Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/155

 fine prospect of the track we have passed, but opens another still superior before us—a reach of alternating rock and wood, nearly half a mile in length, contrasted to the right by desert downs scarred with crags.

Following the road, which now gently drops down to the turnpike-gate, the scene grows upon us, varying its features and increasing in extent; adding to the inartificial beauties of nature an interesting picture of animated industry, the great cotton-mill of Sir Richard Arkwright, employing three hundred people in the manufacture of thread; whose operations are so elegantly described by Dr. Darwin, in a work which discovers the art, hitherto unknown, of cloathing in poetical language, and decorating with beautiful imagery, the unpoetical operations of mechanical processes, and the dry detail of manufactures:

"So now, where Derwent guides his dusky floods,

Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods,

The nymph Gossypia treads the velvet sod,

And warms with rosy smiles the wat'ry god;

His pondrous oars to slender spindles turns,

And pours o'er massy wheels his foaming urns;

With playful charms her hoary lover wins,

And wheels his trident—while the monarch spins;

First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull

From leathery pods the vegetable wool;

With wiry teeth revolving cards release

The tangled knots, and smooth the ravell'd fleece;