On leaving Macclesfield we are, as usual, embarrassed by a choice of routes, due to the perseverance of Mr. Ricardo, one of the members for the Potteries, who has endowed his constituents with a set of railways, which cut through their district in all manner of ways.  These North Staffordshire lines, Tria juncta in uno, form an engineering continuation of the Trent Valley, and are invaluable to the manufacturers of porcelain and pottery in that district.  To the shareholders they have proved rather a disappointment.  The ten per cent. secured to the Trent Valley Company, by the fears of the London and North-Western, has not yet rewarded the patriotism of the North Staffordshire shareholders.  But to our route, we may either make our way by Leek, Cheadle, Alton, and Uttoxeter to Burton, famous for the ale of Bass and game of cricket nourished on it, and through Burton to Derby. (The learned and lively author of the “Cricket Field” remarks, that the game of cricket follows malt and hops—­no ale, no bowlers or batsmen.  It began at Farnham hops, and has never rolled further north than Edinburgh ale.) Or by Congleton, Burslem, Hanley, and Stoke upon Trent (the very heart of the Potteries), then either pushing on to Uttoxeter to the north, or keeping the south arm past Trentham to Norton Bridge, which will convey you to the Trent Valley Line, the shortest way to London.

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Congleton is an ancient borough of Cheshire, on the borders of Staffordshire, containing a number of those black and white oak frame and plaster houses, which are peculiar to that county, and well worth examining.  It is situated in a deep romantic valley on the banks of the river Dane, and enjoys a greater reputation for health than commercial progress.  The population does not appear to have increased between the two last census.  The Municipal Corporation dates from a remote period.  It appears from the Corporation Books that the Mayor and Aldermen patronised every kind of sport—­plays, cock fights, bear baiting, morris dancing.  So fond were they of bear baiting, that in 1621, by a unanimous vote, they transferred the money intended for a bible to the purchase of a bear.

Times are changed; every inhabitant of Congleton can now have his own bible for tenpence.  Bear baiting and cock fighting have been discontinued; but we hope the inhabitants have grown wiser than they were some fifteen years ago, when they allowed themselves, for the sake of petty political disputes, to be continually drawn through the Courts of Law and Chancery—­a process quite as cruel for the suitors, and more expensive and less amusing than bear-baiting.

At the Town Hall is to be seen a “bridle” for a scold, which the ladies of the present generation are too well behaved ever to deserve.  President Bradshaw, the regicide, was a Cheshireman, born and christened at Stockport.  He practised as barrister, and served the office of mayor in 1637, at Congleton, of which he afterwards became high steward.  At Macclesfield, according to tradition, he wrote, when a boy, on a tombstone, these prophetic lines:—­