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The Fifth Edition of the OUT-DOOR PHOTOGRAPHIC NOTE BOOK, post free for 13 stamps. BY RICHARD KEENE, DERBY. Size, 81 x Q\, Is. 6d. each. 7i x 5J, 'Is. each. * # * These Pictures have obtained First-class Medals in all parts of the world. The Views comprise the best Scenery and most interesting Antiquities, Churches, Halls, Ruins, &c., in the County of Derby, besides a large number taken in other parts of the Kingdom. A Catalogue is in preparation, and will be sent gratis on application. These Platinotypes being absolutely permanent, commend themselves to the Antiquary, Historian, and others, for inter- leaving and illustrating topographical and other books; they also harmonize better with printed matter than ordinary photo- graphs. Mr. Keene has illustrated many works by this process, and begs to refer to them as specimens of his work in this direction. Where needful, they can be printed with white margins up to any size., at an extra cost. A LIST OF SOME OF THE PLACES PHOTOGRAPHED BY RICHARD KEENE, DERBY. DERBYSHIRE. Alderwasley Codnor Ironville Alfreton Coxbench Kedleston Allestree Cressbrook Dale King's Newton Alstonfield Cresswell Kirk Ireton Alvaston Crich Kirk Langley Ambergate Croxall Knowle Hills Ashbourne Dalbury Langwith Ashopton 1 Dale Abbey Lathkill Dale Ashover Darley Abbey Lea Ashwood Dale Darley Dale Little Eaton Aston-on-Trent Denby Littleover Ault Hucknall Derby Litton Dale Bakewell' Dethick Locko Park Barrow-on-Trent Dove Dale Long Eaton Barton Blount Doveridge Longford Belper Dronfield Mackworth Beresford Duffield Mapperley Blackwell Dale Eckington Mappleton Bolsover Eggington Markeaton Bonsall Elvaston Castle, Marston-on-Dove Boulton Gardens, &c. Matlock Bath Brackenfield Etwall Mayfield Brailsford Eyam Melbourne Breadsall Fenny Bentley Mickleover Breaston Foremark Middleton Dale Bretby Park Great Longstone Miller's Dale Burnaston Grindleford Bridge Monk's Dale Burton-on- Trent Haddon Hall Monsal Dale Buxton Hard wick Monyash Castleton Hartington Morley Chaddesden Hartshorn Morton Chapel-en-le-Frith Hassop Nor bury Chatsworth Hathersage Normanton Chee Dale Hazlewood North Winfield Chesterfield Heath Ockbrook Church Broughton Holbrook Ogstone Hall Church Gresley Holloway Osmaston Clay Cross Hope Osmaston Manor Clifton Idridgehay Quarndon Places Photographed by Richard Keene, Derby. DERBYSHIRE (Continued). Repton South Winfield Manor Trent Riddings Stainsby Walton-on-Trent Ripley Stanley Wardlow Risley Stanton-in-Peak West Hallam Rowsley Stanton-by-Dale Weston-on-Trent Sandiacre Steetley Whitwell Sawley Stoney Middleton Willington Scarcliffe Stydd Wilne Shardlow Sutton-on-the-Hill Wingfield Park Shirland Sutton Scarsdale Winster Shirley Swanwick Wirksworth Smalley Swarkestone Wye Dale Snelston Thorpe Youlgreave Somersal Herbert Tideswell For Views in the following Counties, see detailed Catalogue to be had free on application or per post : Cheshire Nottinghamshire Wiltshire Devonshire Shropshire Worcestershire Gloucestershire Somersetshire Yorkshire Lancashire Staffordshire North Wales Leicestershire Surrey Isle of Man Northam ptonshire Warwickshire Scotland Middlesex RICHARD KEENE, portrait ant) Olanfcscape pbotograpber, OPPOSITE ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, 1DER13V. Platinotype Printing done for the Profession and Amateurs from their own Negatives. 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PICTURES OF THE PEAK, PICTURES THE PEAK EDWARD BRADBURY, (" STREPHON,") Author of "All About Derbyshire," " Wardley's Gossiping Guides," ETC., ETC. ILLUSTRATED WITH PEN AND INK SKETCHES BY A. J. KEENE. LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT AND CO. DERBY : RICHARD KEENE, ALL SAINTS*. BUXTON : C. F. WARDLEY. iSQI. [All Rights Reserved.} (07 O TO SIR WILLIAM CHRISTOPHER LENG, OF "THE SHEFFIELD DAILY TELEGRAPH," AS A SLENDER TOKEN OF SINCERE ADMIRATION OF HIS GENIUS AND PATRIOTISM, AND IN GRATITUDE FOR MUCH PERSONAL KINDNESS, THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, ALTHOUGH HE NEEDS NOT THE COMPLIMENT OF A DEDICATION. 807179 PREFACE. THE majority of these collected papers originally appeared in the columns of The Buxton Advertiser, and also of The High Peak News. Other essays have been previously published in CasselVs Magazine, and The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Their source is hereby gratefully acknow- ledged. No one can be more sensible of the defects of this volume than the author, for, in correcting the proof-sheets, he found a repetition of phrases that became monotonous and suggested a destitute vocabulary. Gibbon said of his powers of illustration, after writing one or two books, that " his millinery was exhausted ; " and in these descriptions of Derbyshire scenery, the writer has found that epithets, like the letters of the alphabet, are limited. There is a combination of old colours, and a variation of arrangement vi. Preface. that recall the successive turns of the kaleidoscope; but this redundance may, perhaps, meet with the clemency of the merciful critic, when it is remembered that these sketches have not been written consecutively, but are contributions which were penned at various dates. For the rest, the author agrees with Mr. George Augustus Sala, who, in one of his diverting prefaces, states that he would not mind abusing one of his own books, even as the Dey of Algiers, after Lord Exmouth had bombarded half the city into a mass of ruins, offered to bombard the other half, if the British Government would compensate him for his trouble ! " STREPHON." JBuxton, Sept., 1891. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Lighting a Jubilee Bonfire CHAPTER II. May on the Moors With the Wye CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. With the Wye (continued) PAGE I 23 36 CHAPTER V. With the Wye (continued) 47 CHAPTER VI. With the Wye (concluded) CHAPTER VII. Bagshawe's Cavern 63 x. Contents. CHAPTER VIII. PAGE About Axe Edge... ... ... ... ... ... ... 74 CHAPTER IX. About St. Anne's ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 82 CHAPTER X. Box Seat Views 94 CHAPTER XI. From Dore to Chinley, before the Railway 102 CHAPTER XII. Buxton One Hundred Years Ago ... ... ... ... 123 CHAPTER XIII. 4 Arbor Low, Lathkill Dale, and Rowtor Rocks 134 CHAPTER XIV. Charles Cotton's River 158 CHAPTER XV. The Descent of the Derwent ... ... ... ... ... 175 CHAPTER XVI. The Descent of the Derwent (continued) ... ... ... 180 CHAPTER XVII. The Descent of the Derwent (concluded) ... ... ... 193 CHAPTER XVIII. Moorland Sketches ... 220 Contents. XL CHAPTER XIX. PAGE Round About Belper 227 CHAPTER XX. A Garden Sketch 237 CHAPTER XXI. Above and Below Deep Dale 243 CHAPTER XXII. Voices from the Valley 257 CHAPTER XXIII. By Coach to Castleton 267 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Entrance to Dove Dale (Platinotype) ... ... ... Frontispiece Ashover Church ... ... ... ... ... ... ... i The "Cat and Fiddle" 18 Old Mill in Ashwood Dale " 39 Millers' Dale 46 Monk's Dale ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 48 The Stocks at Great Longstone 51 The Toad's Mouth ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 109 Ancient Cross in Eyam Churchyard ... ... ... ... 112 Tomb of Sir Thurston and Lady de Bower, Tideswell Church 113 Little John's Cottage, Hathersage ... 114 Station Master at Buxton 120 Assembly Room, Buxton, of last century 122 The Crescent, Buxton, in Coaching Days ... 125 Old Hall, Buxton, from the Gardens 129 Arbor Low 137 Cratcliff Tor 146 Walton and Cotton's Fishing House ... ... 168 Pack-Horse Bridge, Derwent Chapel 182 xiv. Illustrations. PAGE On the Derwent near Ashopton ... ... ... ... ... 185 Chatsworth 195 Lea Hurst ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 206 St. Mary's Bridge, Derby ... ... ... ... ... 215 Iron Gates to Old Silk Mill, Derby 217 Sawley Church ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 219 Moorland Farmhouse ... ... ... ... ... ... 226 A Bit of the Mills, Belper 229 Harry Newbold, the Bugler at the Buxton Gardens ... 241 Swans in Buxton Gardens ... ... ... ... ... 242 Deep Dale from the Buxton Road 246 The "Young Man" 252 LathkillDale 263 Peveril Castle and Great Peak Cavern, Castleton ... ... 271 PLATINOTYPE ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE " EXTRA EDITION," BY RICHARD KEENE. PAGE Dovedale ... ... Frontispiece Viaduct near Deep Dale ... ... ... ... 40 The Wye, below Flag Dale 45 Monsal Dale ... ... ... ... ... ... 52 Haddon Hall, from the West 57 The Wye, oelow Conksbury Bridge ... ... ... ... 145 Burbage Brook in Padley Wood ... ... ... ... 190 Chatsworth, from North- West .., ... ... ... ... 196 Cromford Weir ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 200 St. Mary's Bridge, Derby 216 Pictures of the Peak. Apart from the special circumstances of the hour that made the poetical quotation in the pulpit so acceptable and apposite, the introduction of passages from the master minds of English literature into sermons would serve to enrich and diversify many a bald discourse. The pinchbeck sentiment and platitudinous moralizing of the modern sermon would be relieved by the philosophy of Shakespeare, the imagery of Milton, and the tender feeling of Tennyson. When Moncure D. Conway occupied the pulpit at Finsbury Chapel, once the scene of the labours of the unflinching W. J. Fox, he introduced into his hymnology, poems from the highest writers of the day. Longfellow once visited this historic place of worship. He was unknown to pastor and people ; but he found to his astonishment and emotion the whole congregation singing from their hearts and with one voice his noble " Psalm of Life." When the Highland minister upbraided an elder for taking snuff during the sermon, the admonished saint promptly replied that the preacher should put some snuff into his sermon. There was a fine " pawky " rebuke in the suggestion that in itself is sufficient to demolish Sydney Smith's calumny that the Scotch possess no sense of humour. But, perhaps, the modern sermon is better than the discourses that prevailed when the Jubilee sermons of "Farmer" George were being preached in October, 1809, for then the ancient office of the "Sluggard Waker" was in existence. It was the business of this quaint functionary to keep the congregation from snoring when By the preacher perplex'd, How should they determine? "Watch and pray," says the text " Go to sleep," says the sermon. Our Parson's name is Nodder, and his hearers might be pardoned deriving some soporific influence from a name that has been held by successive Rectors of Ashover for generations. But there are no " nodders " in the pews while Macaulay's burning lines are tingling in our ears. It did not need, however, any recitation of past deeds to waken the loyal feeling of the people to a sense of their present duty. The men of the Ashover uplands and valleys have always been the patriotic sons of patriotic sires. In the old Lighting a Jubilee Bonfire. lead-mining days, rough and rude they may have been, as became the followers of a risky calling, demanding readi- ness for any emergency and nerve for any peril. They spoke with their fists. It was a blow first and an explanation afterwards. When Napoleon I. was massing his troops at Boulogne-sur-Mer to invade England, a regiment of King's Volunteers was soon raised in Ashover parish. An instructor of musketry was sent to teach this local contingent how to handle their fire-pieces ; but his services were not required, as he found that all the men could shoot ! Poaching pur- suits had taught them how to take sight and pull the trigger. It is the descendants of these sturdy fellows who are build- ing the beacons that are to flash their crimson messages from peak to peak and parish to parish until the Derbyshire heights look like a constellation of fire. The day of Jubilee, June 2ist, 1887, the longest day of the year. It has been a day so perfect that it might have been stolen from a poet's dream. It has been too free from cloud to suit a painter. The sky has been one sunny stretch of azure, and the sun has shone warm and bright upon woods in all the tender beauty of their summer foliage, still unstricken by excess of heat ; upon lanes that are honeyed banks of wild-flowers ; upon pastures glowing with butter- cups until they look like " fields of the cloth of gold." It has shone upon scenes of enjoyment so unforced in their festivity that they might have belonged to the unartificial days when England was " merrie England," and the snarl of the Puritan had not been heard in the land. And now the long glad day is dying, but the lavish light lingers as if loath to depart. The western sky is ablaze with many splendours of crimson and purple and gold. Streamers of ruby radiance spread into the expanse of clear blue heaven above and around. It is as if Sol were desirous to show what he can accomplish in the way of Jubilee conflagration, and after his blaze I am afraid our efforts will " pale their ineffectual fires." The passionate hues in the west gradually cool down, and soon reposeful chords of colour purples and violets -take the place of the fervid scarlets and burn- ing crimsons. Throughout the day the hills have been conspicuously near and clear, but dwarfed in altitude to mere banks owing to the vast space between the sparkling Pictures of the Peak. sky and their loftiest summits. But now that the sun-flame has sunk, the banks have again grown into mountains. From romantic Ravensnest, the old Manor House under the grim gritstone crags, to Overton Tor, where our bonfire is to be lit, is a pretty stiff ascent for ladies unaccustomed to the strange inequalities and dangerous surprises of the Ashover hills, to make in the darkling twilight, but they prove better mountaineers even than the pioneer of the party, who owns the land we are now exploring. The first stage of the climb is up what looks like a gigantic snow drift, for the slopes of the hill, nearly half-way to the summit, are spread with a substance of shining white many yards deep, here and there intersected with water-threads that make vocal the whispering stillness. If these little scattered ribbons of water the cradle-song of children were collected, they would make a magnificent waterfall. The snow that winter cannot make whiter, and summer sun only renders more glittering, is the debris from the exhausted Gregory Lead Mines which perforate the flinty ridge of dark, storm-rent, defiant crags that stretch from Ravensnest, past Overton to Bradley. There are few ranges of rocks in Derbyshire more impressive than these surly, sombre gritstone cliffs, loved only by fern and fir and pine, and almost unknown to the tourist. Lead mining at Ashover is a dead industry ; but a century ago no part of the Peak was more opulent