OF ROCKS

Summary

Rills, rivulets, and cascades, abound among rocks; they are natural to the scene; and such scenes commonly require every accompaniment which can be procured for them: mere rocks, unless they are peculiarly adapted to certain impressions, may surprise, but can hardly please; they are too far removed from common life, too barren, and unhospitable; rather desolate than solitary, and more horrid than terrible; so austere a character cannot be long engaging, if its rigour be not softened by circumstances, which may belong either to these or to more cultivated spots; and when the dreariness is extreme, little streams and water-falls are of themselves insufficient for the purpose; an intermixture of vegetation is also necessary; and on some occasions even marks of inhabitants are proper.

Middleton dale is a cleft between rocks, ascending gradually from a romantic village, till it emerges, at about two miles distance, on the vast moor-lands of the Peake; it is a dismal entrance to a desart; the hills above it are bare; the rocks are of a grey colour; their surfaces are rugged; and their shapes savage; frequently terminating in craggy points; sometimes resembling vast unwieldy bulwarks; or rising in heavy buttresses, one above another; and here and there a mishapen mass bulging out hangs lowering over its base. No traces of men are to be seen, except in a road which has no effect on such a scene of desolation; and in the lime kilns constantly smoaking on the side; but the labourers who occasionally attend them live at a distance; there is not a hovel in the dale; and some scanty withering bushes are all its vegetation; for the soil between the rocks produces as little as they do; it is disfigured with all the tinges of brown and red, which denote barrenness; in some places it has crumbled away, and strata of loose dark stones only appear: and in others, long lines of dross and rubbish shoveled out of mines, have fallen down the steeps.