If any reader wishes to obtain a brief respite from the busy life of the “unclean city,” to get away from the noise of looms and spindles, the smoke of factories and the smell of dyes, and to find within easy distance of the great manufacturing metropolis a place of perfect quiet and repose where he may feel that for all practical purposes he is “at the world’s end,” let him by all means spend a summer afternoon in that quaint little out-of-the-way nook, Gawsworth, and he will return to the crowded mart with little inclination to cry out with the Roman Emperor, “_Perdidi diem_.” Yet how few there are who have made acquaintance with this _beau-ideal_ of a quiet rural retreat. The places which it is the proper thing to visit, or “do,” as the phrase is, are all carefully mapped out for our convenience; but the literary finger-posts afford but little guidance to the true rambler, who knows that the fairest spots are those which are oftenest overlooked. Gawsworth may be easily reached from Alderley or Chelford; but perhaps the most convenient starting point is Macclesfield, from which it is distant a short four miles. Macclesfield does not present a particularly prepossessing appearance, though it possesses much that is historically interesting, and you may here and there see relics of mediæval times; but the long centuries have wrought many changes in its condition, and those changes can hardly be said to be from grave to gay. Its forest was once the hunting-ground of kings. A royal palace occupied a site very near to the present Park Lane, and in the Fourth Edward’s reign Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham, had a princely residence there. The town itself was walled, and though there is not now a single stone remaining, the recollection of its fortifications is preserved in the streets—Chestergate, Church Wallgate, and Jordangate—which form the principal outlets from it. Notwithstanding that it once boasted a royal owner, it now presents but a dingy and uninviting aspect, so that we are little loth to leave its steep and tortuous streets, and what Nathaniel Hawthorne would call its ugliness of brick, and betake ourselves to the open country.