Unfortunately for his peace, a large manufacturing town had sprung up within a couple of miles of him. He could see its red-brick walls, and its red-tiled roofs, and its tall, smoke-vomiting chimneys, growing and extending over the slopes beyond the river. It was to him the most irritating sight in the world; for what were all those swarming weavers and spinners but arrant radicals, upstarts, sworn foes of the ancient institutions and the landed interests of England? Sir Roger had passed through many a desperate conflict with them for the return of members to parliament. They brought forward men that were utter wormwood to all his feelings, and they paid no more respect to him and his friends on such occasions than they did to the meanest creature living. Reverence for ancient blood did not exist in that plebeian and rapidly multiplying tribe. There were master manufacturers there actually that looked and talked as big as himself, and, _entre nous_, talked a vast deal more cleverly. The people talked of rights and franchises, and freedom of speech and of conscience, in a way that was really frightful. Then they were given most inveterately to running out in whole and everlasting crowds on Sundays and holidays into the fields and woods; and as there was no part of the neighbourhood half so pleasant as the groves and river-banks of Rockville, they came swarming up there in crowds that were enough to drive any man of acres frantic. Unluckily there were roads all about Rockville; foot roads, and high roads, and bridle roads. There was a road up the river-side, all the way to Rockville woods; and when it reached them, it divided like a fork, and one foot-path led straight up a magnificent grove of a mile long, ending close to the hall: and another ran all along the river-side, under the hills and branches of the wood. Oh, delicious were those woods! In the river there were islands, which were covered in summer with the greenest grass, and the freshest of willows, and the clearest of waters rushed around them in the most inviting manner imaginable. And there were numbers of people extremely ready to accept this delectable invitation of these waters. There they came in fine weather, and as these islands were only separated from the mainland by a little and very shallow stream, it was delightful for lovers to get across, with laughter, and treading on stepping-stones, and slipping off the stepping-stones up to the ankles into the cool brook, with pretty screams and fresh laughter, and then landing on those sunny, and to them, really enchanted islands.