Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume I.djvu/198

 more dreary, rude, and forlorn, for twelve mile out of the sixteen. The little village of Hathersage, dropped in the centre of a broad bottom formed by the mountains rising around it, contrasts agreeably with their barren summits and dark declivities; and offers the first dawnings of the hardware trade to which we were approaching, in a little manufactory of buttons. This scene of life and business is, however, succeeded by a tract of moor in the true style of the Salvator Rosa scenery; the line of the horizon being broken by black rocky crags, which frown over the subjacent waste, and assume the appearance of enormous castellated ruins. But this sterility and desolation only prepare the traveller the better for the rich and fertile picture presently to be presented to his eye, when climbing a hill about five miles from Sheffield, he throws his delighted vision over the southern part of Yorkshire, and takes in an unbounded expanse of country covered with towns, villages, manufactories, and handsome human habitations.

Proceeding four miles through this region, which seemed to Have burst upon us preternaturally, we reached Sheffield, a large town situated near the borders of Derbyshire, on a gentle rise, at the confluence of the rivers Sheaf and Don. This place, you know, has long been famous for the