in repair and afford a walk from which you enjoy a prospect of the surrounding country; but no ancient monument is allowed to stand in the way of modern improvements as they are called, and I found workmen at one corner tumbling down the stones and digging up the foundation to let in a railway.  The river Dee winds pleasantly at the foot of the city walls.  I was amused by an instance of the English fondness for hedges which I saw here.  In a large green field a hawthorn hedge was planted, all along the city wall, as if merely for the purpose of hiding the hewn stone with a screen of verdure.

Yesterday we took the railway for Manchester.  The arrangements for railway travelling in this country are much more perfect than with us.  The cars of the first class are fitted up in the most sumptuous manner, cushioned at the back and sides, with a resting-place for your elbows, so that you sit in what is equivalent to the most luxurious armchair.  Some of the cars intended for night travelling are so contrived that the seat can be turned into a kind of bed.  The arrangement of springs and other contrivances to prevent shocks, and to secure an equable motion, are admirable and perfectly effectual.  In one hour we had passed over the thirty-one miles which separate Manchester from Liverpool; shooting rapidly over Chat Moss, a black blot in the green landscape, overgrown with heath, which, at this season of the year, has an almost sooty hue, crossing bridge after bridge of the most solid and elegant construction, and finally entered Manchester by a viaduct, built on massive arches, at a level with the roofs of the houses and churches.  Huge chimneys surrounded us on every side, towering above the house-tops and the viaduct, and vomiting smoke like a hundred volcanoes.  We descended and entered Market-street, broad and well-built, and in one of the narrowest streets leading into it, we were taken to our comfortable hotel.

At Manchester we walked through the different rooms of a large calico-printing establishment.  In one were strong-bodied men standing over huge caldrons ranged along a furnace, preparing and stirring up the colors; in another were the red-hot cylinders that singe the down from the cloth before it is stamped; in another the machines that stamp the colors and the heated rollers that dry the fabric after it is stamped.  One of the machines which we were shown applies three different colors by a single operation.  In another part of the establishment was the apparatus for steaming the calicoes to fasten the colors; huge hollow iron wheels into which and out of which the water was continually running and revolving in another part to wash the superfluous dye from the stamped cloths; the operation of drying and pressing them came next and in a large room, a group of young women, noisy, drab-like, and dirty, were engaged in measuring and folding them.

This morning we take the coach for the Peak of Derbyshire.