furnished to me by a native gentleman who knew it well, and South Lancashire generally :-" It was a fine old building of the Tudor style, with three gables in front, which looked towards the high-road: it was of light coloured ashler stone, such as is found in the neighbourhood, with mullions, and quaint windows and doors to match, and was, I think, dated about 1521. Such another building you will certainly not find on this side of the county. Castleton Hall comes, in my opinion, nearest to it in venerable appearance; but Bamford Hall had a lighter and more cheerful aspect: its situation also, almost on the edge of the rocky chasm of Simpson Clough, or as it is often called Guestless, i. e. Grizlehurst Clough, gave an air of romance to the place, which I do not remember to have noticed about any ancient residence with which I am acquainted.” Stillness was falling upon the scene; but the evening wind still sung its lulling vespers in Grislehurst wood, and now and then, there rose from the gently-rustling green overhead, the silvery solo of some lingering singer in those leafy choirs, as we worked our way among the deepening shade of the wood, down the broken steep, by blind paths, until we came to the rocky bed of "Nadin Water," low in the shrouded hollow of the clough. The season had been dry, and the water lay in quiet pools in the fantastic basins and crevices of the channel, gleaming in the gloom, where the light fell upon them through the trees. We made our way onward, sometimes by leaping from stone to stone in the bed of the stream, sometimes tearing our path over the lower part of the sloping bank, which was mostly broken and irregular, and, in some places, scattered with moss-greened fragments of fallen rock, in others, slippery and swampy with old lodgments of damp, fed by the tiny rindles and driblets of water, rnnning more or less in all seasons from little springs, here and there, in the wood-shaded steep. In some parts, the bank was overgrown with close-woven, scratchy thickets, com posed of dog-berry stalks, wild rose-bushes, prickly hollins and thorns, young hazles and ash trees; broad-leaved docks, and tall drooping ferns; and, over all, the thick summer green of the spreading wood. Pushing aside the sweeping branches of the trees, we laboured slowly on, till we came into the pleasant opening where the two streams combine, and the two narrow ravines terminate. A stone bridge crosses the water at this spot, leading up to the high and woody ridge of land which separates the two ravines in the upper or northern part of the clough. Here we climbed up from the stony, irregular bed of the stream, and got upon a cart-road which led us southward, out of the clough, and up to the Rochdale road, which crosses the lower end of it, at a considerable elevation. The thin, clear crescent of a new moon's rim hung like the blade of a silver sickle in the sky; and the stars which herald the approach of night, were beginning to glow in "Jove's eternal house;" whilst the fading world below seemed hushed with wonder and awe, to see that old, mysterious sprinkling of golden lights coming out in silence once more from the over-spanning blue. We walked up the slope of the road, from the silent hollow, between the woods, and over the knoll, and down into Hooley Clough again, by the way we came at first. Country people were sauntering about, in the balmy twilight, upon the main road, and the green bye-lanes thereabouts, in twos and threes. In the village of Hooley Bridge, the inhabitants were lounging at their cottage doors, in neighbourly talk, enjoying the last beautiful hours of a departing summer day; and, probably, "Ned o' Andrew's" was sitting in some quiet corner of the village, amusing a circle of eager listeners with his quaint country tales. A short walk brought us to the end of our pleasant and interesting ramble, and we sat down to talk over what we had seen and heard. My visit to Grislehurst had been all the more interesting that I had no thought of meeting with such a strong living evidence of the lingering superstitions of Lancashire there. I used to like to sit with country folk, hearkening to their old-world tales of local boggarts, and goblins, and faries, "That plat the manes of horses in the night, and I had thought myself well aquainted with the boggart lore of my native district; but this goblin of Grislehurst was new to me. By this time, I knew that in remote country houses, the song of the cricket and the ticking of the clock were beginning to be distinctly heard, and that in many a solitary cottage, these were, now, almost the only sounds astir, except the plaintive cadences of the night-wind sighing around, and turning every crevice into a mysterious voice of supernatural import to many a superstitious listener; while, perhaps, the low rustle of the trees, blended with the dreamy ripple of some neighbouring brooklet. The shades of night would by this time have fallen upon the lonely, haunted homesteads of Grislehurst, and, in the folds of its dusky robe, would have brought to the old moorland cottagers, their usual nightly fears, filled with "Shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends;" and I could imagine the good old simple pair creeping off to repose, at the old time, and covering up their eyes more carefully than usual from the goblin-peopled gloom, after the conversation we had with them about Grislehurst Boggart. THERE is a quiet little rural clough about three miles from Manchester, on the north-east side, near to the ancient village of Blackley. The best entrance to it, which I know of, is by a gateway leading down from the southern edge of a shady steep called "Entwisle Broo," in the high road from Manchester to Middleton, which runs close by the northern end of the clough. Approaching the spot, in this direction, a winding road leads down between a low bemossed wall on the right, and a thorn hedge which partly screens the green depth on the left. The trees which line the path, over-lap it loftily with a pleasant shade in summer time, till it reaches the open hollow of the clough, where there stands a comfortable and commodious brick-built farm house-the only habitation in it-with its outbuildings and gardens spreading around; and sheltered in the rear by the green, wooded bank of the clough. Thence, this pretty little Lancashire dell wanders on, southward, for a considerable distance, in pastoral and picturesque quietude. The township of Blackley, in which it is situated, retains many traces of its former rural beauty, and some scattered remnants of the woods which once covered the district. As a whole, it is, even yet, so pleasantly varied in natural features as fairly to entitle it to rank among the prettiest scenery in the immediate neighbourhood of Manchester; although its green vallies are now, almost all of them, more or less, surrendered to the conquering march of manufacture-all, except this little secluded and shady glen, known by the mysterious name of "Boggart Ho' Clough." Here, still, in this old sylvan "deer-leap" of the Saxon hunter, the dreamy student, the lover of nature, and the jaded townsman, have a green and tranquil sanctuary, where they can quietly wander, and worship if they will, serenely cloistered off from the tumults of man's life; and perhaps, there is many a contemplative rambler unknown to fame, who, when wearied by the tricks and troubles of the crowd, sometimes seeks the serene retirement of this leafy dell, the whole aspect of which seems to invite the mind to hold a "sessions of sweet, silent thought." Here while calmly reviewing the footsteps of his past life, and considering the purposes and tendency of its future, the quiet beauty of the scene may chance to touch the feelings of such a wanderer with some sweet influence of nature, and he may depart from the spot with a clearer head and a better heart to renew his pilgrimage among the world of action. One can imagine that this is such a place as a man of poetic temperament would delight to linger in occasionly; and the interest which has gathered around it is not lessened by the fact that before Samuel Bamford, the Lancashire poet, left this district, to take up his abode in the metropolis, he dwelt at a pleasant cottage, on the summit of the green upland, a little distance from the eastern edge of the clough. And, here, in his native sequestration, he may have sometimes felt the significance of Burns's words, "The muse, nae poet ever fand her, |