Blackpool. 229 



and are in a state of remarkable preservation. No 

 monastic establishment was ever more powerful or bene- 

 ficial than that of Furness. When, in 1537, Henry 

 VIII. compelled its surrender, the overthrow was beheld 

 with the deepest dejection, and was followed by the 

 decay and depopulation of the neighbourhood. Finsth- 

 waite, the lofty and wooded eminence on the left of 

 Newby Bridge, commands one of the most glorious 

 views of land and water, salt as well as fresh, that are 

 anywhere to be found in the north of England. 



Deviating from the Fleetwood line, almost when 

 within sight of the sea, we find ourselves at BLACKPOOL, 

 distant from Manchester, like the last-named place, 

 almost exactly fifty miles. Blackpool, if not the Brighton 

 of Manchester, is, at all events, a kind of huge " marine 

 villa" for some tens of thousands of its inhabitants 

 during the season. Nothing can be more flat and 

 dreary than the inland country ; yet once within list or 

 sight of the water, a man must be dull indeed who finds 

 Blackpool so. We may walk where the wrinkled sand 

 is strewn with the pretty sea-born playthings left by the 

 tide, shells and polished pebbles round as birds' eggs, 

 while a thin line of delicate foam comes creaming up, 

 and retires in silence. At another time the white rage 

 of the surf shall beat us back, and send showers of salt 

 rain into our ill-averted faces, while blotches of yeasty 

 froth scud past, and stop not until captured by some 

 heap of stranded wrack. Though there is none of that 



