OLDFIELD, DUNHAM. Drawn and Etched by Thos. Letherbrow 64 BARLOW HALL. Drawn and Etched by Thos. Letherbrow 82 LYME HALL. Drawn and Etched by Thos. Letherbrow 124 HALEWOOD CHURCH. Drawn by W. Hull, Etched by Thos. Letherbrow 168 HALE HUT. Drawn and Etched by Thos. Letherbrow 254 [Illustration] Country Rambles. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The meanest floweret of the vale, The simplest note that swells the gale, The common sun, the air, the skies, To him are opening Paradise. Wide as may be the circle covered by a great town, we come to the country at last. Let the bricks and mortar stride far as they will over the greensward, there are always sanctuaries beyond--sweet spots where we may yet listen to the singing of the birds, and pluck the early primrose and anemone. We need but take our survey from a sufficiently high point, to see that the vastest mass of houses ever heaped together by man is still only an encampment in the fields. Like the waves of the sea upon the shores of the islands, the surge of the yellow corn is still close upon our borders. We need but turn our faces fondly towards rural things and rural sights, and we shall find them. Manchester itself, grim, flat, smoky Manchester, with its gigantic suburb ever on the roll further into the plain, and scouts from its great army of masons posted on every spot available for hostile purposes,--Manchester itself denies to no one of its five hundred thousand, who is blessed with health and strength, the amenities and genial influences of the country. True, we have no grand scenery; no Clyde, no Ben Lomond, no Leigh Woods, no St. Vincent's Rocks, no Clevedon, no Durdham Down; our rivers are anything but limpid; our mountains are far away, upon the horizon; our lakes owe less to nature than to art; as for waterfalls, we have none but in our portfolios. Still is our town bosomed in beauty. Though the magnificent and the romantic be wanting, we have meadows trimmed with wild-flowers, the scent of the new-mown hay and the purple clover; we have many a sweet sylvan walk where we may hear The burnie wimplin' doon the glen,