PREFACE.
THE view of the country which has been the occasion of the present composition, is one which may be caught from any of the first range of hills adjacent to the great northern road. If an imaginary line be drawn upon the map from the mouth of the Mersey, and another from the mouth of the Ribble, meeting each other a few miles behind Manchester, they will include within them the the view here alluded to.
This plain, upon which are placed so many flourishing towns, is bounded to the left, by the hills of Cheshire and Derbyshire; more distantly, the high hills of Wales may be observed. To the right, the hills of Lancashire confine the prospect, stretching up into Cumberland and Westmoreland. The front of the view opens to the West in one continued flat, extending down to the sea. And the back ground is made up, by the black and barren mountains of Yorkshire.
