One might go on gathering such reminiscences till one became like the Ritter Tils of Saxon legend-who, at the bottom of a lake, everlasting sits at a marble table, old and hoary, with his white beard grown through the slab. There is to them no end. Perhaps, in my enthusiasm, I am apt to forget that their fascination is not universal. Britons have been known who cared not for such; indeed, I verily believe that it takes an American, or, at least, a European who has been long out of Europe, to appreciate and to understand, say, either England or Germany. We are variously constituted. Graphite is own brother to the diamond, but, strange fantasy of nature, the one is, in almost all respects, the exact converse of the other-the one opaque and black, the other translucent and colorless-the one among the softest, the other the hardest of minerals. That which pleases one man may displease another. I am certain, however, that no Englishman ever saw as much in his own land as did our own Washington Irving or Henry Longfellow. Only to a small district in the old world does this book take my reader; and now, I would have him read the book itself, in which, if he find some things deserving of censure, I trust he will discover many more things worthy of praise. Philadelphia, November 30, 1893. Woods and Dales of Derbyshire. THE ALTHOUGH Derby is one of the oldest and most flourishing towns in the kingdom and has about it much that is historically interesting, yet Derby does not win the attention or excite the emotions of the traveller. Seen from a distance, one is indeed led to hope for much. Amidst the clouds of smoke which float over the town and darken the valley in which it is situate, rise towers and spires graceful and lofty enough to gladden the artist and the ecclesiologist, but closer acquaintance only too readily reveals the tastelessness and commonplace character of the buildings themselves. The heart is not brightened even by the fact that in All Saints' Church lies buried Bess of Hardwick, or that both All Saints' and St. Alkmund date from near the Danish invasion of Mercia. And though there are several structures of justifiable pretensions, and though they who care for manufactures may find much satisfaction in the numerous porcelain, silk and iron works, yet such things scarcely move one who has seen the chimneys of southern Yorkshire or wandered through the towns of the Black Country. The streets are dingy and dusty. The houses for the greater part are dull, heavy and uninviting, some of them disfigured with signs and most of them, even when evidently the homes of a comfortable and well-to-do, if not an opulent people, not such as to occasion a second lcok. (13) By those who know the place well we are told that the impression made upon the stranger is as unfair as it is unfortunate, and that in this ancient Deoraby or home of the deer, as the Danes called it, are many objects worthy of study and admiration. There is the Chapel of St. Mary on the bridge over the Derwent, founded in days when men paid toll in crossing rivers, and also thought it worth their while to stop by the wayside and pray for a blessing on themselves and their goods or pursuits. Much older is the Church of St. Peter, with its towers and walls gray with time or covered with ivy, having in its chancel a remarkable Flemish chest and in its yard a Free School, established over seven hundred years ago by Walter Durdant, Bishop of Coventry. And there are the Devonshire Almshouses, founded by Bess of Hardwick; and once there were the Black Almshouses endowed by Robert Wilmot, of Chaddesdon-proof sufficient that the Derbyshire folk praiseworthily united in good works the purposes of saving their own souls and of helping their poor neighbors. And if sympathy with modern progress be thought more of than these relics of the olden time, it is plain to see that no longer is Derby what Defoe declared it, "a town of gentry rather than trade." Commerce has given to the place a life and an energy greater than it possessed in the faroff ages when in it men coined money and dyed cloth-perhaps, some will say, more to be desired than the spirit which here possessed the folk when they stole and sang hymns with the Cromwellians, or shouldered muskets for William of Orange, or cheered Bonnie Prince Charlie ere Culloden forever destroyed the hope of the Stuarts. Notwithstanding all this, and much more that might be said, the town fails to delight. This may be, after all, not so much from any fault of its own, but because behind and north of Derby lies a country whose hills and dales, and wooded slopes and wandering streams not only make up a landscape both grand and lovely, but also speak of legend, history and romance. Derby is the gateway of the Peak; and with the imagination stirred at the prospect of glories rivalling those of Switzerland, no wonder the busy, noisy town is neglected and soon forgotten. In the Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1776, is an extract from a manuscript sermon probably delivered about the time of the Restoration, in which the preacher-supposed to be Dr. Gardiner, of Eckington-indulges in the praise of his beloved county, taking for his text the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 8: 7-9: "It is a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains, and depths that spring out of the hills.' "What's this," says he, of the inspired passage, "What's this but a description, as in a type, of our own county Derby 10 