underground. The glistening bits of flint slip beneath our feet as we struggle upward, and at last emerge among the scornful crags that guard the green, wooded valley that winds far away below in the stealthy twilight. The cool wind on this table top is as invigorating as the wine of the gods. Amid a chaos of black and inscrutable cromlech-like rocks and rocking- stones, scattered as if the Titans had been playing at skittles on a very gigantic scale, stands the bonfire with the colours on its summit flapping before a fifteen knot breeze. The fire is built up of tar barrels, dry and green timber, coal, and furze, arranged round a centre pole some twenty feet high. All the materials have been rendered more in- flammable by being smeared with petroleum or tar. A pennon flutters in high top-gallant style from a flag-staff" at the summit, and the green furze covering outside makes the Lighting a Jubilee Bonfire. structure look like an exaggerated edition of a rustic arbour, sacred to strawberries and cream. There is an expectant group of people standing under the shadow of the great rock that impends precipitously over the valley. The ancient building 500 feet below is Overton Hall, where Sir Joseph Banks botanized for years after he had gone round the world with Captain Cook. It is now the residence of Mr. Jessop, J.P. His wife is on this wind-scourged height to catch a glimpse presently, perhaps, of the beacon her father, Sir John Alleyne, Bart, will light at the Firestone, on the Chevin range, near Belper. There are twinkling lights in Ashover village, and the wind brings up to us snatches of music and echoes of laughter. The yellow splash of colour on the opposite hill-side comes from the windows of the Hydropathic Establishment, and the mass of dusky hill beyond, corresponding with the eminence on which we stand, is the Fabric, where a fire has been laid that in its solidity and substantial proportions should not soon become exhausted. But see ! what are those lambent lights in the direction of Clay Cross and the Erewash Valley ? Those are Jubilee bonfires already blazing, at points six or seven miles from us and one or two from each other. They appear to be but yellow lamps burning in the dusky night. Ever and anon a rocket soars above them and falls in a shower of golden rain. More rockets in the direction of Hardwick, and now a fire burns on the dark crest of hill at Bolsover Castle. Steadily burn these fires with a pale yellow light. They do not look as big as coke ovens. They rather remind you of ships' lights lying at anchor in a vast, dim shadowy sea. Bang ! Bang ! ! It is only the keeper firing two shots as a signal for the torch to be put to our tar barrels. With a sharp crackle, a hiss, and a roar up flies the fire in a gust of red flame. The wind, blowing straight across the valley, carries a million sparks among the trees. The smoke paints itself in lurid folds against the tranquil summer sky. In this impassioned outburst of burning sparks the sport of the strenuous north-east wind one is apprehensive of the trees and the undergrowth. The long lithe tongues of flame leap upward, licking the boiling tar with a feverish thirst ; the dull roar increases : the sparks are blown about in a hurri- Pictures of the Peak. cane of fire ; the billows of tinted smoke roll in waves of oceanic grandeur. Rembrandt, with his mastery of light and shadow ; Schalken, with his dramatic fire-light effects ; " Wright of Derby,"' with his cunning chiaroscuro, could not imagine a fire-picture like this. How startling in their strong relief, how livid in their weirdness, are the group of sightseers standing under the sombre, wrinkled rocks, with the living, leaping light bringing out strange expressions on- their faces, half-wistful, half-alarmed ! How every green leaf on the trees above grows blood-red with flame, and the bracken beneath becomes burnished, and the fir-needles gleam with metallic lustre ! How luminous are the reflec- tions on the opaque background ; how sharp the lights, how ebon the shadows. How distinctly is brought out every seam and scar in the Rocking Stone close by, called " Robin Hood's Mark," and how the vivid light penetrates the curious crevices under the Turning Stone, upon which the Druids kindled their sacrificial fires. The roar of the fire, the flutter of the sparks, the canopy of cloud, the circle of flame make up an illumination magnificent, tragic, awful. When this pillar of fire is answered by other fires Lord Byron's lines descriptive of a storm at night on the Lake of Geneva acquire a new meaning : The sky is changed ! and such a change ! Oh night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman ! far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder ! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud ! A dozen beacons now call to us from the wide Scarsdale Valley. Just to our left the austere mass of High Oredish has become bright with flame ; across the valley towards Beeley Moor, a steady light shines on Alicehead ; right opposite on the intervening hill the Fabric fire is aglow. Rocket after rocket ascends and falls in Danaean showers. Our own fire burns with a duller roar but a more crimson colour. The glare drives us to the footpath to the west where stands the lofty ruined tower known as the Overton Lighting a Jubilee Bonfire. Engine* From this isolated table is to be seen a panorama of thirty or forty beacon fires, like lighthouses on distant headlands. Forty miles of country is lit up at intervals as though it were a continuous street with lamps every few miles apart The lights on Masson, Barrel Edge, and Crich are the nearest The distant gleam on the southern horizon comes from Bardon HilL The fires in the north-west are at Stan ton Woodhouse and Birchover. It is a spectacle in the mystery of night under the silence of the solemn stars of refined beauty. Lovers of sensational effects will feel a sense of disappointment at these distant fires looking so small. There is no reflection in the sky perhaps because the night is so cold and clear and there are no clouds to mirror the fires, which seem to be suspended above the the world and throb like the fixed stars. In point of simple lurid splendour Sheffield on a November night, when all the great, roaring ironworks are aflame and the pulsating sky is now a sullen, smoky blood-red, and now a fervid crimson, as glow and gloom follow in bursting throbs from the furnaces, can produce a much more imposing fire-picture, one that might have inspired the "Inferno" of Dante, or have suggested a vision of poetic horror to the pencil of Gustave Dore, or a dream of red ruin to the tremulous pen of poor RossettL But if you want mere sensation, and that of a dangerous, not to say personal, character, it is close at hand. In fact, my friend, you are actually sitting upon it The rough stone slab on which you are now resting to watch the beacon fires, masks an awful pit, the depth and darkness of which is sensational enough to test the nerves of the strongest That decayed old isolated tower behind you, that looks romantic enough to have belonged to feudal times, is simply the building which a hundred years ago enclosed the Overton pumping engine to keep the water under in the mines that penetrate these hills for a distance of nearly a mile, at a depth of 400 yards from the surface. We drop a boulder into the abyss to make us fed the * Since these lines were in type this well-known landmark has been all but demolished. The old masonry has been employed for fencing purposes, although stone is so plentiful in the neighbourhood. Pictures of the Peak. thrilling depth. It plunges into the dark shaft with a haunt- ing, hollow sound, uncanny and sepulchral. Rumble rumble rumble a dash, as the stone collides against the slimy side of the rocky wall rumble rumble fainter now and then a hard, echoing crash, as it dives into the watery depths at the bottom, which it strikes with a solid impact. Stone after stone goes down with the same "dithery" results. The time of suspense seems a long one from the moment the stone is thrown until you hear that it has arrived at its dark and dismal destination. But the space is but five seconds. The sound is not that of a heavy plunge. It is as if the missile struck solid matter, instead of millions of tons of water. I have had many shuddering sensations in my time. I have been up in a balloon, and down in a coal-pit. I have witnessed a private execution, and watched a post-mortem examination. I have ridden upon an express engine at midnight, and been in a collision at sea ; but for the real " creeps " give me the sound of stones falling down the Overton shaft in the darkness as you lean over the suggestive abyss listening to the boulder drop drop drop until it plunges into the Stygian pool below. Perhaps the surroundings, the silence, the dim twilight hour, may have something to do with this strange experience. But the most unemotional mind would be stirred by such a place at such an hour. How it would have commended itself to poor Hugh Conway, with his love of mystery, and his com- mand of dramatic episode ! Let us hasten from this wild, weird spot, standing isolated among a region of knolls and peaks and moorland wilds. It is past midnight, and the air bites shrewdly, and the surroundings are " uncanny." Even Clytemnestra, waiting for Vulcan's bright flash from Ida, telling of the fall of Troy, would have hesitated sitting over the Overton shaft in the witching hour watching for the beacon signal. More- over, the fires are fading on the Matlock hills, and the far Peak is left to silence, solitude, and the stars. The moon and the planets look down with inscrutable unconcern on the fleeting fires of man. They have seen too many festive altars and burnt offerings to trouble about our Jubilee conflagrations. And now that the fires are becoming gray embers we have the stars to light us down home again to Lighting a Jubilee Bonfire. Ravensnest. Right overhead is Ursa Major. There is the festoon of stars that belong to Perseus. Andromeda and Cassiopeia are the other star clusters visible that suggest the romance of mythology, and contribute to the exactitude of science. The brightest star is Arcturus, shining with a rich orange yellow in the southern sky. That beautiful red star is not Mars, but Antares, the rival of the planet of war. The milky-way is faint and far, like diamond dust in the vast violet dome. As one penetrating star declines another rises, and a night spent each month on this lonely, lofty table-land near the sky would soon teach us to know the stars to be able, like Milton's hermit, to Sit and rightly spell Of every star that Heaven doth show. As we push down through the thickwood and boulders we break an intense silence. It is emphasized by the flight of the night-jar ; the vibrating whistle of the curlew ; the chatter of the "sedge-bird" the "fisherman's nightingale." We waken the lightest of sleepers, the plover, and away he starts with a " pee-wit ! pee-wit ! " startling some rabbits that scamper with rustling sound through the bracken, showing their white scuts. On the mossy banks by the field-path are little luminous lamps the pale phosphorescent gleam of our English fire-fly, the glow-worm. There is a sweet odour from the wild-flowers that enrich the night- time. Pleasant is the smell of the evening campion ; but even a more welcome fragrance is that of lavender, in the great, ghostly bedroom at Ravensnest, with its carved oak chests and chairs, and broad old staircase up which a fiery Rupert of the family in the Royalist days rode his charger. There are relics of those historic times in the sombre chamber ; and here I dream that I am assisting at a Jubilee reception. Mary, Queen of Scots, who has escaped from Winfield Manor, is busy in converse with young Bab- ington, of Dethick. Sir Joseph Banks is taking snuff with Parson Bourne, and listening to a full and true account of the sacking of Eastwood Hall by the soldiers of Oliver Cromwell, when suddenly Sir John Cell arrives from Hop- ton, and consigns us all to the Overton shaft, and I am the first to be thrown down with a rumble rumble rumble that dies away into sleep. Othaptcr II MAY ON THE MOORS. Sing hey for the moorlands, wild, lonely, and stern, Where the moss creepeth softly all under the fern ; Where tlie heather-flower sweetens the loue highland lea, And the mountain winds whistle so fresh and so free. T is a blithe baritone voice that trolls forth Edwin Waugh's lilting song as he climbs elastically up- stairs to a room at the top of a house 1,000 and more feet above sea-level. My enemies say that I have chosen this eyrie to give " elevation " to my literary style, and as the view from my desk is of " Solomon's Temple,"* without any intervening building, ill-natured * This familiar Derbyshire landmark, once as prominent as Crich Stand, Stanage Pole, the Hunting Tower at Chatsworth, or the ob- servatory at the top of Milford tunnel, has now (1889) disappeared. "Solomon's Temple" for years was little more than a cairn, and the few remaining portions of the ruined fabric have been removed by a farmer to fence his fields. The breezy height upon which it stood, so close to Buxton and yet commanding views so far away, will, of course, always go by the name of " Solomon's Temple." The " temple " itself was erected about 1830 by Mr. Philip Hancock, then the Duke of Devonshire's agent, for the purpose of affording employment to the labouring men of Buxton during the rigours of an exceptionally severe May on the Moors. ii sarcasm points to that sardonic monument of folly as my fountain of wisdom. Sing hey for the moorlands, wild, lonely, and stern. The Young Man is more buoyant and boyish than ever, although 70 years have blanched the flowing beard that gives a patriarchal appearance to a fine face. " The very morning for one of our old rambles and scrambles!" he exclaims. "What do say to a tramp over the moors to Macclesfield ? " I point to my occupations to the sheets of my unfinished treatise on " The Relation of Entity with the two Predicaments ; " but he shows me the sun prompting Nature's new effort at colour on the woodland slopes, and actually throws wide open the window. The message that the sweet, cool breeze brings is from the lark trilling high in the blue. Pens, ink, and paper otherwise livelihood on the one hand, and Life as taught by moorland solitudes and mountain streams on the other. It is a hesitating moment, decided by the appearance of the Lady Superior a duo- decimo edition of Divinity, who took first class honours at the exercise called " dictation " at school, and who has grown, at least two inches taller at hearing the Young Man's proposal that we should tramp it over the moors to Maccles- field. It had all been