Morgan Brierley, a Memoir

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: prices and earnings in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (1280 to 1320), the rise of the manufactures, the churches, schools, and notable men of the district. In the spring of 1891 my father printed another chapter of the history, in the form of a series of articles to the Oldham Weekly Chronicle,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: prices and earnings in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (1280 to 1320), the rise of the manufactures, the churches, schools, and notable men of the district. In the spring of 1891 my father printed another chapter of the history, in the form of a series of articles to the Oldham Weekly Chronicle, and these also were afterwards re-issued separately under the title?A History Of Saddleworth Schools. In the introductory note to this small volume my father speaks of his Saddleworth History as comprising sixteen, some larger, some shorter, chapters, and says: The author had thoughts of deferring the publication of the whole work till after his decease, but has not permitted them to chrystalise into a Medean law, and it is not unlikely that in the course of next year the complete history may be published. This, however, did not happen, and my father, so far as failing physical strength would allow him, was still busy with the uncompleted task when he died. Eye Nature's ways, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise. These lines he considered to indicate the chiefest function (to use his own words) ? of all history, material, social, and political; and history is the greatest of all subjects with which literature is concerned. The Holy Scriptures, which up to the last day of his life he considered as the best of all books, he regarded as a history; and he used to describe Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as the finest, noblest prose composition in the English language. I have spoken of my father's failing physical strength. It was a very gradual failure during the last ten years of his life, purely physical, and in no way dimming the brightness of his intellect. He had no organic disease, it seemed th...