The farms in this neighborhood are mostly small, the average being seventy acres, and some are still smaller, though when one gets down to ten, one is tempted to call them gardens. Grazing and dairy-work are the chief industries. Farther inland, beyond the manufacturing town of Stockport, is a house of the Leghs, an immense building, more imposing than lovely in its exterior, but one of the most individual and pleasant houses in its interior as well as in its human associations. It has been altered at various times, and bears traces, like a corrected map, of each new phase of architecture for several hundred years. The four sides form a huge quadrangle, entered by foreign-looking gateways, and the rooms all open into a wide passage that runs round three sides of the building, and is a museum in itself. Old and new are just enough blended to produce comfort, and the stately, old-English look of the drawing-room, with its dark panelling and tapestry, is a reproach to the pink-and-white, plaster-of-Paris style of too many remodelled houses. Outside there is a garden distinguished by a heavy old wall overrun with creepers, dividing two levels and making a striking object in the landscape; and beyond that, where the country grows bleak and begins to remind one of moors, there are the last survivors of a unique breed of wild cattle, which, like the mastiffs at the house, bear the name of the place. The name of another Cheshire house, formerly belonging to the Stanleys, and now to Mr. Gladstone, is probably familiar to American readers--Hawarden Castle. The present house must trust entirely to associations for its interest, having been built in 1809, before much taste was applied to restore old places, but the old castle in the park dates from the middle of the thirteenth century. The park is not unlike that of Arundel, but the views from the ruin are finer and more varied. The counties of Caernarvon, Denbigh, Flint, Cheshire and Lancashire are spread out around it, and the ruin itself is beautiful and extensive.