BOOK FIFTH 



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CHAPTER I. 



" How may we now the truth unfold — 

 How learn, delighted and amazed, 

 What never tongue or numbers told — 

 What hands unknown that fabric raised ?" 



" A smiling village decks the plain, 

 Where once the tangled forest frown'd ; 



And Hodge impels his lab'ring wain 



O'er grounds where wolves a shelter found." 



TN the immediate neighbourhood of Brandwood, though situated 

 -*- ill the township of Lenches, is the hamlet of Rough Lee, in a 

 picturesque and pleasant nook on the hillside, sheltered from the 

 easterly winds by the friendly shoulders of a considerable elevation, 

 and looking far away down the Irwell valley — along which, and over 

 the grassy slopes on either side, it commands a varied and extensive 

 view. 



In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, when the 

 waste of Brandwood was the property of the Abbots of Stanlaw and 

 Whalley, the scenery embraced in a view of the landscape from Rough 

 Lee, was widely different from that which its present prospect com- 

 prehends. Where now the Railway winds through the vale, the shriek- 

 ing whistle of its " iron horse " awaking the echoes on every side — 

 then, the glossy coat of the antlered deer, as in the heyday of its 

 pride it flashed across the glade to thicker covert, or gambolled on 