settled, it appears, before I was even consulted. The chair-back in Guipure d' Art had been thrown aside, and sandwiches cut. What is the use of temptation, unless you give way to it? At Burbage you have the choice of two roads to reach the Cat and Fiddle, the half-way house between Buxton and Macclesfield. The lower, or the old road, is a mile shorter, and is far more picturesque. Rugged, wild, and rocky, the Buxton flymen avoid it ; but it was the coaching winter, and when outdoor work was scarce. It was built as an object tower, and at an elevation of 1,510 feet above sea-level. Castellated in shape, unfortunately the whole of the structure was built of rubble limestone, unmortared. Wind and weather were not long in attacking so exposed a building, and, through various processes of disintegration, it became at last a tumble-down heap of stones. It derived its sobriquet from the land on which it was built being in the occupation of a quaint old Peakrel, one Solomon Mycock, and the nickname was Pickwickian in its application. i 2 Pictures of the Peak. route in the olden times. If you pursue this disused high- way, you have the river Goyt part of the way to keep you voiceful company, and you are rewarded with a surpassing view of Goyt's Clough, a Highland glen just placed where Derbyshire and Cheshire are disputing as to which county should have the right to such a bewitching transcript of scenery. The Young Man, however, is of opinion that the new road will, after the heavy rains, be in a better con- dition, and so we pass under the bridge of the High Peak Railway to the right of the Leek turnpike. The scene here is more industrial than picturesque. Grin Cliff is being rapidly removed by one of the limestone companies that are doing so much to discredit Derbyshire scenery by their destructive operations. Half of this stupendous hill has been removed ton by ton from the High Peak to the low- lands. If the despoilers are permitted to break the crest of the hill, they will obliterate Poole's Hole, even as a much finer cavern Fern Cavern was "improved off" the face of the earth by Messrs. Gradgrind and Company, and all the idea a future generation will have of its grim grandeur and ghastly gloom will be the photographs that have been taken by means of artificial light of the interior. Poole's Hole has made a capital " dark room " for the collodionists ; but it is a trifle too damp and dripping for " dry plates." The Young Man takes the part of the Capitalists as we view this remarkable scene of activity. " A thousand families," he pleads, " live out of this limestone cliff, which Provi- dence has placed in this rugged spot to be distributed by Man's industry all over the kingdom : to the farmer to fertilize his fields, to the builder to whom bricks are useless without lime, and to the ironworker to whom lime is as essential as coal." The Lady Superior is struck with the cleanliness of the cottages, which should be the envy of the arti/ans of large towns. Yet the time is not very remote when the lime-burners of Burbage lived in burrows in the hillside, like the ancient " cave-men," ' or the Troglodytes of Kthiopa. An ancient writer compared these whimsical habitations to a rabbit warren, and called the colony of huts a "burrow" without a "corporation." The High Peak Railway locomotives fussy, little tank engines are skir- mishing over cindery and sooty sidings, and ever and anon May on the Moors. 13 advancing and retreating in the direction of a tram-line that seems to emulate Archimedes in its attempt to square the circle. The tram-line, however, gives up the geometrical proposition in despair, and accordingly loses itself in a low-level coal-mine under Axe Edge. The entrance to this abysmal place is a dark aperture in the rock as dismal as the cave of the Polypheme. Axe Edge is a mountain perforated with mole-like coal burrows. The martello-like towers you see now and again high up on the hill are walls built round old ventilating shafts. It is these coal- measures that discolour so indelicately the Wye at its source, and give it that obnoxious ochre complexion that makes the the river anything but a stream of beauty in the Buxton Gardens. Here and there on the Cheshire side the coal asserts itself on the surface. A shaly, slaty kind of coal is to be acquired for the trouble of picking. It is of inferior quality, but sufficiently caloric to boil the kettles and warm the hearths of these hardy, hill-side cottagers, although there is an eternity of peat at their doorsteps which would make glad the home of Scottish crofters. Mention of the cottagers, whose whitewashed little homes twinkle in the sunshine, and at night show to the traveller cheery rays of yellow light touchingly eloquent of snug domestic comfort, provokes the Young Man into telling a story at least half a mile long. Pointing to one of these lonely habitations he says : " Here resided John Wain who was shooting grouse about half a century since with Matthew Lees. The birds flew across the valley, when John said, ' Matthew ! Mark ! ! ' and Matthew in his eagerness shouted, ' Look, ! John ! ! ' ' without any intentional reference to the four evangelists. In the meantime, we have passed to the left on the roadside a curious limestone crusher of the olden time a ponderous stone disc of considerable circumference, with a stout, steel tire. A shaft is inserted through the middle of the wheel, and it has been worked on the mill-horse principle. But now, like the old Temeraire, it is at rest. Good service, no doubt, it rendered in the old lime-burning days, when the crushed lime was conveyed to the adjoining counties in bags on the backs of horses and mules over the bleak zig- zag moorland paths. We are noticing the contrast between this primitive appliance and the modern, steam-driven 1 4 Pictures of the Peak. machinery that crushes up with relentless iron jaws huge blocks of limestone, chewing up so many hundred tons a day with teeth that never tire and with "an appetite that grows with eating," as Gargantua hath it in Rabelais, when the Lady Superior attracts our attention by her sweet con- fidences with the healthy, wholesome-looking children with perambulators. These rosy urchins are not wheeling babies, but baskets of newly-washed clothes. The vehicles are two and three storeys high, and the clothes are on their way to the hotels and houses of Buxton. They have been washed at the cleanly cottages that give such a tender human in- terest to the inhospitable hills. And now we are on the moors, that rise and fall in billows like the swell of the ocean suddenly arrested and petrified in its motion. These moors limited as they are extend to some score square miles, and give an impression of immensity akin to the wilds of Khiva. As Matthew Arnold says, Here abides a place of Thine Man did not make and cannot mar. It is a musical solitude. The wind here is always audible. Sometimes it is a shrieking crescendo ; to-day it is a most caressing cadence. There is the liquid lisping of rivulets the trickling water-threads from Axe Edge that are little feeders of the Wye and the Goyt ; the tremulous bleating of lambs ; the hum of bees (although the coltsfoot and the lesser celandine are the only wild-flowers we have seen); the plaintive cry of the pee-wit ; and the estatic song of larks innumerable, singing as if their little hearts would burst for very joy. Now and again from the very sod at our feet one of these divine minstrels, so plain and small, so shabby of appearance but so overflowing of soul and song, will rise until it is poised invisible in the lapis-lazuli light of heaven- poised as Shelley heard it : Till nothing but a voice, a song remains, A song suspended like a star in heaven. The blackcock and grouse, which are such a feature on these undulating moors, are silent to-day. These birds are <; nesting," and no breechloaders disturb them in their seclusion. May on the Moors. 15 " Some people " breaks in the Young Man " say that the view from this Axe Edge road (the Macclesfield turn- pike is carried over the shoulders of the mountain) is dreary and monotonous, and lacks variety and character. But look at the view ! " And behold ! there in the north-east Kinderscout throws its burly bulk across the distant sky- line, a dusky gray ; Mam Tor, at Castleton, more individual in character, sketches its outline between that morose mountain and the gritstone edges Bamford, Millstone, Froggatt, Curbar, and Baslow that rise above the Derwent, and take the eye southward towards the moorland heights above Matlock. Cloud and sunshine play with the scene, as gray shadow alternates with silverygleam, and the distant outlines are now blotted out from the picture, to be as suddenly restored by a great burst of vivid light that travels across the landscape. The white clouds of smoke from the lime-kilns at Burbage, and Peak Forest and Dove Holes further away suggest that these places are extensive batteries commanding a battlefield. Ever and anon the booming reverberations, that follow the firing of a dynamite charge, endorse the fanciful delusion. The scenery at our feet and around us in this treeless region to the eye unfamiliar with Nature's chromatic scale would seem to be of a cheerless brown ; but there are really more colours in it than ever Turner had on his palette. Taken as a mass, the moors are a rich, velvety bronze ; but there are delicate greens and dreamy grays, dusky reds and russets, oranges and purples, golden sheens and silvery whites, burnt umbers and lamp blacks half-tints and semi- tones now dull under strong cloud shadows, now burnished in sunburst, and melting away imperceptibly in the misty, soft, faint, far-away blue. Heath, gorse, moss, lichen, ling, bog myrtle, bracken, and the various bilberries projecting rock, pool of water, patch of pasture land, and peaty bog reeds, rushes, sedges, and coarse grasses, have all con- tributed their mixed threads and diverse fibres for Nature to weave together in this vast brocade, this embroidered arabesque so stern and wild, and withal so calm and harmonious. At the corner of one of the roads that stretch wide and wild and white through the dusky moors, diminishing, 1 6 Pictures of the Peak. perhaps, into a rut-worn cart track to an isolated farm, is a moss-grown trough. There is the sound of water, and tremulous tributaries have grown from tinkling traceries of moisture into a tiny torrent that fills this way-side well. Some gipsies have lit a fire here and are cooking something in an iron pot suspended from an impromptu tripod, while they are weaving baskets from dry rushes and making brooms from the heath. The wreaths of reek from their smouldering fire, curling to heaven, are in their pale, ethereal blueness, the very poetry of smoke. On the edge of the moor, where the heathery waves break against the sky-line, is a whitewashed cottage, that might be a light- house overlooking the 'ocean ridges. It, too, burns its filmy incense, and tells a tale of domestic comfort. One thinks of the opening of Lamartine's " Jocelyn," where On voyait la fumee en colonnes d'azur, De chaque humble foyer monter dans un ciel pur. It is a family party, with a great-grandmother and a sleeping infant in the group, picturesque in its squalor and bright in its rags. The wrinkled old crone smokes the shortest and blackest pipe we ever saw (and the Lady Superior confesses to the knowledge of certain " Broseleys " of remarkable degrees of uncleanliness). There is freemasonry among smokers, and the Young Man offers the witch his pouch. " You are fond of a short pipe ? " he says cheerily. " Yes, it's close to my comfort," she replies, pulling away at a stumpy stem about an inch long, with a fiery bowl about half an inch from her respectable gray moustache. This Macclesfield road is the highest public highway in England, and the isolated house a mile in front of us, breaking the sky-line, is the Cat and Fiddle, standing " four square to every wind that blows." Our friend, Mr. M. J. B. Baddeley, B.A., whose "Thorough Guide Series" justify their title, says: "The occupants of the Cat and Fiddle consider them- selves to be 1,966 feet above the sea, but we venture to deduct some 250 feet from this reckoning, and even then we leave them the proud satisfaction of beating the reputed 'highest house' the Traveller's Rest, on the Kirkstone Pass, in Westmoreland by fully 200 feet, and of rivalling, if not overtopping, a still greater celebrity in point of height the May on the Moors. 17 shooting-box of Corrour Lodge, in Perthshire, between which and the sea-level the perpendicular measurement is 1,700 feet." As the road ascends, tall, gaunt posts are erected at intervals to denote the road in snow-time and prevent the dazed traveller falling into the deep gullies, inky with peat, that are pitfalls by the wayside. Here and there at the more precipitous ravines a stone-wall screen has been erected for this purpose. Otherwise the heather grows to the edge of the road, and the wide track, without hedge or fence, seems like a line of white thread stretched across the great brown moors."* Very beautiful is this land of heather after a great snowstorm. It is a world of witching whiteness. But not beautiful when the white storm makes everything distant and darkling ; not beautiful when the snow is blown in powdery particles that are blinding in their force ; not beautiful when the wind in its wild carousal robs you of your breath. The Young Man illustrates the significance of these snow-posts by a story. In the winter of 1880, Samuel Hargreaves, a packman of Macclesfield, who still regularly visits the solitary farm-houses and colliers' cottages on the Highlands of Cheshire and Derbyshire, left his house in Macclesfield on the Sunday about four in the afternoon, with his bags of calicoes and sundries slung across his shoulders, for the usual fortnightly round. It was raining slightly when he started, and the rain turned to snow as he approached the hill ; but he strode manfully on determined to reach Burbage. Things were serious when he passed the Cat and Fiddle, where, being a teetotaller, he did not seek shelter. He strode sturdily and stubbornly forward in the blinding snow. Before he reached the cottages which stand a little off the road, about a mile and a half from the Cat and Fiddle, he had become snow-blind, and almost in- sensible. But he still pursued his mechanical walk. He had, however, lost his way ; but still, as his numbed senses made him think, walked on, and on, and on in a straight direction. In reality he was walking in a circle, like a mill horse, and trudged all through that night, and all the next day, blind, inarticulate, frozen. The umbrella he carried was worn away a foot from the ferrule by frequent indenta- * The old road is fenced with stone walling throughout. B i8 Pictures of the Peak. tions in the snow, and when the nearly perished pedestrian was discovered by one of the neighbouring cottagers at six o'clock on the Monday evening, after being twenty-six hours on foot, he was standing, his poor feet still trying to go, and the mill-track trodden into a hard and frozen path. Removed to the nearest house restoratives were applied with effect, and a few days' nursing made him all right again. He still follows his trade in the hills ; but his arms for long afterwards were stiff and numbed, while his legs, which had saved his life, were not much punished. A carriage from Buxton passes us just before we reach the Cat and Fiddle. Its inmates, although covered with shawls and rugs, are shivering with cold. (The date is the 4th of May, 1888.) They are evidently not accustomed to the thin, fluent air and ozone-laden breezes of these mountainous moorlands. A pause at the Cat and Fiddle, which is in Cheshire, a mile from the Derbyshire frontiers. A square weather-beaten house of grim, gray stone, with a sentry-box-like porch with doors at either side to protect the inner front door from the bombardment of the wind. The feline sign of the house is carved in stone over the portals ; and in the front room there is a painting in oils, by one of the Van Daub school, of a grinning Grimalkin, with a tail of remarkable convolution, seated on a chair, playing a fiddle before an open window. The musical score placed before May on the Moors. 