The Town of Heywood and its Neighbourhood.
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy.
Wordsworth
One Saturday afternoon, about midsummer, I was invited by a friend to spend a day at his house, in the green outskirts of Heywood. The town has a monotonous, cotton-spinning look; yet, it is surrounded by a pleasant country, and has some scenery of a picturesque description in its immediate neighbourhood. Several weeks previous to this invitation had been spent by me wholly amongst the bustle of our "cotton metropolis," and, during that time, I had often thought how sweetly summer was murmuring with its "leafy lips" beyond the town, almost unseen by me except when I took a ride to a certain suburb, and wandered an hour or two in a scene upon which the season seemed to smile almost in vain, and where the unsatisfactory verdure was broken up by daub-holes and rows of half-built cottages, and the air mixed with the aroma of brick-kilns and melting lime. Sometimes, too, I stole down into the market-place, on a Saturday morning, to smell at the flowers and buy a "posy" for my button-hole. It reminded me of the time when I used to forage about my native hedges, for bunches of the wild rose and branches of white-blossomed thorn. But now, as the rosy time of the year grew towards its height, I began to hanker after those moors and noiseless glens of Lancashire, where, even yet, nature seems to have it all her own way. I longed for the quiet valleys and their murmuring waters; the rustling trees; and the cloudless summer sky seen through fringed openings in the wildwood's leafy screen. Somebody says, that "we always find better men in action than in repose;" and though there are contemplative spirits who instinctively shun the din of towns, and, turning to the tranquil seclusions of nature, read a lofty significance in its infinite forms and moods of beauty, yet, the grand battle of life lies where men are clustered. Great men can live greatly anywhere; but ordinary people must be content to snatch at any means likely to improve or relieve their lot; and it will do any care-worn citizen good to "consider the lilies of the field" a little, now and then. Country folk come to town to relieve the monotony of their lives; and town's folk go to the country for refreshment and repose. To each the change may be beneficial—at least I thought so; and, as light as leaf upon tree, I hailed my journey; for none of Robin Hood's men ever went to the greenwood with more pleasure than I.
It was nearly three when we passed the Old Church, on our way to the station. The college lads, in their quaint blue suits, and flat woollen caps, were frolicking about the quadrangle of that ancient edifice which helps to keep alive the name of Humphrey Chetham. The omnibuses were rushing by, with full loads. I said "full loads;" but there are omnibuses running out of Manchester, which I never knew to be so full that they would not "just hold another." But on we went, talking about anything which was uppermost; and in a few minutes we were seated in the train, and darting over the tops of that miserable jungle known by the name of "Angel Meadow." The railway runs close by a little hopeful oasis in this moral desert—the "Ragged School," at the end of Ashley Lane; and, from the carriage window, we could see "Charter-street"—that notable den of Manchester outcasts. These two significant neighbours—"Charter-street" and the "Ragged School"—comment eloquently upon one another. Here, all is mental and moral malaria, and the revelry of the place sounds like a forlorn cry for help. There the same human elements are trained, by a little timely culture, towards honour and usefulness. Any man, with an unsophisticated mind, looking upon the two, might be allowed to say, "Why not do enough of this to cure that?" On the brow of Red Bank, the tower and gables of St. Chad's Church overlook the swarming hive which fills the valley of the Irk; and which presents a fine field for those who desire to spread the gospel among the heathen, and enfranchise the slave. And if it be true that the poor are "the riches of the church of Christ," there is an inheritance there worth looking after by any church which claims the title. Up rose a grove of tall chimneys from the streets lining the banks of the little slutchy stream, that creeps through the hollow, slow and slab, towards its confluence with the Irwell; where it washes the base of the rocks upon which, five hundred years ago, stood the "Baron's Hall," or manor house of the old lords of Manchester. On the same spot, soon after the erection of the Collegiate Church, that quaint quadrangular edifice was built as a residence for the warden and fellows, which afterwards became, in the turns of fortune, a mansion of the Earls of Derby, a garrison, a prison, an hospital, and a college. By the time we had taken a few reluctant sniffs of the curiously-compounded air of that melancholy waste, we began to ascend the incline, and lost sight of the Irk, with its factories, dyehouses, brick-fields, tan-pits, and gas-works; and the unhappy mixture of stench, squalor, smoke, hard work, ignorance, and sin, on its borders; and, after a short stoppage at Miles Platting, our eyes were wandering over the summer fields. Nature was drest in her richest robes; and every green thing looked lush with beauty. As we looked abroad on this wide array, it was delightful to see the sprouting honeysuckle, and the peace-breathing palm; and there, too, creeping about the hedges, was that old acquaintance of life's morning, the bramble, which will be putting forth "its small white rose" about the time that country folk begin to house their hay; and when village lads in Lancashire are gathering gear to decorate their rush-hearts with. Clustering primroses were there; and the celandine, with burnished leaves of gold; and wild violets, prancked with gay colours; with troops of other wild flowers, some full in view, others dimly seen as we swept on;—a world of floral beauty thickly embroidering the green mantle of the landscape, though beyond the range of discriminating vision; but clear to the eye of imagination, which assured us that these stars of the earth were making their old haunts beautiful again. The buttercup was in the fields, holding its pale gold chalice up to catch the evening dews. Here and there grew a tuft of slender-stemmed lilies, graceful and chaste; and then a sweep of blue-bells, tinging the hedge-sides and the moist slopes under the trees with their azure hue—as blue as a patch of sky—and swinging the incense from their pendent petals into the sauntering summer wind. Then came the tall foxglove, and bushes of the golden-blossomed furze, covered with gleaming spears, upon the banks of the line. Oh, refulgent summer! Time of blossoms and honeydews; and flowers of every colour! Thy lush fields are rich with clover and herb-grass! Thy daylights glow with glory; thy twilights are full of dreamy sights and sounds; and the sweetest odours of the year perfume the air, when