The storm, which was very severe in the Metropolis and
neigh. bourhood, last week, was quite terrific in the North of England. At Manchester, Rochdale, Bolton, Preston, and several towns in Yorkshire, there was a tremendous fall of rain and hail stones, mixed with large pieces of ice, which broke almost every pane of glass in the conservatories and factory skylights. But the most extensive in. jury was occasioned by the floods in the streams which take their rise in the country north of Rochdale and Bolton. This is part of a description- " These seem to have been filled with fearful rapidity, so that the bridges spanning them were soon swept down; and in many cases the great body of water, carrying away before its resistless torrent the banks of reservoirs and lodges of water, appears to have speedily inundated the lower lands to a great depth, covering the hay-fields, sweeping away the newly-cut grass, and doing great injury to buildings, machinery, and property of every description. A number of persons lust their lives, the flood having overwhelmed them so rapidly as to cut off all chance of escape. Near Barnsley, in Yorkshire, twenty-seven boys and girls were drowned in one coal-pit; three men were, in like manner, over- whelmed by the flood in a coal-pit in the neighbourhood of Rochdale; a boy was swept from a stable at Bradley, and drowned ; another had lost his life at Bolton; and a large number of cattle, sheep, and other animals, have perished.',
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The Spodden, a small rivulet which takes its rise between Whitworth earl Backup, and meets the rives Roach about two hundred yards below the town, bore every thing down before it by three o'clock. So sudden was its rise, that it enclosed half.a.dozen children, and some men, who had gone into a field to watch it, before they were aware of their perilous situation. Retreat was im- possible. The field was surrounded with water; and the ground upon which they stood every moment became narrower and narrower, till at last all was one sheet of water. The little urchins had now retreated into a thorn hedge, where their situation became truly painful.; every moment they were expected to be washed from this last place of refuge. The most lively Interest was excited for their fate in hundreds of spectators, though property of every description came floating down; barrels, planks, trees torn up by the roots, wool-pieces, carts, skiffs, timber, Ise. ; yet every one seemed absorbed in the fate of these children. The water was at its highest a little before four, when it began to subside; at half-past four a man plunged in on horseback, and brought the children to land, by two ct a time ; the water at the deepest part he had to cross might be about a yard and a half."
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