Mr. Brueres Herd. 177 



which we passed on the branch line from North- 

 allerton to Leyburn. It was done to hand in a 

 Richmond paper by the Robins of the district. " You 

 can stand," he says, "and see almost to Sedberg 

 north-west, with a valley bursting forth with living 

 beauty and grandeur ; and the river moving in its 

 serpentine form, and in all its silvery brightness. You 

 can then turn round and you will be able to see on a 

 clear day eastward the Cathedral at York, and a 

 landscape of living beauty that becomes overwhelming 

 with grandeur to the intelligent admirers of greatness 

 and beauty. I look forward to the time when the 

 railway shall pass through the valley to every part of 

 England ; and when the princely manufacturers shall 

 be drawn by the beauties of the Dale, to come and 

 reside here, and fill the Dale with their splendid man- 

 sions, so that it should become like Sharon, Carmel, 

 or Lebanon for splendour and grandeur." 



Parson's Barn is soon in sight, that once great 

 trysting-place of the Edie Ochiltrees of every age and 

 degree, and for which Yorkshiremen say that they 

 have heard summer appointments made by vagrants 

 when they have been strolling in Hyde Park. A 

 little to the right is Spennithorne, in whose "Throstle's 

 Nest" poor Job Marson, the jockey, made his last in- 

 vestment, not long before he was carried to its church- 

 yard. Middleham, with its castle on the hill, we leave 

 to the right, and wind round by East Witton, where 

 the grass is hardly grown on the grave of Tommy 

 Lye, through lanes, into which two carts cannot pass 

 without considerable generalship, up the sycamore 

 avenue, and so to Mr. Bruere's hermitage at Braith- 

 waite. It stands in the midst of a rose tree prairie, 

 among which white Dorkings, which proved hardier 

 than Spanish, lead a merry sort of life. The three 

 gables, which look like ivy bushes, were said to have 

 been built by three sisters, and they bear the date of 

 1672. Everything is in keeping with the wide en- 



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