[143]
fine prospect of the track we have passed, but opens another still superior before us—a reach of alternating rock and wood, nearly half a mile in length, contrasted to the right by desert downs scarred with crags.
Following the road, which now gently drops down to the turnpike-gate, the scene grows upon us, varying its features and increasing in extent; adding to the inartificial beauties of nature an interesting picture of animated industry, the great cotton-mill of Sir Richard Arkwright, employing three hundred people in the manufacture of thread; whose operations are so elegantly described by Dr. Darwin, in a work which discovers the art, hitherto unknown, of cloathing in poetical language, and decorating with beautiful imagery, the unpoetical operations of mechanical processes, and the dry detail of manufactures:
"So now, where Derwent guides his dusky floods,
Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods,
The nymph Gossypia treads the velvet sod,
And warms with rosy smiles the wat'ry god;
His pondrous oars to slender spindles turns,
And pours o'er massy wheels his foaming urns;
With playful charms her hoary lover wins,
And wheels his trident—while the monarch spins;
First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull
From leathery pods the vegetable wool;
With wiry teeth revolving cards release
