But still, for a little way ahead, it is only the main road that is so urban. Open fields, a little sickly, it is true, extend on either side, behind the fringe of houses; and away to the left, nearly two miles off, Bramhall Hall, one of the finest of the ancient timbered halls of Cheshire, may be found. It is interesting, with an interest almost pathetic, to journey on to Manchester and to notice how the urban undertone of the road grows to be the dominant note: how the wayside fringe of bricks and mortar widens and the meadows give place first to brickfields and finally to grey streets. You pass from place to place and think them all one: from Hazel Grove to Heaviley, and thence to Stockport, Heaton Norris, Heaton Chapel, Levenshulme, Grindley Marsh, Longsight, and Ardwick Green, finally coming into Manchester by the infernal din of the thronging traffic at London Road railway station. [Sidenote: _A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND_] I am a southerner. It has been borne in upon me, on this progression to Scotland, that I am journeying to what is, to all intents and purposes, a foreign land; and on the way to that country across the Border I encounter a growing strangeness. Leicester is the ultimate place on this road wherein the Londoner finds himself on equal terms with the inhabitants. At Derby he notices a slight change; but on approaching Manchester, he finds himself on the threshold of another order of things. He notices a suppressed energy in even the least active, and an abundant vitality everywhere; and he finds a strange accent and strange new expressions. For example, even on the land-agents’ notice-boards, here, on the outskirts of Manchester, there will be seen a something incomprehensible to the stranger from the south: as thus “This Land to be Let, or Sold on Chief.” This strange term, “on Chief,” which looks like a variant of “Freehold,” is really a species of ground-rent: the landowner “selling” his land, yet with the odd reservation of a perpetual “Chief Rent”; by which if he does not precisely achieve the impossible feat usually described as “Eating your cake and having it too,” he certainly does seem to approach that marvel. The suburban road is here sufficiently broad, and approaching Stockport, where the fine modern church of St. George looks along the vista with its great bulk and graceful spire, it is even imposing, but the prevalent grey atmosphere dims and flattens everything; obscuring details, like an impressionist painter. The great church of St. George, in the newly formed parish of that name, was built in 1897, at the enormous cost of £90,000; borne entirely by one person. With a rather touching, but misplaced, confidence it is surrounded by trim lawns, and an almost rural-looking vicarage rises close by; but the stone-work of the church shows signs of turning black, the earth is growing dank and stale, and the lawns are by degrees going bald. [Sidenote: _STOCKPORT_]