CHAPTER VI. 



BY THE NORTH-WESTERN LINE THROUGH STOCKPORT. 



Oh, my lord, lie not idle : 

 The chiefest action for a man of great spirit 

 Is never to be out of action. We should think 

 The soul was never put into the body, 

 Which has so many rare and curious pieces 

 Of mathematical motion, to stand still. 



WEBSTER. 



EFORE the opening of the "Manchester and 

 Birmingham" a title now forgotten, the line 

 having been absorbed into the London and 

 North-Western the road through Rusholme, 

 Didsbury, and Cheadle was the accustomed 

 highway to Congleton, via Wilmslow, to 

 which latter place the hand still points at certain corners 

 within a mile or two of All Saints' Church. The 

 Cheadle people occasionally made use of it for pic-nic 

 carriage parties to a fir-crowned steep just beyond 

 Chorley, a wilderness scarcely inhabited, and, save for 

 its checking the speed of travellers from Knutsford to 

 Macclesfield, scarcely recognized in the local geography. 

 How vast the revolution promoted in 1842 ! The wilder- 



