The long and beautifully wooded glen extending from Romiley to Marple is Chadkirk Vale, and the stream, not as some suppose, the Mersey, but the above-named Goyt. That it is marked as the Mersey in Speed, and again in the Ordnance map, no doubt is true. White also calls it the Mersey,--all who do this considering that the Mersey begins with the confluence of the Etherowe with the Goyt, about half-a-mile below Compstall bridge. But the real point of commencing is where the Goyt is joined by the Tame, that is to say, a little below Portwood bridge, in the north-western suburb of Stockport. The ramble up the vale is in every portion delightful, closing in a deep ravine or clough called Marple Dell, the upper extremity spanned by the three great arches of "Marple Aqueduct." The height of this celebrated work from the bed of the river is nearly a hundred feet; yet, to-day it is overtopped by the Midland viaduct, from which, as we glide past, the dell is seen half as much again below. Aqueducts are common enough, and so are viaducts, but it is seldom that we have the opportunity of contemplating at the same moment a twofold series of arches of equal grandeur, the viaduct consisting of no fewer than thirteen. Everywhere right and left of the Goyt, hereabouts, there are unforbidden and usually quiet and shady paths, some of them possibly entered more readily by the ancient foot-roads from near Bredbury and Hazel-grove, but all converging towards Marple village. Three or four of the most interesting little cloughs or dells within the same distance of Manchester are here associated, the prettiest, perhaps, being those called Dan-bank wood and Marple wood. Lovely strolls are at command also by aiming for Otterspool Bridge, these chiefly through meadows and by the rapid river, which, when not perplexed by shifting islands and peninsulas, decked with willow-herb and butter-bur, glides with a stilly smoothness quite remarkable for one so shallow. At Otterspool the rush of water is sometimes very strong. In the olden times it was similar at Stockport, though now subdued by the constant casting in of dirt, if there be truth, that is, in the record that in 1745, when the Stockport bridge was blown up in order to check the retreat of the Pretender, it ran beneath the arches "with great fury." Upon the western banks of the Goyt, not very far from Chadkirk, perched upon a romantic natural terrace, there is another very interesting and celebrated Elizabethan mansion, Marple Old Hall, the more pleasing since, though subjected in 1659 to rather considerable alterations, it appears to retain all the best of the original characteristics. It is now draped also, in part, with luxuriant ivy. The historical incidents connected with Marple Hall are well known,--those, at least, which gather round the name of Cromwell. To our own mind there is something better yet,--the spectacle in the earliest months of spring of the innumerable snowdrops, these