The path through the fields referred to as the best for approaching the clough from Manchester, turns up when near Blackley through a little wood, and thence into meadows, which very agreeably abridge the distance homeward, especially if we go at that best season of all for visiting Boggart-hole, when the newly-cut hay is scenting the air, and tiny hands are trying to help the great rakes and forks of the farmer's troop, and the beautiful crescent of the young moon hangs golden in the sky, and the bright reluctant twilight almost lasts to another day, lingering like a lover at the hand of his betrothed. The stream, it may be added, that winds its way along the bottom of the clough is a tributary of the Irk,--that unfortunate little river which, rising in or near tree-crested Tandle Hill, north-east of Middleton, seems to grow ashamed of its blackened waters as it creeps into the town by Collyhurst, and which, as it hastens to its oblivious refuge in the Irwell, is known to every one in its last leap,--the hideous fall underneath the Victoria Station, on the side next Millgate. "Manchester Rivers, their Sources and Courses," would form a capital subject for a book. The Mersey, the Irwell, the Irk, the Tame, the Etherowe, the Bollin, the Goyt, and several others, are full of interesting associations; and if they be not of the clearest water in their lower portions, remember the work they do. A limpid stream among the hills is lovely and poetical; but the most pleasing of all rivers are those of which the banks are occupied by an industrious and intelligent population; and we must not cry out too vehemently about the soiling and spoiling, unless it be easily avoidable and a piece of downright and wilful damage, when their first and highest value is that of facilitating industrial efforts, and helping on the prosperity of a town and nation. The truly poetical man is never a sentimentalist; and though he may pity the destruction of beautiful objects, he is content to see them converted into sources of general welfare, and to look elsewhere for new materials of enjoyment.