shire? What pen could have drawn it forth more graphically and exactly?" And after many lines in which beats and glows the enthusiasm of the good divine, he adds-getting dangerously near an anti-climax : "What shall I say more? for time would fail me sooner than matter. A land of wheate and barley, oates and pease, that affords seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, who takes paines to get a good stomache." Yet he stops not here, but continues: "It enjoys good aire, fertile ground, pleasant waters; fire and fuel of the best; neighbouring counties fetch her coles from farr, who, being warmed by her fires, cannot but wish and call her blessed." The men who heard these and like words afterwards dined together, and I have no doubt drank heartily to the welfare of the region which had won their affections. Probably they got as warm and happy as Englishmen abroad are apt to do on St. George's Day when, roast beef and plum pudding done, the ale flows freely and songs are sung and speeches made in honor of the land beyond the seas. In truth, Derbyshire is worthy of praise; as worthy to-day as it was by those convivial souls two hundred and fifty years ago. There through valleys, sometimes wild as Scottish glens, and sometimes picturesque and quiet as Berkshire itself, flow the Derwent and the Wye, the Dove, the Trent and the Rother. There are lofty heights that pierce the white mists and send long shadows far towards the Merrie Sherwood, and back across the plain edged by the glittering Dee-heights such as Kinder Scout, the Peak and Axe Fdge, which suggest to the dweller in the lowlands the mountain-mystery known only to him whose days are spent in Pyrenean solitudes or amidst the grandeur of the storm-bleached Alps. There are castles and mansions, a few fresh as from the builders of to-day, but many more gray with the moss of time and weird with ghostly story or curious tale. Fuller well put it when he said, "God hath more manifested His might in this than in any other county of England; or, to use the words of the sermon just referred to, we may say, Derbyshire is "a country wherein Nature sports itselfe, leaping up and down, as it were, in the pleasant variety of hills and valleys, until being weary it recreate itselfe at Chatsworth, Boulsover, or Hardicke." Earlier we found ourselves in this winsome land, and now again ere our days beyond the sea come to an end, in a morning when the August sun makes golden the mists and clouds which hang along the hills, we start from Derby on a journey that shall take us to sweet Ashbourne, and to Youlgrave and Bakewell, through the country hallowed by the memories of Izaak Walton. Now comes to us a tender joy, for, as I shall pres ently show, we shall see many things that not only are in themselves beautiful, but also are associated with friends and events dear to us. The distance by the highway from Derby to Ashbourne is about thirteen miles, but, with the exception at Mackworth of a gate-house of a fifteenth century castle, and a fine view of Ashbourne from the steep hill near the town, the road has little to commend it. A better route is by railway, for though the train moves over the thirty miles leisurely enough to enable one to count the sparrows that settle on the telegraph wires, yet in pretty scenes and quaint villages the interest never flags. Perhaps, to save time, had the weather been more certain and the roads less heavy, we should have gone by the former way, but rain had fallen constantly the day before, and this morning gave none too sure a promise of clearing up; so, in spite of gleaming sunshine, and the temptation to stay longer in Derby, we committed ourselves with patience and resignation to a second-class. We made no mistake. Before Tutbury was reached we had our first glimpse of the romantic and erratic Dove-sweetest stream to all lovers of the rod and line; none less dear to all who know quaint Izaak, and his pupil of the hook and fly. The pretty brook, princess of rivers, as Cotton calls it, like a playful and capricious maiden wanders hither and thither across the low, green fields, its clear waters scarcely less rapid and eddying now than when coursing through the glens shadowed by the high-crested cliffs. Under the willows and the flags lurks the swift and ghostly grayling-the flower of fishes, according to St. Ambrose-which some say feeds on gold, and others on water-thyme. It was beside such a stream that Dean Nowell, of famous memory and of thorough Elizabethan scholarship, made a discovery for which others besides anglers have been grateful. Fuller tells the story, and far stranger than that I should repeat it, is the fact that Mr. Augustus Toplady gives it in his grave and ponderous "Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England." No one marvels at Fuller, but one would as soon expect to find a rose growing on an iceberg as to come across a ripple of humor in a dry theological treatise. Nowell was a sad divine, that is to say, grave and sober, as men in his day used the word "sad"; but like St. Peter he was fond of fishing. After one of his fishing expeditions, he happened to leave a bottle of ale in the grass. "He found it some days after," says Fuller-Mr. Toplady quoting him-"no bottle, but a gun, so loud was the sound at the opening thereof; and this is believed to have been the original of bottled ale in this kingdom." So that we are indebted to Dean Nowell for more than his catechism. Perhaps this may be the scene of the adventure. |