Nooks and Corners of Lancashire and Cheshire; A Wayfarer's Notes in the Palatine Counties, Historical, Legendary, Genealogical, and Descriptive (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... HALL-l-TH-WOOn-THE STORY OF SAMUEL CROMPTON, THE INVENTOR OF THE SPINNING MILE. HERE is much truth in the remark that it is more in the lives of England's worthies than in the lives of England's warriors that we may discover the true secret of England's greatness. Yet, of those master-spir1ts who by their inventive genius, their patient industry, and indomitable perseverance have been the greatest benefactors to their country, and who, on that account, deserve ever to be held in honoured remembrance, how many have had to battle with untoward fate, to Wage with fortune an eternal war, Checked by the scoff of Pride, by Envy's frown, And Poverty's unconquered bar. Of such men was Samuel Crompton, the inventor of the spinning mule, whose mechanical achievement may be said to have laid open the prospect of unbounded wealth to the industrious of his native shire, and to have wrought in Lancashire changes well-nigh as wondrous as any recorded in the f1ctions of Eastern romance. Hall-in-the-Wood, or Hall-i'-th'-Wood, according to the vernacular, the ancient dwelling-place in which Crompton spent his toilsome days and thoughtful nights--the shrine to which our present pilgrimage is directed, and which deserves to be hallowed as one of our sacred temples--is situated in the midst of scenery strangely at variance with the associations the name calls forth; for though, with Firwood, the Lower Wood, the Oaks, and other places of similar designation immediately adjacent, it recalls the sylvan beauty of former days, so complete has been the disafforesting that, with the exception of the blighted and blackened relics of a sturdy oak or stately elm here and there dotting the landscape, scarce a remnant remains of the old forest that once formed its pleasant...