Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/266

 Chap. VII V OF MANCHESTER. 335 VI. WHILE the northern Briton's were thus happily adopting the ^elegant refinements of the Italian politenefs and thus happily catching the ingenuous fpirit of the Roman literature, the pre- cinfts of Mancunium mud have been divided into farmS. Thefe afliiredly were large and extenfive, as fuch certainly were the farms of the Gallic huibandmen And houfes muft have been neceffarily erefted for the management of them, the firft farm- houfes that arofe in the neighbourhood of Mancunium. They muft. have been generally railed upon the convenient border of a ftream, upon the edge of Shooter's Brook, along the high (loping bank of the Jrke, and on the bending margin of the Medlock. And in them and their adjoining offices muft all the conperns of the farm have been tranfa&ed. The milk of the primaeval Britons had not only furnifhed them with an agreeable liquor, but had long been formed into an agreeable food *. Butter was utterly unknown to the Ro- mans : ar>d to a mind delighted with the hiftory of human mant- ners it is curious to obferve the terms in which one of th$ir writers defcribes it. He fays, that it is the fpume of the milk, that it is more concreted than what is denominated the butter* milk, and that it has the nature of oil in it This food was highly efteemed by the tribes of the Celtae, and the ufe of it was entirely confined to their chiefs, 4 . And the Celtic proceff in making it was eflentially the {arfte as it remains to the prefent moment *• To thefe the Mancunians muft have now added a third fpeciefc .of milky food, and muft;now fori thfcfirft time have underftood the •art of man ufa&u ring cheefe Tke ehecfes which were moft in ^ftimation among the Romans of this period were the Gallic, and particularly fuch of them as were made at Nifmes and in
 * two villages of the Gcvaudan. Thefe were calculated only for

immediate ufe T. And Ao calculated undoubtedly were the cheefescof the Britons, which theBelgic colonifts had been long H h % accuftomeJ