226 Country Rambles. 



gives the first taste of the landscape grandeurs to be 

 enjoyed later on from the crest of Pendle. 



For those who love to feel their feet pressing the turf, 

 Whalley is the best point of departure also for Stony- 

 hurst, and for the pretty villages of Great and Little 

 Mitton, the former upon the opposite bank of the Ribble, 

 which here separates Lancashire from Yorkshire. The 

 announcement, when half-way over the bridge, comes 

 with most curious unexpectedness. All of a sudden, 

 while delighting in the sweet spectacle of the stream, 

 silver-eddied like the immortal ones in the greatest of 

 epics, an inscription upon the wall says we are in the 

 county of the white rose ! How can this be ? Our 

 faces are turned westwards! Yorkshire is not in front 

 of us, but behind L Look at the map, and you will 

 discover that Mitton stands upon an odd bit which darts 

 away from all the rest, after traversing which we are 

 in Lancashire again. Little Mitton Hall is accounted 

 one of the finest specimens in England of the style of 

 domestic architecture which prevailed at the commence- 

 ment of the sixteenth century, or that of the building of 

 Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster. The base- 

 ment is stone, the upper portion timber, including the 

 roof of the great hall, which is ceiled with oak in wrought 

 compartments of singular beauty. Great Mitton Church 

 (in Yorkshire) is no less interesting in respect of its 

 antiquities and to the admirer of sculpture in the private 

 chapel, near the altar, once belonging to the Shireburns, 

 the very ancient and honourable family, long since 