19 the performer is " Home, sweet Home," and the apartment has violent green walls relieved by a dado of excruciating white. The picture is signed "George Peters, Epsom, Surry (sic), 1826." On the table in this front room is a Visitors' Book full of Colney Hatch doggerel, and the window is scratched all over with the names of the Great Unknown anxious to remind an indifferent world that they wear diamond rings. The late Duke of Devonshire, who was fond of driving up to the Cat and Fiddle, once asked old Cotterel, a former landlord, to whom the house belonged. "To the Grimshaws, of Errwood, your grace." "I thought it was mine," said the carekss Cavendish, lighting his pipe. " If it had been, I meant building you an hotel here." The Duke gave his humble host a photograph from a portrait of his favourite long-haired Russian cat with a fiddle by its side. It is an heirloom in the family, and the last time I was at Goyt's Moss the photograph was shown me with no little pride. The situation of the Cat and Fiddle is just the place for a comfortable little hotel. The altitude, the purity of the air, and the scenic surroundings would recommend such a caravanserai alike to invalids and pleasure seekers. The modern school of medical science recommends an elevation of 1,800 to 2,000 feet above sea- level as a restorative in invalided conditions, and even in advanced pulmonary cases. Such an eminent authority as Dr. Hyde is of opinion that people suffering from con- sumption have more chance of recovery in a thin, fluent mountain air than they have in places where the atmosphere is blander and less rarified. While the Young Man, to the edification of the Lady Superior, is indulging in etymological speculations as to the meaning of the Cat and Fiddle (I catch something he is saying about Catherine la fidele) let us behold the view westward across the green undulating plain of Cheshire. The gauzy line between land and sky, with black dots upon it, is the Mersey ; and those spectral clouds to the south are the Welsh mountains. The carriage party are reading the view from a guide-book, and are in ecstasies at seeing the Mersey under such exceptional conditions. But it is the Gawsworth reservoirs, a few miles away, that they take for the great tidal river. 20 Pictures of the Peak, It may be claimed for the second half of the journey from Buxton to Macclesfield that it possesses more variety and picturesque charm than the first portion, together with atmospheric effects that are the despair of landscape painters. The moorland scenery continues of the same character, although we are now in the region known as Macclesfield Forest. " Forest ! " exclaims the Lady Superior, "Where are the trees?" This gives the Young Man a chance of once more enlightening our darkness. " ' Ad foras,' " he begins, " or out of doors ? " " The old forests were not so called because of their trees, but on account of their uncultivated state." Peak Forest is cited to illustrate his meaning, although Charnwood might have been brought up in evidence against him. The scenic interest is con- centrated in the " Tors," a hilly range that is really a con- tinuation of Axe Edge. A series of rocky escarpments, dramatically wild and bold, they are of great physical, archaeological, and geological interest. The highest ridge is " Shining Tor," which reaches the respectable altitude of 1,837 feet. Eastward of the conical peaks called Park Hill and Croom, the soft valley of the Dove imparts a strange contrast between fertile cultivation and wild barren- ness. It is worth while stepping down hill to visit Forest Chapel. It is a gray stone building, with a small tower and saddle-back roof. The porch bears the date 1673 ; but the " restorers " have robbed this little church among the mountains of much of its old quaint charm. If we were epitaph hunters, we might soon add to our note-books. One of the graves shows that its inmate reached the age of 105 years. To die at the age of three-score years and ten in the Forest seems to be a premature departure, as the following inscription will testify : " You readers all, both old and young, your time on earth will not be long ; for like a lily fresh and green, I was cut down and no more seen." This verdant specimen of humanity only lived to be 72 ! The incumbent of the Chapel is the well-beloved Rev. G. E. Freeman, the parson of Wild Boar Clough, and the popular " Peregrine " of the Field. An authority on falconry, he here revived the ancient sport, and flew his hawks at fur and feather. Step we out now sturdily down hill. We meet a " bit " May on the Moors. of character on the road. More gipsies. A "scissors to grind" man, shockingly short, pushing in front of him a one-wheeled machine ; another man, disgracefully tall, with large pedlar's baskets on each arm ; and two women, with olive complexions, flashing dark eyes, and tangled hair, wind-blown and jet black. The touches of red in their tartan shawls impart to their appearance a picturesque colour, set off by an amazing breadth of chest and a free and swinging gait. The Young Man wonders how the Wheel Tax will affect the grinder, and the Lady Superior speculates as to which of the two men has the hardest task Ixion and his wheel, or Christian with his heavy burden. The party seem healthy and happy, and at the Setter Dog Inn, three miles from Macclesfield (the milk is excellent) we find that they take broad views on bread and cheese and beer, and that the men, though rough of exterior, are kind-hearted in seeing after the wants of their wives. By no means wanting in intelligence are these itinerants. They recall Cobbett's shrewd saying " If you want to learn how clever a plough-boy is, put a philosopher to the plough-tail." How mighty pleasant in the summer- time must be this nomad life ! You have no transit expenses beyond shoe-leather, no baggage in excess of what could be carried in a pocket-handkerchief; no hotel ex- penses, for a " doss " under a hayrick would bring dreamless sleep that a millionaire might envy. You are your own master ; you pay neither rent nor rates ; Schedule B of the Income Tax carries with it no terrors ; you are independent of Schools for Scandal ; you snap your fingers at the social Star Chamber and its verbal vivisections ; you kick aside the conversational rack on which Mrs. Grundy tortures her victims " We amble down the country dales On easy pads, my friends and I ; We live an easy life, no cloud assails, With property in sun, and stars, and sky. * * * * Our charter is the poet's passion ; It separates us from the place Where men cut throats with golden knives, where Fashion Makes copyright the lie on Folly's face. 22 Pictures of the Peak. Our patrons are the moon and sun, The visible earth, and that sublime, Indefinable sense of things undone, Which draws one's godhead out, and makes him climb." The Young Man, when we are once more on the highway, would induce us to turn vagrants for a month, just to wander down country lanes and by the side of grand old rivers, through cathedral closes and moss-grown villages with half-timbered houses, to study rural life and rustic character, to learn all about the flowers and the birds, the rain, the sunshine, and all beautiful colours. What splendid freedom, what a flavour of Bohemia ! There would be no feverish walking against Time, no straining to " beat record." A book, the Lady Superior, with a keen eye to business, suggests should be the result of such happy-go-luckie loiter- ings. What do you think of " Wanderings with a Watercress Gatherer," or " Rambles with Romanies/' or " Pilgrimages with a Pedlar," or " Tramps with a Tinker ? " Of the present tramp, however, little remains to be said. The promontories in front are Teggs Nose (1,300) and Eddisbury (1,000 ft.) hilly barriers sentinelling Maccles- field, and dominating an extent of landscape that includes the Wrekin in Shropshire, and the Snowdon range in Wales. Beyond the busy manufacturing town, the steep, curving cliff called Alderley Edge, dark with fir-woods and diversified with bold, rocky bluffs, adds beauty to the surroundings. Au resfe, we book, via the Middlewood curve for Buxton. The Young Man shortens the railway journey with recondite references to the Great Anticlinal Fault in the geological strata from Buxton to Macclesfield, and appeases our hunger with solid lumps of mountain limestone, millstone grit, and Yoredale rock served in lower coal measures. He excites the interest of the Lady Superior in a surprising degree when he speaks of the " Dolmens " found on the hills we have traversed. But I will not betray her ignorance ; for she appears all the more vigorous and vivacious after what, in the case of such a fourpenny piece sort of person, Belfs Life might, without exaggeration, pronounce as " pedes- trianism extraordinary." Othapter HI. ]HE people who make so much of Well-Dressings in the Peak of Derbyshire can care little about the sanctity of water." These reproachful words are spoken in the Buxton Gardens on an inspiring morning in the third week of June. They do not proceed as might be supposed from a sour misanthrope, disappointed with the world, or deceived by a woman, from an aged hypochondriac, who has left his liver in India, from a gouty valetudinarian in a bathchair wearing list-slippers. No ; the perverse observa- tion comes from a clear-eyed, innocent Philosopher in Flounces, who, because of her decisive, not to say despotic manner, is known as the Lady Superior. Now, no one yields to her in love of the Buxton Gardens ; and surely on this sunny summer morning, when to live is a delight, with the sun lying warm and still on the emeraldine lawns, and not a breath of wind to break the reflection of the rhodo- dendrons and azaleas in the glassy surface of the river pools ; with the trees a study of spring tints, and voiceful with bird music, and the bold moorland environments that close in upon this beautiful domain, standing out clear-cut against the blue and silvery sky, whose white, wide spaces the larks are filling with full-throated trills and tremors of song ; with 24 Pictures of the Peak. well-dressed idlers laughing and chatting and listening to the dreamy music of the great tone-masters ; surely, surely this is not the scene for ungrateful views of men and manners. But did not a serpent enter the Garden of Eden, and was there not the fearful dragon Ladon in the Garden of the Hesperides ? Probably there were spiders and other ungracious things in Celia's Arbour; while we know that Armida's Garden and the Bower of Proserpine had disen- chanting drawbacks. " Well-Dressings," continues this Parasol Potentate, ad- dressing the Young Man, " have degraded an innocent and interesting custom of a religious character into little better than a vulgar wake." She passed him the programme of the Buxton Carnival, which is a fete lasting three days. This kindly Nestor reads that "world-renowned Morris-dancers" will be engaged for this occasion ; that "experienced artistes" (sic) will decorate the wells ; that there will be fireworks, military bands, donkey racing, old English sports, and many other diversions. "No," he observes, "there is some danger of a time-honoured observance falling into disrepute, be- cause the old-world meaning and moral of paying respect to springs is not sufficiently understood. The poor, be- nighted beings, whom the superfine folk of the present day dismiss as Pagans such as Plato and Socrates held their rivers in high reverence. Their well-dressings, the ancient Fontinalia, were a sort of sacrament. Chaplets were thrown into the springs as tributes to truth and purity, for un- polluted water was regarded as Nature's emblem of chastity. But we over-civilized people are too sophisticated for such rustic simplicity. We think that the rivers should be robbed of their romance by rubbish, and the laughing joyance of mountain streams sobered with sewage. If the limestone tors have been fashioned by Nature into cathedral-like spires and minarets, we think them too fantastic, and topple them down with dynamite into a limekiln. If the grass is sweet-smelling and green, we make it less sentimental by toning down its velvet verdure with furnace-ashes and brick- dust. We are such practical, uncompromising, utilitarian people, with no silly nonsense about us. The teachings of ' progress and civilization ' had not reached the benighted beings mentioned by Milton in Cotus, where he represents With the Wye. 25 the people honouring their river-goddess, the good and beautiful Sabrina : The shepherds at their festivals Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays, And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils.' This would be a curious botanical offering to present in one bouquet, as the pansy, the pink, and the daffodil do not bloom together. But no matter. Shakespeare is guilty of similar anachronisms." The Lady Superior takes up the argument with unneces- sary vehemence, although there is truth in her contentions when she says "The spiritual character and quaint sim- plicity of Well-Dressings is maintained only at Tissington. Ascension Day is dedicated to the observance of the ancient custom. The five natural springs in this idyllic village are decorated with flowers, until each well is like unto a beautiful bride on her marriage morn. Well-Dressings else- where in Derbyshire have degenerated into a saturnalia of Aunt Sallies and shooting galleries. Drinking fountains are decorated to give an excuse for a holiday. Special trains bring thousands of excursionists to the Wirksworth ' Tap ' Dressings each Whit-Wednesday. After partaking freely of the ' tap,' the trippers invade the Via Gellia valley, and because the lilies of the valley are 'not out' revenge themselves by tearing up the roots." One of us, who has been watching the wild-fowl, but listening to the talk, points to the state of the Wye in the Buxton Gardens, and asks if that thick and nasty ochre discolourment cannot be taken out of the water. " Well," replies the Young Man, " if it cannot be entirely removed it can be considerably modified. Have you seen the source of this disagreeable yellow fluid ? " Now this question was really an invitation for a tramp to the springs of the Wye, which we made the same day, and which led the next morning to our following the fascinating little river downward from Buxton to its confluence at Rowsley with the more staid and stately Derwent, an alli- ance that is irresistibly likened by travellers, who have never been on the Continent, to the junction of the Rhone and Saone. 