“The drive from Dronfield to Sheffield is pleasant and picturesque.  It is the dawn of a region of high hills, a fine range of which stretch westward into Derbyshire, while on every side there are lofty eminences and deep valleys.  Sheffield opens magnificently on the right, and its villas and ornamented suburbs stretch full two miles on the eminences to the left.  At two or three miles from Sheffield, the western suburbs display a rich and pleasing variety of villas and country-houses.  On the left, the Dore-moors, a ridge of barren hills, stretch to an indefinite distance:  and on the right, some high hills skreen from sight the town of Sheffield.  At a mile distant, the view to the right opens, and from a rise in the road is beheld the fine amphitheatre of Sheffield; the sun displaying its entire extent, and the town being surmounted by fine hills in the rear.  The wind carried the smoke to the east of the town, and the sun in the meridian presented as fine a coup d’oeil as can be conceived.  The approach was by a broad and well-built street, the population were in activity, and I entered a celebrated place with many agreeable expectations.

“Sheffield is within the bounds of Yorkshire, but on the verge of Derbyshire, and was the most remarkable place and society of human beings which I had yet seen.  It stands in one of the most picturesque situations that can be imagined, originally at the south end of a valley surrounded by high hills, but now extended around the western hill; the first as a compact town, and the latter as scattered villas and houses on the same hill, to the distance of two miles from the ancient site.  It is connected with London by Nottingham and Derby, and distant from Leeds 33 miles, and York 54 miles.  Its foundation was at the junction of two rivers, the Sheaf and the Don; in the angle formed by which once stood the Castle, built by the, Barons Furnival, Lords of Hallamshire; but subsequently in the tenure of the Talbots, Earls of Shrewsbury.  Three or four miles from this Castle, on the western hill, stood the Saxon town of Hallam, said to have been destroyed by the Norman invaders, on account of their gallant opposition.

“The town was originally a mere village, dependant on the Castle; but its mineral and subterranean wealth led the early inhabitants to become manufacturers of edged tools, of which arrow heads, spear heads, &c. are presumed to have been a considerable part; a bundle of arrows being at this day in the town arms, and cross arrows the badge of the ancient Cutlers’ Company of Sheffield.

“The exhaustless coal seams and iron-stone beds in the vicinity, combined with the ingenuity of the people, conferred early fame on their products; for Chaucer, in alluding to a knife, calls it ’a Sheffield thwittel,’—­whittle being among the manufacturers at this day the name of a common kind of knife.  The increasing demand for articles of cutlery, and their multiplied variety