsetting everything human! One cannot even bestow a name, but she tries to undermine it. ”

“ Rising high upon every side, the encircling hills have a wild and rugged grandeur that contrasts most agreeably with the smooth and tender beauty of the environments of the meres of Cheshire,—from their summits, upon a sunny afternoon, the effects are quite as pleasing as the average of those gathered above Ullswater. An obelisk upon the highest point marks Whiteley Dean, the view from which is wonderfully fine, reaching southwards to Manchester; while beyond Littleborough, amid great piles of hills, stands Brown Wardle, famous, like Bucton Castle, as an ancient signal station. ”

“ They saturate every slope and recess that is in any degree shady, and diffuse themselves even upon the otherwise bare hill–sides, not in a thin and niggardly way, but with the semblance of an azure mist. In many parts, at the edges of the little groves, where the ground is steep, they seem to be flowing in streams into the meadows beneath, and where there are breaks among the nearer trees they actually illuminate the opening. When the spectacle of the bluebells comes to an end, the walk continues along a beautiful green arcade, straight, level, and uninterrupted into the village. ”

“ All the woods and lanes are full, every bank and sheltered slope is yellow with them, everywhere primroses, primroses, primroses, great handfuls, and bunches, a score every time we pluck, till wonder is exhausted and out of breath, and primroses and nature seem to mean the same thing. Such was the spectacle on the 8th of May—when this was written—the glow of bloom, which lasts in the whole perhaps for a month, being then at its height. ”

“ We call the flower nemorosa, conclude that all is settled, and straightway, as in that sweet and still forenoon in the Reddish valley (1840) , she flings it by handfuls over the sward, and leaves the grove as she then left the Arden woods, without a blossom and without a leaf. Similar curious departure from the accustomed habitat of the wood–anemone has since been observed at Cheadle and at Alderley.
No slight pleasure is it in connection with botany that plants and events thus link themselves together, recalling whole days of tranquil happiness spent with valued friends in the green fields. ”

“ Days gone by are made brighter to recollection; the present are filled with the same pleasures; for it is the peculiar property of the happiness induced by the love of nature, that if we are trained in youth to seek and find it, when we are old it will not depart from us;—even the future is made cheerful and inviting by the certainty that, leaving us our eyes, nature for her part will never grow old nor look shabby, not even in winter, which is decorated in its own way, but will always, like the Graces, be young and lovely. ”

“ The beauty of Prestwich Dells has long rendered the latter place a favourite resort. Easy, moreover, of access, and with the capital recommendation of a harbour of refuge close at hand, in the shape of the commodious and well provided Church Inn, no wonder that few except naturalists have cared to push on farther. It needs something more than invites people to a place like Prestwich Dells to take us to one still prettier, but where, as far as concerns supplies for the inner man, we are like sailors on the open sea—commanding only what we carry thither. ”

“ The man, or the woman either, upon whom we look back as having supplied the aurora of our mental day, when we think it out carefully, is he or she who taught us not so much how to write and cast accounts, as how to see and to feel—to see the wild–flowers, and the snow–crystals, and the darting dragon–flies in their beautiful blue corselets,—to listen to the hum of the busy bees and the songs of the birds, and to feel that “he prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small.” Evans was taught, when no more than ten years old, how to contemplate the immortal beauty of nature. ”

“ The view from Rushton churchyard is one for painters. The valley, receding southwards, encloses the smooth expanse of Rudyard, which, though no more than a reservoir, has all the winning ways of a Coniston or a Windermere, seeking to elude one’s view by reliance on friendly trees. In the north and east the hills rise terrace–wise, range beyond range, each remoter one of different hue, Shutlings Low, that beautiful mamelon, towering above all, and more effectively than as contemplated from any other point we know of. ”

“ All the charms of a leafy and flowery solitude are there assembled. Not those of the old, old forest, perfect in forest–ways, these we must not look for; but of the gentle ravine, wherein we cannot be lost, and which often pleases so much the more because less grand, since in all things while it is the great and sublime that we admire, that which we love is the little and measurable. ”

“ Superadd to this the habit of connecting our own feelings and emotions with the forms of nature, and, however wanting in attractions to the mere adulator of “fine scenery,” every little flower, every bend of the branches, and sweet concurrent play of light and shade, every pendent shadow in the stream, becomes animated with a meaning and a power of satisfying such as none but those who accustom themselves to look for it here, can find in the most favoured and spacious landscape. ”

“ Two periods there are when Beeston calls upon us to remember, with a sigh, that there are forms of beauty in the world in which we may not hope to revel many times, perhaps, in their perfection, not more than once or twice. One is mid–winter, when in the great hush of the virgin snow the landscape becomes a world carved in spotless marble; the other, when the corn is waiting the sickle, and the vast plain is steeped in sunset such as August only witnesses. ”

“ Once upon the summit, the reward is ample, alike in the magnificent scenery, rich with distant purple shadows, and in the inspiring atmosphere. If in the landscape there is nothing gay and festal, no slight thing is it to stand in the presence–chamber of these antique solitudes, reading the silent history of centuries of winter ravage, so terrible that no wonder the very rocks have thrust up their grey heads to ask the meaning of it. ”

“ Up on that wonderful crag to–day, where the scene is so still, and the “heavens’ breath smells wooingly,” we feel far more profoundly than in streets and cities, how grateful is the dominion of peace compared with the turbulence of war. For, looking over the westward parapet, at our feet is Vale Royal, a warm and smiling plain that stretches, literally, to the rim of the landscape. Randulph looked upon those far away Welsh mountains, the Frodsham hills, the estuaries of the Dee and the Mersey, all so beautiful as ingredients in the magnificent prospect. ”

“ Half a loaf enjoyed with one’s friends, far away in the sweet silence of nature, and a happy walk home afterwards, with loving faces right and left, is better, ten times over, than a luxurious meal got by coming away prematurely. All this part of the country is remarkable also for the luxuriance of its culinary vegetables. The rhubarb is some of the finest grown near Manchester, and it is quite a treat to look at the beans. ”

“ At the end of May these woods are suffused with the brightest blue [107] in every direction,—the bloom of the innumerable wild hyacinth, which clusters here in great banks and masses, so close that the green of the foliage is concealed. The ground being a slope, and viewed from below, the effect is most singular and striking. Shakspeare speaks of “making the green one red;” here we have literally the green made blue. In the same woods grows the forget–me–not, in abundance only exceeded in the Morley meadows. ”

“ Branches, gathered when in full bloom, and laid to dry in the shade, retain their freshness of form and pretty colour for many months, and serve very pleasingly to mix with honesty and everlastings for the winter decoration of the chimneypiece. Intermixed with the heather grows the Erica tetralix, or blushing–maiden heath, an exceedingly elegant species, with light pink flowers, collected in dense clusters at the very summit of the stalk. The immediate borders of the moss, and the lanes approaching it, are prolific in curious plants. To go no further, indeed, quite repays a visit. ”

“ Very beautiful in plumage, usually a sweet light blue or dark blue and yellow, common in woods and gardens, and building its nest in holes of trees, in letter–boxes, old pumps, and anything else that has a cavity in it and it takes a fancy to. In late autumn and winter there is no prettier sight than to watch one of these elegant little creatures pecking away at one of the two or three apples that a kind–hearted man always leaves for it. ”