CHAPTER XV.
SHEFFIELD AND ITS INDIVIDUALITY--THE COUNTRY, ABOVE GROUND AND UNDER GROUND--WAKEFIELD AND LEEDS--WHARF VALE--FARNLEY HALL--HARROGATE; RIPLEY CASTLE; RIPON; CONSERVATISM OF COUNTRY TOWNS--FOUNTAIN ABBEY; STUDLEY PARK--RIEVAULX ABBEY--LORD FAVERSHAM'S SHORT-HORN STOCK.
From Chatsworth I went on to Sheffield, crossing a hilly moorland belonging to the Duke of Rutland, and containing 10,000 acres in one solid block.

It was all covered with heather, and kept in this wild, bleak condition for game.

Here and there well-cultivated farms, as it were, bit into this cold waste, rescuing large, square morsels of land, and making them glow with the warm flush and glory of luxuriant harvests; thus showing how such great reaches of desert may be made to blossom like the rose under the hand of human labor.
Here is Sheffield, down here, sweltering, smoking, and sweating, with face like the tan, under the walls of these surrounding hills.
Here live and labor Briareus and Cyclops of modern mythology.

Here they-- Swing their heavy sledge, With measured beats and slow; Like the sexton ringing the village bell, When the evening sun is low.
Here live the lineal descendants of Thor, christianised to human industries.

Here the great hammer of the Scandinavian Thunderer descended, took nest, and hatched a brood of ten thousand little iron beetles for beating iron and steel into shapes and uses that Tubal Cain never dreamed of.