Hall-o'-th'-Hill was the dwelling place of the Asshawes, who were also lords of Flixton; one of them--Sir Ralph--Mr. M'Dougall has made the subject of the most pathetic of his legendary ballads; while another--Ann--was the wife of that Richard Pilkington who built Rivington Church, and the mother of James, the Puritan prelate, who founded the school. Adlington lies below us; and beyond the view takes in the great plain that stretches away to the Fylde, dotted over with collieries and mills and loomsheds, that bear testimony to the active industry of the people. Westwards, crowning a rocky ridge that rises abruptly from the banks of the Douglas, we see the village of Blackrod, with the battlemented tower of its ancient church rising above the lowly habitations that gather round. The remains of a Roman causeway, it is said, may still be traced along the summit, and learned antiquaries confidently assure us that here the subjects of the Cæsars had a military station--the _Coccium_ of Antoninus, and the _Rigodunum_ of Ptolemy; though other antiquaries, equally learned, with no less confidence and much more show of reason, tell us that the old Roman station was not at Blackrod, but further north, at Walton, on the Ribble. Whether the masters of the ancient world bore the imperial eagles along those heights, and awoke the echoes with the cry of "Ave! Cæsar Imperator!" we will not stay to inquire, but leave others to determine. The snow lies like a great white carpet upon the scene, spreading over moss and moor, and field and fell--a wide wilderness of unsullied purity, broken only where the lanes wander and the hedgerows cross and recross each other, or where a wooded bluff, a solitary homestead, or some manufacturing hamlet stands out in bold relief. Occasionally a faint gleam steals through a rift in the shifting clouds, lighting up and beautifying some distant spot upon the landscape; but the brightness is only transient, and the scene soon resumes its cold grey monotonous gloom. Presently the road bends to the right, and in a few minutes we reach the entrance to a long straight avenue of beeches that leads down to where the home of the Willoughbys once stood. Tall patrician trees they are that border the way, and meet almost in a canopy overhead, very patriarchs of their kind, that have withstood the winter's blast and summer's sunshine, and budded and blossomed and shed their leaves through long ages; but what time has failed to do sulphurous fumes from a neighbouring tile kiln have effectually accomplished, and now they present only the scathed and blighted semblance of their former glory. At the end of the gravelled walk may still be seen the two tall gate-posts that once flanked the entrance to the garden court; they are massive in character, rusticated at the joints, and surmounted by ball ornaments of ponderous size. To the right is a long range of outbuilding, with a tablet high up on the gable bearing the inscription W H H