The Bollin Valley. 2 1 



Norcliffe it begins to meander through the prettiest rural 

 scenery near Manchester. The gentle rise and fall of 

 the ground on either side, the plentiful and comely trees, 

 the innumerable windings and turnings that bring with 

 every successive field a new and pretty prospect, the 

 sound of th,e rushing water, the birds saturating every 

 grove and little wood with their cheerful poor man's 

 music, the flowers no longer ambitious, for every bank 

 and meadow is brimful and overflowing, really it almost 

 makes one fancy, when down in this beautiful valley, that 

 we have got into those happy regions old Homer tells of, 

 where the nepenthe grows, and the lotus, that wonder- 

 ful fruit which, when people had once tasted, they forgot . 

 their cares and troubles, and desired to remain there 

 always, and ceased to remember even home. The 

 difference is here, that after going thither, we love home 

 all the better for our visit, since the heart, though it may 

 be unconsciously, always grows into a resemblance of 

 what it contemplates with interest and affection. No 

 senseless fiction is it after all, about the lotus-fruit. 

 Every man has his lotus-country somewhere; the poet 

 has only turned into ingenious fable the experience of 

 universal human nature. 



The middle portion of the valley, or that which, 

 ascending it, lies about half way between Ashley and 

 Wilmslow, is occupied by Cotterill Clough, a place of the 

 highest celebrity with the old Lancashire botanists, being 

 not only picturesque in every portion, but containing 

 a great variety of curious and unusual wild-flowers. 



