GAWSWORTH OLD HALL.
On the right the scenery is of a more pastoral character. Lawns and meadows stretch away, and the eye ranges over the broad fertile plain of Cheshire—over quaint sequestered nooks and quiet homesteads, and old-fashioned villages, with here and there a grey church tower rising in their midst; over well-tilled fields and daisied pastures, and league upon league of cultivated greenness, where the thick hedgerows cross and recross each other in a network of verdant beauty. The crumbling ruins of Beeston Castle crowning the edge of a bold outlier of rock, may be dimly discerned, with Peckforton rising close by its side, and beyond, where a shadowy form reaches like a cloud across the horizon, we can trace the broken outline of the Welsh hills, with Moel Fammau towering above them all.
Presently the battlemented towers of Gawsworth Church are seen peering above the umbrage; then we come to a cross road, and, turning sharply to the left, continue along a green old bosky lane, and past the village school, close to which is a weather-worn memorial of bygone days—the old wayside cross standing beneath a clump of trees, erected, as old writers tell us, to “guide and guard the way to church,” and the sight of which, with the surroundings, calls to remembrance Hood’s lines on the symbol of the Christian’s faith:—
Say, was it to my spirit’s gain or loss,
One bright and balmy morning, as I went
From Liège’s lonely environs to Ghent,
If hard by the way-side I found a cross,