2 6 Pictures of the Peak. The Wye yields only to the Dove as the most bewitching of rivers in the Peake Countrie, and possesses characteristics denied to the more placid stream. It is purely a Derby- shire river. There is a Yorkshire flavour about the Derwent as it rises amid the Penistone Moors. The Trent divides the counties of Derby and Leicester, and the Dove is the line of demarcation between Derby and Stafford, just as the Goyt separates Derby from Cheshire. But the Wye from Axe Edge to Rovvsley never leaves its native county. The early life of the river is distinctively Derbyshire in its training. It is born amid the wild doughs and reedy hollows of Axe Edge, and you may see its tributary rills running down the heathery slopes with mountain swiftness. But they disappear, like other Peak streams, underground. The childhood of the Wye is spent in darkness, and only when it has burst its barriers, do you see its sunny gleam giving a new light and grace to the gray landscape. Several North Derbyshire limestone streams possess the same caprice. The limestone region is burrowed with water " swallows ; " and Mr. Ruskin's careful study of this habit of our streams is shown in these words " But Derbyshire is a lovely child's alphabet, and powerful chiefly in the way it engages and fixes the attention. ... It was a meadow a minute ago, now it is a cliff, and in an instant is a cave, and here was a brooklet, and now it is a whisper tinder- ground ; turn but the corner of the path, and it is a little green lake of incredible crystal ; and if the trout in it lifted up their heads and talked to you, you would be no more surprised than if it was in the Arabian Nights." In America larger rivers have worked like moles, and thus honeycombed the earth with their waterways beneath the hills ; and the Spanish Quadalquiver furnishes an instance of an important stream losing itself in the ground, -and bursting out again some distance away. The Wye is a companionable little stream. It articulates pretty secrets to its lover. It takes you into its confidences. It whispers its confessions. But you must not leave its side. There are deep pools in which you may lave your limbs, and let the cool water wash its refreshing way through your heated brain and over-wrought nerves. There is no boating; and if you leave the river for the road you lose With the Wye. 27 its most captivating scenes. With its serpentine-windings the Wye may be twenty-five miles long. A water-bailiff would follow every sinuosity of its course and regard it as an ordinary day's work. What other river in the world is there that can give you, in such a short distance, such romantic revelations and scenic surprises, from austere moorland to wild rocky glens, thence to placid pastoral prospects, where the water has a glassy smoothness, and green woods cover gentle slopes, and golden-green meadows glow in the sunlight ? Two Wyes of distinct and diverse individuality enter Buxton. The lucid water that reflects every twig and leaf and grass blade on the western side of the Gardens, and which feeds the lake, so transparent and shining as to look like a damascened shield, is one Wye, whose fretting sound may be heard in the dark abysmal distances of Poole's Hole, even as the Styx tinkles with a weird sound in the Peak Cavern at Castleton. The water flowing sluggishly in front of the Pavilion, of such a dirty yellow complexion (not the rich, flashing cairngorm colour imparted to water by mountain mosses), comes from Axe Edge, and has been discoloured in flowing through the shale of the Burbage coal measures. There is a coalition of the two streams at the last bridge in the Gardens, where the bright limestone Wye makes a silvery cascade as it springs down a grotto into the yellow Wye, dividing the united current into two contradictory colours, before it is inveighled into the sewer- like opening under the Square, where it has further subterra- nean experiences under the Crescent and the Grove. One sighs to think of the artistic advantages lost in thus culverting the stream. Imagine it flowing through the heart of the town, reflecting patches of blue sky and kissing the greenery hanging from its banks ! But somebody, many years ago, with a positive genius for the perpetuation of the supreme ugly, ordained otherwise. What should have led to a breach of the peace was condoned, and the sprightly river was treated as a thing to be put out of sight. The Wye, none the clearer for its rat-like burrowing, emerges in Spring Gardens, to be refreshed by the addition of the Hogshaw, a whimpling burn cradled amid the ozone of Combs Moss. More ill-treatment and torture await the 28 Pictures of the Peak. innocent river at the Gas and Sewage Works near the entrance to Ashwood Dale, where science, civilization, and progress having " purified " the sewage of the town, turn the liquid residuum into the stream. But the Wye possesses wonderful recuperative powers, and speedily recovers itself to make of Miller's Dale a painter's dream of scenery. 'We will follow it down the dales another day, and the Lady Superior shall sing "And Monsal, thou mine of Arcadian treasure, Need we seek for Greek islands and spice-laden gales, While a Temple like thee, of enchantment and pleasure, May be found in our own native Derbyshire dales." Our present exploration is to the fountain heads. " This is just what I told you ! " exclaims her Ladyship, as we stand at Wye Head, on the old road to Burbage. " Here is Derbyshire with its Well-Dressings to deify water, and look how people defile it ! " The sight was not a pleasant one. The Wye at this picturesque point emerges into day- light from the gloomy horrors of Poole's Cavern, three fields away to the left of the road, its course being marked by the indentations and undulations of the ground, just as mining operations leave winding hollows on the surface. The little river here enjoys its first sensation of light and life and liberty ; but its exuberance is half choked with such festive offerings as kettles and pans, broken pottery and filthy rags. Just below Wye Head it is dammed up into a small mere, which is nearly silted up. Seven weedy, mossy steps of considerable depth make a cascade of crescent shape, and the river finds its way into the lush meadows below. At a place called Warm Wells a tepid spring joins the Wye. There is the humid, steamy air of a hot bath about the fissure in the rocks where this thermal contribution trickles out. Luxuriant is the growth of marsh-marigold and other aquatic plants. Watercresses abound. In the depth of winter the temperature of the water at this place is never below 60 Fahrenheit, and in days of severe frost it is a favourite haunt of snipe and other shy wild-birds that have their own private and peculiar opinions concerning towns as places of civilized abode. With the Wye. 29 As we walk up the white and dusty Burbage Road to the breezy altitudes of Axe Edge, there occurs an etymological controversy. Now, etymology is not one of the exact sciences, and I somewhat incline to the opinion of Voltaire, who said that it was a science in which the vowels counted for nothing and the consonants for very little. But I contend that the Wye .derives its name from the Celtic gwy, signifying water. The Lady Superior, who knows as much about local nomenclature as she does about the square of the hypotenuse, advances an alphabetical theory. She says the Wye has been so called because its shape resembles the letter which is sometimes a vowel and sometimes a consonant. The Young Man, however, has quite a novel interpretation of the force and meaning of the word. He tells us that the sources of the Wye are three in number, called respectively /, Thou, He, and when this trinity becomes unity its singular name becomes the plural We, now changed to Wye. But no matter. Neither the Lady Superior or the Young Man is fond of etymology, or any other ology. George Dawson confessed that he hated the- ology, and geology, and botany ; but that he loved religion, the rocks, and the flowers. Science and sentiment, however, need not be thus divorced. George Dawson, sneering at fossils and ferns with Latin names indispensable for their proper classification, is quite as one-sided and narrow- minded as Gradgrind, exact and unemotional, without heart or soul, who reads the book of Nature as he would a philosophical treatise, or balances it as he would his ledger. The love of Beauty ought surely to go hand in hand with the laws of Science. In the meantime, I observe that the Lady Superior has plucked a handful of speedwells as blue as her own eyes, or the azure of the sky above. The forget- me-not, the wild rose, and the edelweiss, the flower of the glacier, have their tender legends. Do you know that the speedwell (veronica] has a pretty literary fragrance ? The poetical conceit attached to this wayside flower is that it is called after St. Veronica, the compassionate maiden who wiped the face of Our Saviour on the morning of the crucifixion, her handkerchief for ever bearing the image of the martyred Christ. But here we are on the slopes of Axe Edge, above 30 Pictures of the Peak. Burbage, with its mountainous tip of limestone debris, rising almost to the level of the lofty chimney stalk on the top of the cliff. Strong sunlight and sombre shadow now make the great rock vivid and near, now brown and distant, and the heather and ling now a bright green or a rusty bronze. Water-threads percolate moor and moss, and the little reservoir at Ladmans Low is really fed by one of the tributaries of the Wye. Axe Edge is the watershed of five rivers the Dove and Manifold, the Dane, the Goyt, and the Wye ; but you look in vain for any actual brook gushing with poetical wave and impressive sound from some projecting crag. The rivers on this wild table-land of peat and bog are but mere tricklings, whose liquid lispings you can just hear in the summer silence and solitude, when the wind is not stirring the rushes and bracken, and when the peewits cease their petulant: cry, and the grouse and blackcock their frightened call. Their articulations as they pass, fair-hidden yet full-confessed, in topaz-coloured clear- ness from peaty pool to peaty pool are not much stronger than the hum of wild-bees ; but on every side you may hear their murmuring whispers. These spacious uplands are Nature's reservoir, supplying the domestic, agricultural, and commercial needs of the community of three counties ; but the vast storage seems to hold its fluvial resources in suspension. There are no rushing torrents to be seen or heard only gentle traceries of moisture ; yet to reclaim these far-reaching and desolate wastes would be to cut off the water-supply of some hundreds of thousands of people. The discoloured Wye first sees daylight at Burbage Clough, under the lee of Girdon Hill, one of the spurs of Axe Edge. There is a cluster of cosy, whitewashed cot- tages. A dozen yards or more away from it yawns the tunnel mouth of the old low level coal mine, whose work- ings extend into the bowels of Axe Edge. This disused mine at one time supplied Buxton with all its coal. Here is the Wye, a mere brook with ruddy water. Time was when there were some settling tanks at this place, over which the stream was suffered to run and deposit a sort of barytes, used by speculative painters as a substitute for red lead. The old wooden tanks are abolished. Their place is taken by a brick receiving tank, and a large pipe belonging With the Wye. 31 to the Buxton Local Board carries away by gravitation as much of this powerful iron water as is required for use at the Sewage Works at Ashwood Dale, a distance of two and a quarter miles, where the town sewage is treated by the precipitation process. When the tank up in these hills is emptied, the deposit is thrown into the river. Men of science may deem this an easy and economical method of getting rid of objectionable matter; but lovers of Nature have, perhaps, less practical ideas as to making beautiful rivers perform the functions of scavengers. " Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things. We murder to dissect. Enough of science and of art : Close up those barren leaves ; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. " Follow we now the stream through the meadows down to the Buxton Gardens. The stream is of deep ochre tint, staining the boulders over which it ripples with pleasant fleetness a deep gamboge. Some of these oxidized boulders have been taken out of the river bed and used for repairing the rough stone walls, their vivid orange colour offering a strong contrast to the brumous hue of the other stones. The Young Man's powers of observation always remind me of Thomas Day's adroit imitation of Rousseau's Emile. In Sandford and Merton there is, my middle-aged readers will remember, for my young ones are too well informed to tolerate that juvenile romance, a moralizing chapter entitled " Eyes and No Eyes : Or the Art of Seeing." It is intended to show what a lot one little boy, through not looking about him, misses, which is all noticed by a more attentive Tommy Goodboy. Here we are at Dog Hole, a one-arched stone bridge. I observe some cleanly white cottages, with dados of yellow- wash an elaborate mural embellishment peculiar to the Peak. The Lady Superior looks at the water choked with the ash-pit rubbish from the cottages, and wonders why people with such spick and span little homes should be so slovenly and slothful with regard to clear running water. 