MANCHESTER AND BUXTON 47 
should walk to London although my stumps should 
be worn off to the knees. 
About 10 o clock yesterday,” he writes 
(Thursday, 14th of October), “ I left Manchester, 
and such an abominable dirty hole of a town I 
never before saw. Narrow, irregular, dirty streets, 
misshapen brick houses daubed over with paint and 
whitewashing, hideous manufactories with their 
sooty, smoke-discharging chimneys towering among 
pestilential clouds that rolled over the city,” etc. 
To be out of the city and again on his way was a 
great relief to him. 
The sight of a stone,” he writes, “ marked 
with ‘ to London 182 miles’ inspired me with fresh 
vigour, and for some time I trudged along as cheerily 
as if I had been within three hours’ march of that 
great city, the goal at which my wild goose chase is 
to terminate.” 
He now walked on in better spirits, especially 
after he began to ascend the hills of Derbyshire, 
where, he writes, “ I even became so cheerful as 
to whistle a tune and to utter the expression with 
which this report commences, viz.: ‘ England, with 
all thy faults I love thee still.’ Get thee behind 
me, Scotland, I said last evening.” 
He reached Buxton and spent the night 
(Thursday, 14th October) there. 
“London is still,” he writes the following day, 
150 miles. ^ I propose to be there on Thursday at 
about two o’clock—that is, at the rate of twenty- 
six miles a day. Ten shillings and sixpence is the 
sum to be expended on this part of my journey_ 
