Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/152

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" for one carriage; consequently they are cut at " once into ruts, and you will easily conceive what " a breakdown, dislocating road, ruts cut through " a pavement must be. The pretence of wanting " materials, is but a mere pretence; for I remarked " several quarries of rock, sufficient to make miles " of excellent road. If they will pave, the breadth " ought to be such as will admit several carriages " abreast, or the inevitable consequence must be " the immediate cutting up. Tolls had better be " doubled, and even quadrupled, than such a nui- " sance to remain." An idea of the immense population of the country in the environs of Man- chester burst upon our minds on a sudden, when we reached the summit of a hill about two miles without the town, where a prodigious champaign of country, was opened to us, watered by the river Irwell, filled with works of art; mansions, villages, manufactoncs, and that gigantic parent of the whole, the widely-spreading town of Manchester. " With a good fortune almost peculiar to itself, Manchester has had two historians both calcu- lated to make the different accounts which they have given of it, perfecf in their respective lines. In Mr. Whitaker's work we find all that erudition could effect towards rendering its ancient history, its origin and early revolutions, clear and consist-

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