IIL] THE STONES IN THE WALL. 71 



Lake mountains, about Carlisle and the Scotch side 

 of the Solway Frith, stretches the New Red sandstone 

 plain, from under which everywhere the coal-bearing 

 rocks rise as from a sea. It contains, in many places, 

 excellent quarries of building-stone ; the most famous 

 of which, perhaps, are the well-known Runcorn 

 quarries, near Liverpool, from which the old Romans 

 brought the material for the walls and temples of 

 ancient Chester, and from which the stone for the 

 restoration of Chester Cathedral is being taken at this 

 day. In some quarters, especially in the north-west of 

 England, its soil is poor, because it is masked by that 

 very boulder-clay of which I spoke in my last paper. 

 But its rich red marls, wherever they come to the 

 surface, are one of God's most precious gifts to this 

 favoured land. On them, one finds oneself at once in 

 a garden ; amid the noblest of timber, wheat, roots, 

 grass which is green through the driest summers, and, 

 in the western counties, cider-orchards laden with red 

 and golden fruit. I know, throughout northern 

 Europe, no such charming scenery, for quiet beauty 

 and solid wealth, as that of the New Red marls ; and 

 if I wished to show a foreigner what England was, I 

 should take him along them, from Yorkshire to South 

 Devon, and say There. Is not that a country worth 

 living for, and worth dying for if need be ? 



Another reason which I have for dealing with the 

 New Red sandstone is this that (as I said just now) 

 over great tracts of England, especially about the 

 manufacturing districts, the town-geologist will find it 

 covered immediately by the boulder clay. 



The townsman, finding this, would have a fair right 

 to suppose that the clay was laid down immediately, or 