3 2 Pictures of the Peak. We hear more about Well-Dressings being an organized hypocrisy so long as the streams are treated so abominably. But the Young Man's discernment is more penetrating. He points out to the right of the stream on a limestone embankment certain disused cave-dwellings of the Burbage inhabitants, which would have escaped our less vigilant eyes. They were used as homes by the lime burners of less than half a century ago. These rude habitations were scooped out of the hillocks made by limestone refuse, and became consolidated by time and weather. Warm they were, and waterproof, and the walls were of substantial thickness. They had two rooms, but the only light was that admitted by chimney and doorway. Bad as they were, they are better than some of the hovels, more fertilizing than flagrant, to which the Irish peasantry are attached, with a limpet-like attachment, in the wilds of Connemara, and superior to the bee-hive huts of the crofters of Skye and the Lewis. St. Fond, a French geologist, who visited Derby- shire early in the present century, and appears to have thoroughly explored the regions of the Peak, writes of these habitations : " Such is the effect of the whole that when the workmen descend into their caves, at the time of repast, and a stranger sees so many small columns of smoke issuing out of the earth, he imagines himself in the midst of a village in Lapland." A local historian of the same period, who does not an- nounce his name on the title page of his quaint volume, says : " The hill appears at a distance as if covered with a number of ant-hills or mole-hills. These are formed from burning stone into lime, the ashes of which, being left in large heaps, have by time become incrustated, and a number of them have by the labourers been excavated for dwellings, and are now inhabited by themselves and families. The spectator may frequently see cattle pasturing on the tops of these houses, close to the chimneys, which are so low that with your hat you might stop the issuing smoke. But within they are furnished with every convenience, having various apartments adapted for culinary and domestic uses. The inhabitants of these dormitories may be compared to the primitive Christians, literally inhabiting dens and caves of the earth." With the Wye. 33 Arthur Jewitt in his History of Buxton, published in T8n, describes these domiciles as "wretched and disgusting in the extreme," and but for having their entrances closed by a door, might be more easily taken for the dens of wolves or bears, than the abodes of humanized beings." These strange dwellings were known as the Ash Hillocks, and their inmates had the caustic humour of the hill country people. Living so near to aristocratic Buxton they gave themselves titles, and there were knights of the garter and belted earls, duchesses and countesses, among the lime- burning fraternity. To the left of the bridge, the Young Man points out a superior house, embowered in trees, with an extensive garden in front and outbuildings behind. Rising at the side of a fine weeping ash is a pretentious monument. Is this an ancient burial ground? There is an obelisk, very shapely and chastely carved, rising ten feet or more high from a goodly pedestal. A dog lies couchant at the summit of this memorial, and on the four sides are inscribed not the names of ancient Kings of the Peak but the pet appellations of dogs no doubt of high degree in their day and generation. No date is inscribed ; but the names of the animals are " Don," " Nell," " Bold," and "Bob." This is a canine Pere la Chaise, and underneath the tomb are buried the favourite sporting dogs of the late Mr. James Norton, a Silk Manufacturer, of Macclesfield, who made this rural residence a kind of shooting-box for the moors. It is now converted into a couple of small houses, and the graveyard garden is rather a source of pleasure than otherwise to the sturdy cottagers. Just above is Shay Lodge, a white house, one part glistening like a pearl in the vertical sunlight, the other shaded a soft purple by a branch- ing sycamore. Time was, and that not scores of years ago, when in the Burbage uplands religious accommodation was of a very meagre character, and the inhabitants were as savage as the country. Wesleyanism got hold of the rough mountaineers before the Church, and at Shay Lodge devo- tional meetings of a very sincere but perfervid type were often held. " Sammy " Bagshaw was the master of the house. He was a quaint, knotted, gnarled old character, and he had a pungent spouse, who was powerful in prayer. Her exhortations at one meeting were too demonstrative c 34 Pictures of the Peak. for his more subdued principles of piety or his patience, and he was too stiff in the joints to kneel down and hide his head in his hat. And so, tottering with his stick across the room, he put his hand gently on her shoulder and whispered " Mary, Mary, the good Lord be neither deaf nor gone from whoam ! " We are now wandering with the Wye through the fields to Buxton, now and again pausing to pick up an uncommon wild-flower. The right bank is of limestone, and the left millstone grit, and the stone walls a mixture of the two strata, giving them a curious piebald appearance, made more diverse by a cartway dividing two incongruous soils. At intervals an arch crosses the tawny, coffee coloured stream. Fifty years ago the Young Man remembers crossing " By that old bridge which, half in ruins then, Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam Beyond it, where the waters marry." The river runs in serpentine fashion at the back of Burbage Church, past little white farmsteads, bleak, but cheerful, and whitewashed cottages, poor but not squalid, with "throughs" through the rubble walls, acting sometimes as stairs to the upper rooms, and ornamental pieces of surface limestone, shaped by ocean action into curious curves and angles and holes at the front door. There are deep hollows in the fields, caused by the mole-like water burrows far away beneath, with here and there a blow hole where you can hear the tinkling of the tributary wave. Comes Otter Hole, a cleft in the limestone, where a gleaming rivulet shows itself with glance of hawthorn tree above, gray of rock around, and green of grass below. The cavity in the rock was a place of refuge for otters from the hounds and hunts- men. Comes another clear, cold, limestone spring, with pumping engine appliances and shed. This spring is a never failing supply, and saved Buxton from ,a water famine in the fierce drought of 1887. Comes Otter Hole Cottage, where the mysterious Druidical stones made shadows on the sward. They have been removed to Buxton Gardens, to a site where their historical interest is quite destroyed. Just below is Otter Hole Wood, where another limpid limestone tributary runs to the embrace of the ochre stream far away With the Wye. 35 below in a pretty wooded dingle, moss-grown and voiceful with running water and singing birds. Very green and secluded is this miniature ravine, with the dreamy sound of a waterfall, and the whistle of the blackbird, the lay of the linnet, and the jubilant "tirr-a-wee, tirr-a-wee, prooit, tweet" of the thrush. The Wye has much more Oberlandish " beauty-spots " below Buxton, but this delightful dell should be rescued by the town and laid out in shady walks for lovers of Nature and other lovers. A few footpaths only want making, with seats to hold two only placed at intervals where a vista in the green glade invites you to rest. And now comes Gadley Lane Bridge, a wooden foot-bridge where a clear little mountain brook comes with a gentle " ribble- bibble " down from the breezy heights above Watford. Here the Young Man points out a shuttle and a gulley to divert the discoloured iron-water from despoiling the beauty of the Gardens. This artificial water-course is about a mile in length, and empties itself in the Wye at the Pavilion entrance to the Gardens, just before it enters the slimy hole under the Square, to which reference has already been made. But the shuttle is down, and the water in the Gardens this morning is a flood of bile running between banks of jaundice ; while the channel which should relieve the dys- peptic water is well-nigh dry ! Enter we now the Serpentine Walks at the upper end of the Gardens, where at one point the Wye runs at the bottom of a bold curving cliff of toad- stone, thick and black, and evidently composed of the scoria of volcanic lava. Nature has made these Serpentine Walk glades beautiful enough for Oberon and Titania ; but man has neglected them, and the state of the river is a reproach to Buxton. More petulance from the Lady Superior re Well-Dressings and ill-treated rivers ! Othapter FO. WITH T H E W Y E . (CONTINUED.) j|O bright this June morning is, as we leave Buxton to follow the wayward Wye in its sinuous wanderings. It is early morning. The sky is of speedwell blue with cirrus clouds of opal. The sun already shines fiercely on the perpendicular woods of Ashwood Dale, mak- ing of alabaster whiteness the gray tors that gleam from their green background. The stone walls are warm to the touch, and there is a strong glare from the white limestone roads. It would be an exhausting day for walking by the Wye to Rowsley, for the distance is when you follow the windings of the river something approaching twenty miles ; but there is a strenuous east wind that forces its way up the contracted valley like a sea-breeze making its way through a funnel. This east wind, on the longest day of the year, makes a fire a welcome thing in certain Buxton houses entertaining visitors not accustomed to such a strong and stimulating air in midsummer ; but for the cyclist wheeling along the limestone roads that reflect the heat, or for the pedestrian threading the relaxing glens, Canon Kingsley's favourite breeze is a meteorological mercy, giving energy to the exhausted and elixir to the enervated. With the Wye. 37 At the south end of Spring Gardens the Wye has sur- vived its unsavoury subterranean experiences under the Square, the Crescent, and the Grove, and is greeted by the Hogshaw, that has rippled down, with more or less con- tamination on the way, from the Combs Moss heights above the Lightwood reservoir. "Why Hogshaw?" The authorities on the etymology of Derbyshire place-names are silent on the subject, and even the erudite Young Man is puzzled as to the meaning of the word. The little brook has no porcine association. Not even a " pig " of lead is connected with it. No story is linked to it like that of Bladud of Bath, or that of the Vladike, Kolostug of Toeplitz, both of whose fortunes were founded by a certain combina- tion of hogs and hot water. But it is not until we reach the Gas Works and Sewage Tanks at the once enchanted opening of Ashwood Dale that the Lady Superior breaks out against the ill-treatment of the river. It is in vain that the Young Man, who is sufficiently venerable to be regarded as veracious, assures us in solemn accents that the sewage of Buxton is chemically treated by the precipitation of iron- water and limestone ; that Buxton has scientifically solved the great sewage problem that has baffled mighty cities ; and that, in fact, when the purified water is turned into the Wye it is refreshing enough to be used as a sparkling mineral water. But her Ladyship insists that if niceness consists of nastiness, then the water of the Wye at this point is as nauseous as the springs of Kreuznach. Not having visited that German Spa, I, with great confidence, endorse her opinion. Her Ladyship, however, is not to be captured in this easy manner. She maintains, with unnecessary effrontery, that if she suffers from colour-blindness, and her eyes have failed her, her nose has not. And so she turns up a supercilious organ, for which Nature has done much in the way of elevation, and says with Hamlet, " it smells so, pah ! " Now in the humble opinion of the Con- trite Chronicler, the disagreeable odour comes not from the chemically treated sewage, but from the action of the sun upon the bed of the river, which is so silted up at certain points below the Gas Works with weeds and filth that it is so much febrifacient fluid. If the Marquis of Hartington were a fly-fisherman, he would soon improve 38 Pictures of the Peak. the condition of the Wye immediately below Buxton. But after all, these works act as an effective foil to the mag- nificent dale scenery immediately beyond. The Lovers' Leap to the right, just a mile out of the town, is a limestone gorge of a type common enough in North Derbyshire, and the legend that gives the chasm its name is repeated elsewhere in the county in connection with similar ravines. The mossy boulders that strew the bed of the deep gulf are eloquent of the force of water that in flood-time makes its way from the heights above the river. But the water-course is as parched as the Soudan this morning, and the mile-post at the entrance to the defile pasted over with small bills relating to ham and eggs and hot water suggests to the Lady Superior one of those modern automatic machines, whereby for the con- tribution of a copper, you are instantly rewarded with packets of chocolate cream, or Doncaster butterscotch. She asks " Where is the slot to put in the penny to turn on the waterfall ? " Railway, river, and road now run together. The lime-quarries by the side of the line to the left blur the beauty of Ashwood Dale. The trees are blanched with a blinding white powder, like soiled snow. The Lion's Head, once a distinctive feature in the scenery, has been blown into a million fragments, just as some of the most romantic rock scenery in other parts of this enchanting neighbourhood is meeting with wholesale destruction. To the lover of nature the annihilation of these majestic tors is painful, let him look upon them in the most economic manner possible. Utilitarians will tell you that the owners of the land can do what they like with their own, and that the laws of supply and demand are not regulated by landscape painters. But here comes the "Devonshire Arms" (i| miles) where the Wye makes a pleasant pool. Just below is the familiar saw- mill, and the river, here recovered somewhat from its tor- tures above, becomes gleeful. It cascades along in a cheerful way, the sun catching the curves and angles of the little water- falls, and the trees making leaf shadows in the tiny pools. Here is a bridge two-arched and of gray stone leading to the Pig Tor Woods, the haunt of wild-birds and wild-flowers, the sun lying warm on the purple ground ivy, the ethereal blue of the speedwell, and the white glimmer of the star- With (he Wye. 39 wort. Had we time we should climb up above the railway to Pig Tor, where you look down on five converging valleys. But our programme to-day is sufficiently extensive. And for the next two miles the - i ^=- river, the rail, and road run together, the water dividing the steel highway from the dusty turnpike, while on either side rise the limestone cliffs with their profuse foliage of many tints, from the dark hue of the firs to the tender green of the ' larches, and the flaming red of the copper beeches. The eager east wind brings with it messages of scent from the hawthorn and the mountain ash. There is the song of birds, the murmur of the river, and ever and anon the rush and roar of a railway train. Now the engine 40 Pictures of the Peak. is " coughing " to get up to Buxton, and now gliding down to Miller's Dale without steam. If the control of the loco- motive were lost here, the train would run without invitation to Ambergate without stopping to listen to the voice of reason, supposing that the line were clear for such a runaway trip. The Young Man wonders why the ingenious authors of the " shilling shockers " have not developed such a sen- sational possibility into a thrilling story. The public seem to enjoy such literary " pick-me-ups," and surely a strong stimulant might be derived from the escapade of an express engine down the gradients of the Peak, cutting its way through Pullman cars and the pointsmen's boxes, but still keeping to the " permanent way ! " The Wye is always receiving contributions, cool and clear, from hidden woodland nooks and wayside dingles. You can hear the tinkle of the water, and here to the right is a considerable stream conveyed from the heights by a V-shaped wooden trough. On the crest of the hill to the left is a battlemented terrace. The Lady Superior, who is as fond of old baronial castles as a romantic American tourist, is disappointed to hear that it is modern mediaeval masonry, and but a wall to the mansion at Pig Tor beyond. We pass under one of the lofty and graceful bridges that cross rail and river, and over which the train seems " Borne, like Loretto's chapel, through the air." The Wye, by the way, is spanned between Rowsley and Buxton thirteen times by these rainbow-shaped arches that span the deep valleys, and add railway realism to the romance of road and rock and river. Just where the road by the river strikes off to the left, and Topley Pike ascends in front, to the right is Deep Dale. There are several Deep Dales in Derbyshire; but this is, perhaps, the most lovely and impressive. It is a Highland glen without trees. There is a rough path, and the riven sides at times contest the niggard pathway. There are several caverns almost unknown to explorers. A carriage road might be constructed through- out this ravine that would give access to Sterndale. The Young Man talks about what the Duke of Devonshire might accomplish in this direction ; and perhaps when Eastbourne has had its fill of his treasury, the balance may find its way to Buxton. With the Wye. 41 Topley Pike, and its dusty limestone workings and rail- way connections, provokes more animosity from the Lady Superior, who is, I believe, ready to start a Defence Society in Derbyshire to protect the scenery from the Demon of Destruction. She is too robust and sensible to rave against railways like Mr. Ruskin ; but she, nevertheless, is of opinion that the sentiment of the nation is against the beauty-spots of the country being ruthlessly defaced and torn to pieces in the interests of private traders. But no matter. Perhaps political economists will not listen to our illogical Potentate in Petticoats. We have now passed through the pleasant shade of the wooded walk to Blackwell Mill, with the ruined corn-mill, and the isolated railway cottages, where the Midland main line passes through Great Rocks Dale to Manchester. We have grown to regard the Lady Superior as the Old Girl with a Grievance. She finds an iron bar has been placed across this river path, and a notice to pedestrians prominently facing her. This notice is repeated, with varia- tions, throughout the dale. One caveat reads " This road is closed every Thursday. Trespassers will be prosecuted, by order, F. W. Bagshawe." Another board proclaims that "No watercress or ferns to be taken from these grounds. Offenders will be dealt with by law." Now the dale is as much frequented by photographers an'd fishermen and the tourist tribe on the Thursday as on any other day in the week. These portentious "pains and penalties" are more de jure than de facto, and I am sure the owner, Mr. Bagshawe, J.P., has no harsh feelings in the matter. Do you remember the Duke of Clarence who, in sending off an official despatch to Admiral Codrington, telling him not to take his ships in action, wrote a private note in the corner " Go it, Ned ? " Anyhow, where we see the words " No path," we regard the board as misleading, for there is a path quite wide enough for us. Mention of Mr. Bagshawe sends the Young Man back along the path of memory to the time when a fatal collision occurred between Mr. Bagshawe, of Wormhill Hall, and his keepers and a band of poachers, led by one " Big Ben," a desperate character. As showing the influence of ennobling scenery on human character it should be said that the fight took place in the divinest part of the dale, and that Mr. 42 Pictures of the Peak. Bagshawe was killed in the river itself. The poachers were brought to justice, but "got off" at the Assizes. The Lady Superior, with an air of innocent wisdom, enlarges upon the influence of beautiful and majestic scenery on human life and character. She contends that the eternal hills have not an elevating effect upon lowly humanity, and that crimes that would disgrace Seven Dials occur amid the sweetest of sylvan surroundings. If Nature in her noblest moods does not exert a moral influence, it is idle to assume that land- scape loveliness can beautify an ugly face. But there are people of opinion that the bewitching scenery of Peakland should make the most ill-favoured of mortals as comely as the latest professional beauty. The Young Man illustrates this by a story. A party of Lancashire excursionists were talking in Buxton to an old resident, " Eh " said one good lady " Booxton be a pratty place ; and how long have you lived here?" "I was born in the town," was the reply. " No ! really ? then thou ought to have been a lot prattier than thou art ! " So far as ferns and flowers are concerned, a mere glance at the river banks is sufficient to justify the warning as to the removal of these floral attributes. The green spaces abutting on the pathway are mere patches of nettles, butter-bur, coarse grasses, and water plants. The right bank, where there is no footroad, is a vast nosegay of ungathered flowers banks blue with the dim azure of the forget-me-not, hollows filled with wild hyacinths, brambles hidden by the rubied masses of the ragged-robin ; the fresh green fern fronds jut out of every rocky cleft, and every boulder is furred with silken mosses or silvered with starlike lichens. In Taddington Dale, the Duke of Devonshire has been constrained to issue a notice to the effect that the public must abstain from rolling stones, taking up by the roots ferns and other plants, and damaging trees. No one will accuse Mr. Hurt of arbitrary action, but he has been obliged to say " Hands off ! " to the people who pilfer and pillage in the glorious Alderwasley Woods. These upland forests are as accessible to the public as to their private owner, and the people have shown their appreciation of his generosity by rooting up ferns and flowers, plants and shrubs. They have even taken away, as a " token of affection," some young trees of a special aboreal character. The " tripper," With the Wye. 43 having unrestricted access to these spacious woods, tears up flower and frond ruthlessly by the root, and carries them away to die dismally far from their healthy haunts. His path is marked by a debris of wild-flowers and ferns that he has thrown away, when weary of carrying his stolen treasures. A " battle of flowers " might have taken place so littered is the road with the floral residuum. But it is not only the cheap tripper that is to blame. Inflated associations that call themselves " Field Naturalist Societies " are, in the respect of harrying the flora of the woods in the pseudo- pursuit of botany, even greater offenders than the half- holiday excursionists. The latter do not cover their depre- dations under the shelter of Linnaeus. Their thefts are not Latinized larceny. The spoliation at Alderwasley became so serious that last summer (1888), in order to protect his property from disappearing altogether, Mr. Hurt had to prohibit people from taking away with them ferns and flowers. The woods and park are open as usual to the poorest, but the keepers have instructions to take from visitors any flowers or plants they may have collected. When this ukase was first brought into force an incredible number of ferns and flowers was surrendered at the gates. But this is a long digression. Let us resume our walk down the Wye. The face of the stream is covered with a matted vegetation bearing a pretty white flower. The plant is called the water-crowfoot (i.e., Ranunculus aqttd- tilis), and under it many a fine trout seeks shade and shelter. The butter-bur favours these haunts in almost too great abundance. The tall pagoda-shaped white flower is as flossy as silk, and the broad deep green, white-veined, rhubarb-like leaf when folded in the shape of a glass makes a capital drinking cup. Under another railway viaduct with a Pullman express from Liverpool to London thundering along at sixty miles an hour, seemingly flying in mid-air, now tearing along the terraces of rock, now booming through the short tunnels with a shriek and a rattle and a roar. Civilization at a mile or more a minute is in strange contrast to the poetical murmur of the idyllic stream far below the gleaming rails " Making music o'er the enamell'd stones, And giving a gentle kiss to every sedge It overtaketh on its pilgrimage." 44 Pictures of the Peak. Stalactites depend like icicles from the limestone masonry of the lofty arches, and the river is crossed under the viaduct by a plank broad and safe enough for all pedestrian purposes ; although the Lady Superior, whose memory is better than that of the Contrite Chronicler, reminds us that in the January of 1886 two little boys went down this deep and rocky gorge to distribute copies of a Church Magazine to the lonely inhabitants of the isolated cottages at Black- well Mill. The youngsters on their journey had to cross the plank bridges that at intervals cross the current, which in winter runs with swollen turbulence. One of the planks was a treacherous streak of ice, with the river brawling over its boulders far away beneath. The little lads, in crossing the suspended slide, held to each other for safety. One of them slipped. He pulled his companion into the water. The younger boy was drowned. The elder boy did his utmost to save his comrade, and barely escaped with his own life, to run, almost frozen, along the wild and alarmed dale to call assistance, which arrived too late. The pathetic incident haunts the valley, and lends a pensive interest to a picturesque scene. And now the scenery concentrates itself in Chee Dale. Photographs innumerable, and book illustrations and paint- ings, have made the world familiar enough with Chee Tor. There is a convex limestone cliff rising sheer out of a little river to the height of two hundred feet or more, and a concave cliff of corresponding strata facing it if the rocks could be brought together again, you would scarcely see that there had been a fracture, and a waterway between the division. There is just room in the rift for the little river to make its way, and there is just foothold for the intruder in the solitude. The railway pierces the bastion on one side of the river, and in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, the expresses plunge into a tunnel on the other side. There is just a glance of the speeding train as it emerges from one vault to be swallowed by the other, and the re- verberating echoes are flung from bluff to bluff as if a thunderbolt had fallen in the narrow gorge. There are much finer examples of rocky scenery in the world than Chee Tor, and people who assess beauty by bulk, and majesty by mathematical proportions, and who measure With the Wye. 45 their emotions by means of the aneroid, may find the di- mensions of Chee Tor surpassed even in England. The St. Vincent Rocks, at Clifton, will readily occur to the reader ; and the High Tor, at Matlock, for instance, only a few miles away, is loftier and broader, and contains many more thousand cubic feet of carboniferous limestone ; but both are exposed and even vulgar compared with Chee Tor, that is shut in a solitude so wild and poetical that the stranger is almost afraid to intrude upon a scene so lonely and so lovely. Chee Tor stands in its own presence chamber. There are rocky walls above and below and around. You are enclosed. There seems no open door. The precipices at one point impend until they almost touch, leaving room for a glimpse of the deep blue sky above and the bubbling river below. You sit reverently in front of this stern face of rock. In its presence, talk seems a profana- tion. It is as immutable and inscrutable as the Sphinx. The May-fly that flutters on the water is the little thing of an hour against the countless ages, the ephemeral against eternity. Now and again a jackdaw wings its way across the perpendicular sun-lit face of the mighty cliff, leaving a lateral shadow on it and a fleeting reflection on the glassy water below. The solemn silence is broken only by the cadence of the current, the plunge of a big trout, the occasional harsh scream of a jay, the distant bleating of a lamb, and the rumble of a train, whose nearness or remote- ness is judged by the beat of the engine. But as we listen in this rocky recess, shut in between gray walls and green trees, comes the jubilant solo of the thrush, full of soul and song : " He sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture." Lower down the stream we loiter, having clambered over the cliff that brings you down to where Flag Dale intersects the valley, and where a tributary stream emerges from its subterranean windings to join the Wye. Miller's Dale now widens before us, and there are two fishermen standing by the side of the river just where a landscape artist " com- posing" a picture would have placed them. But I am Pictures of the Peak. afraid they will have but little sport. The river is full of trout ; but the day is too hot and glaring, and the wind is in the east. These drawbacks, if the rodsters are unsuccess- ful, will serve as compensating circumstances ; but neither of the gentlemen have been fishing many minutes, so the Young Man's enquiry as to their sport is rather premature. The Contrite Chronicler