“We rested awhile at this pleasant little hostel; the man and I (I might as well call him John at once) each smoked our pipe, with the window thrown up, and the cool breeze wafting around us. It was delicious to breakfast as we had done, and then to repose after a fine, health-creating morning’s walk. John, however, I soon found, had not many conversational matters at his command. He was a plain honest bricksetter; knew something of the value of work in his line, could make out an estimate of the expense of buildings and such things, and those were the most of what he understood. Not so his wife: she was a sensible, well-informed woman for her station, and it was evident that on most subjects (except the purse-keeping) she was his superior, and exercised much influence over him. She had been, as she afterwards informed me, a servant at an inn at Loughborough, where the young bricksetter, then on tramp, fell in love with and married her. They went down to Preston to settle amongst his friends; he was very wild and reckless, and one day he fell from some scaffolding and was shockingly maimed, so that he could never be so stout again as he had been. Latterly he had been more steady, and had saved a trifle of money, and as they had no children she had prevailed on him to return with her and live amongst her relations, and that was the cause of their journey. “At Leek we rested again during an hour, took some refreshment, and then resumed our journey towards Ashbourne. In passing through the streets of Leek we noticed a number of weavers at their looms, and obtained permission to go into the weaving places to see them. The rooms where they worked were on the upper floors of the houses; they were in general very clean; the work was all in the silk small-ware line, and many of the weavers were young girls—some of them good-looking, most of them very neatly attired, and many with costly combs, earrings, and other ornaments of value, showing that they earned a sufficiency of wages, and had imbibed a taste for the refinements of dress. The sight of these young females, sitting at their elegant employment, producing rich borderings and trimmings, in good, well-aired, and well-finished apartments—some of them approached by stairs with carpets and oilcloths on them—the girls also being dressed in a style which two hundred years before would have been deemed rich for a squire’s daughter, was to me very gratifying; whilst to my travelling companions it was equally surprising, and they expressed their feelings by sundry exclamations of astonishment.