transports you from the din of the workshop to the
solitude of "the eternal hills." We do not remember any manufacturing town
so fortunately placed in this respect as Sheffield. For an excellent and
truthful description of this scenery, we may turn to the poems of Ebenezer
Elliott, who painted from nature and knew how to paint in deep glowing
colours.

"Hallamshire, which is supposed by antiquarians to include the parish of
Sheffield, forms a district or liberty, the importance of which may be traced
back to even British times; but Sheffield makes its first appearance as a
town some time after the Conquest. In the Domesday Book the manor of
Sheffield appears as the land of Roger de Busk, the greater part held by him
of the Countess Judith, widow of Waltheof the Saxon. In the early part of
the reign of Henry I. it is found in the possession of the De Levetot family,
and the site of their baronial residence. They founded an hospital, called
St. Leonard's (suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII.), upon an eminence
still called Spital Hill, established a corn mill, and erected a bridge
there, still called the Lady's Bridge, from the chapel of the Blessed Lady of
the Bridge, which had previously stood near the spot; and their exertions and
protection fixed here the nucleus of a town. The male line of the Levetots
became extinct by the death of William de Levetot, leaving an infant
daughter, Maud, the ward of Henry II. His successor, Richard, gave her in
marriage to Gerard de Furnival, a young Norman knight, who by that alliance
acquired the lordship of Sheffield. There is a tradition that King John,
when in arms against his barons, visited Gerard de Furnival (who espoused his
cause), and remained for some time at his Castle of Sheffield.

"On the 12th of November, 1296, Edward I. granted to Lord Furnival a charter
to hold a market in Sheffield on Tuesday in every week, and a fair every year
about the period of Trinity Sunday. This fair is still held on Tuesday and
Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, and another on the 28th of November. The
same Lord Furnival granted a charter to the town, the provisions of which
were of great liberality and importance at that period, viz., that a fixed
annual payment should be substituted for the base, uncertain services by
which they had previously held their lands and tenements, that Courts Baron
should be held every three weeks for the administration of justice, and that
the inhabitan