recalls the Saturday afternoon anglers in the Serpentine, whom John Leech satirized, one of whom exclaims, " Had a bite, Bill ? " to which he receives answer, "Not likely; I only came here last Wednesday." Further limeworks as we approach Miller's Dale (six miles). There is a hut near to the river with locked door, from which comes the sound of swishing water and the thud of a water-ram. The Young Man reminds us of a heavy fall of limestone refuse into the river a year or two ago, which poisoned the fish from Miller's Dale to Bakewell. The trunks of the trees are still dusted with this "slip." More remonstrances from the Lady Superior who is, however, grateful for a seat and certain refreshments at the Railway Hotel, at Miller's Dale. Tempting us on the steep hill to the left is Wheston Hall, an ancient building with stirring historic annals, and associated with a veritable ghost. Wheston Hall, together with Wormhill, must, however, be left for another excursion. Chapter $. WITH THE WYE (CONTINUED.) |N pleasant contrast with the unsightly limestone quarries that are blurring the beauty of Miller's Dale are the two corn mills, where the Wye is gathered up in shining pools, and the plash of falling water makes more pleasant music than the smoking bombardment that is destroying the cliffs above. The Wye valley throughout its course is intersected by lateral dingles that tempt one to leave the river and explore their windings. The first of these is close to the little Church at Miller's Dale. It is known as Monk's Dale, and contains an in- teresting cave where, in the December of 1886, Mr. Milward discovered the skull of a Celtic ox, buried in the tufa. It was a splendid specimen, and in perfect preservation. Litton Dale, Tideswell Dale, Cressbrook Dale, and other way-side glens issue gracious invitations ; but our ramble to-day will be quite expansive enough without making a detour from the river. The Wye is dammed up above Litton to give water-power to the cotton mills, and presents a considerable stretch of water, with the east wind stirring the sunlit surface into glittering waves. Wagtails, pied and yellow, flit across Pictures of the Peak. the shining expanse ; little white-throated " fly-catchers " compete with the swallows, and their operations are much more interesting ; now and again a vole (commonly called a " water-rat," although it is not carnivorous) is giving its young family a swimming exercise. According to the Young Man these mills were formerly owned by Mr. Henry Newton, a son of William Newton, " the Peak Minstrel," who was noticed by Sir Walter Scott, and contributed to the Gentle- man's Magazine when that periodical was a power in litera- ture. But this second-hand association of the mills with the Muses does not relieve their ugliness ; and it is enough for us now to know they belong to Messrs. Brearley. At Litton we have come to the most pictorial passage of the Wye the portion that the railway passenger sees to the right of the line going to Buxton or Manchester. It is only a transitory glance he gets between Cressbrook tunnel and Litton tunnel. The traveller observes the river curving in the shape of the letter S between rocky headlands and densely-wooded heights, and reflecting tree and tor in its liquid light. This is a more tantalizing peep of Paradise than he gets even in Chee Dale. " Three courses lie before us," as a certain eminent statesman would say under the circumstances. We must either leave the river-side alto- gether, and climb the steep hill to the left, pass through the With tlie Wye. 49 village of Cressbrook, with its great cotton mills and pretty cottages perched high above the valley amid most romantic surroundings, and gain the Wye in Monsal Dale ; or follow the river through the deep glen which it almost absorbs, leaving only a perilous path at a nervous elevation, with here and there a treacherous ledge to walk along, with the deep river sheer beneath, impending rocks above, and no room to turn back ; or we must intrude upon the private path leading to the grounds of Cressbrook Hall. Now, the Lady Superior is altogether opposed to the first proposition ; the Young Man declares the second to be fit only for the chamois and the members of the Alpine Club ; so as a dernier ressort we resolve to invade the private path. Wild horses shall not drag from me the diplomatic means by which this tres- pass is arranged. The Young Man is the pioneer. We make our way from Litton Mill to a white chimney that stands alone on the breast of a hill to the left, like a martello in reduced circumstances, and crossing a field, come to the private path through the wood and by the margin of the Wye. This woodland path affords all the exquisite views of the windings of the ravine offered from the opposite bank without its perils. The place is called " Water-cum- jolie," and not even the divinest " bit " of Dove Dale can surpass this combination of wood and water, bold white bluffs and deep green hollows. The river is enclosed in a world of its own, and is lovely in its loneliness. We are worshipping Nature in one of her most secret and sacred haunts. " We are animals among animals," says the Young Man, quoting a favourite author, " and God, the Father of all, is overhead, in the genial light, in the deep-hued sky, and in the warm rushing of the wind." Hundreds of jackdaws have built their nests in the lofty cliffs, and their " chock, chock " seems a harsh invasion of the poetic silence. But there are more birds in this secret valley. We hear the discordant chatter of the jay, and soon see the gleam of his plumage in the glistening sun- shine. Suspended motionless above the crags, high in the blue, is the windhover. We see a solitary heron, but cannot get close enough to gain a full view of its beautiful plumage ; but we admire the exquisite grace of its form and gait, and think ourselves fortunate in being afforded a glimpse of so D 50 Pictures of the Peak. rare a wild water-haunter. The kingfisher flits down the stream like a rainbow flash ; the moor-hen threads her way between the flags and rushes, and rising with a frightened flutter, flies up the river leaving a zig-zag line of splintered light on its surface ; woodpigeons rustle in the interlacing boughs overhead ; we hear the tapping noise made by the beak of the woodpecker against some stubborn bark. Perched upon a slender spray by the edge of the river is the idyllic sedge-warbler, with its pretty Puritan plumage, and timid, quick, little ways, singing as it dodges from stem to stem. And here, too, is the " dipper," or water-ouzel, ever and anon diving in the water to procure its food from the river bed. Regretfully we leave this wild solitude, with its romance of rock and river, its ferns and flowers, its mosses and lichens, its bird 'music and perfumed sunlight. No note in Nature's oratorio is lost. The wild-flowers breathe silent hymns ; the bees hum soothing murmurs ; the buzz of glittering insects, and the whir of wings add to the harmony ; the hawthorn scent is mute music ; the stirring of life in every shoot of the foliage has responsive chords vaguely susceptible to the other sounds. The Wye has no other scene to compare with it, and nowhere is the water more crystal in its clearness, or the silence and solitude more intense. The Young Man, with his flowing beard and imperial presence, leads the way out of the haunted valley, and we pass through the yard of Cressbrook Mills, glancing with envy at Cressbrook Hall on its eyrie-like wooded height, a building which cost ^50,000, and contained at the death of the late owner, Mr. McConnell, paintings worth four times that value. Bull Tor and Eagle Tor bulk in bold beauty behind. And now we are in Monsal Dale. The old " lepping stones " that cross the Wye, and which have been a godsend to many a landscape painter, are still there in the old picturesque position, with the dreamy little cot- tages as a background ; but the modern footbridge athwart the river is an ugly structure, and has quite destroyed their old artistic charms. The river again divides the railway from the road ; but after leaving Monsal Dale we shall not again hear the shriek of the steam-whistle until we leave the Wye at Rowsley, With the Wye. unless it accosts the ear at the tunnel which burrows under the hill where Haddon Hall has planted its deep founda- tions. The road suddenly rises, and at the summit is Edge Stone Head, one of the finest view-points in the Peak. At the corner is an old-fashioned hostel, The Bull's Head, where you may take the road by Longstone to Bakewell, or pass down the wooded dale by the Duke of Devonshire's rabbit-warren and trout pools to Ashford- in -the -Water. Pleasant enough is the drive through the two Longstones, with their famous avenue of trees, and old stone stoops, the remnant of the " stocks " that were one of the punish- ments of the olden time ; but we must remain true to the Wye. whose sharp, elbow-like bend gives a view both up and down the valley. The Lady Superior calls it " sweetly pretty," and although the expression seems somewhat inane, it hits off this scene better than elaborated word-painting. We are standing at the top of Edge Stone tunnel. The railway climbs up a terrace of rock by the side of the river, rippling in Arcadian sweetness far away below, to the Cress- 5 2 Pictures of the Peak. brook tunnel, a small black pin-point perforation in the great cliff it burrows. The trains, as they pass up and down, from this eminence look like toys, and the panting puffs of the locomotive seem like the faint whiffs from a cigarette. The expresses go with a boom into the dark aperture, and the sound diminishes into a dull hum and then into a mere murmur, although when they emerge in the distant daylight the echoes are sent flying with shriek and rattle and roar. The deep winding valley, with its steep green slopes, their limestone sides tufted with trees, the gentle river with its footbridges, and the lofty railway viaduct all compose them- selves into a bird's-eye view, more beautiful than grand, from these heights. We descend the steep wooded slope on the south side of the river, with Brushfield on the one side and Fin Cop on the other, until the road leading from Taddington to Ashford-in-the-Water is reached. The river has lost its foaming mountain character, and wanders in flowing happiness through park-like pastures. The large sheet of water is a " compensating reservoir," which gives out 500 cubic feet per minute for the preservation of fish when the water is being impounded for the mills above. In the woods a number of stoats are nailed up as a warning to their tribe, and the river-meadows are alive with rabbits. There is an instantaneous scurry of hundreds of these shy and pretty creatures when you shout or clap your hands. The stampede is noiseless, and spaces that were brown suddenly become green as the furry inhabitants vanish. But the weasel tribe are not the only enemies of " bunny " in Monsal Dale. The rough-legged buzzard, eagle-like in appearance, has made this region his habitat. Mr. Lupton, the gamekeeper, shot one of these birds here in the spring of 1 889. It had been seen to seize and carry a full-grown rabbit a considerable distance. " On proceeding to the spot where it had alighted to consume its prey, Mr. Lupton found the rabbit almost completely skinned. This solved the mystery of the rabbit skins which he had continually noticed lying about on the ground in the locality." Allusion has been made to the lateral valleys of the Wye, but perhaps the most wild of these defiles is Demon's Dale, which lies between the extremity of Monsal Dale and Ashford. At Ashford-in-the-Water the Wye distributes its With the Wye. 53 resources in a reckless manner ; here spreading itself into a lake, there forming a pool, now wandering carelessly as if it had lost itself, anon picking up its divided energies at a quaint old bridge. Ashford is an idyllic village, although lying too low to ever become a health resort. Interesting are its marble quarries and works. The art of marble inlaying is one of the most refined industries, and although Italian in character, it is indigenous to the Peak. Ashford has been associated with this industry for more than a century, one Henry Watson, of Bakewell, establishing the first marble-works here in 1786. An attempt was made in the summer of 1884 to revive the art of marble-inlaying in Derbyshire, and an Exhibition of Inlaid Marbles was held at Matlock Bath, which was opened by Sir Cunliffe Owen, of South Kensington. There was a representative col- lection, and the work of the Derbyshire artists certainly equalled the finest examples of Florentine mosaics. With the spars and marbles of the Peak the most artistic imi- tations of Nature may be accomplished, and flowers and leaves and insects can be so closely imitated that at a short distance you would fancy you could lift them from the black marble table in which they are deftly and delicately en- shrined. The marbles worked in the Ashford quarries are the lustrous black marble, the bloodstone, locally known as " thunder and lightning," the " rotten stone," the rose- wood marble, and the " bird's-eye marble." A substantial meal at the Devonshire Arms, where there is a quaint portrait and biography of a lady who was only 3 ft. high, but who made up for her diminutive stature by her exceeding ugliness. She was by profession a witch, and died in 1811, at the age of 80, which shows that legerde- main tends to longevity. One of the chief enchantments of this old hag was the solemnization of the marriage of " Sojer John " and " Widow Hales " over a broomstick. The Lady Superior is anxious to visit the antique Church to see the five funeral garlands that hang over the doorway of the north aisle. These are festoons of white ornamental paper, which in appearance have been flippantly compared to "Fly-catchers." They are the relics of a time-honoured custom that survived in the Peak long after its observance had become obsolete in other parts of England. It was the 54 Pictures of the Peak. ancient usage to carry paper garlands before the corpses of maidens in the funeral procession, and suspend them from the beams of the church. The custom takes us back to Shakespeare's time, and Ophelia is honoured with " crants," otherwise " funeral garlands." The Young Man quotes : "Yet here she is allowed her virgin 'crants,'' Her maiden shrewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial." The oldest of the Ashford garlands bears the date 1747, and the latest 1820, when the ceremony was last performed. The paper constructing each garland is cut into the shape of flowers and other designs, and secured to a wooden framework. A glove, a handkerchief, or a collar was attached to each garland, which was accompanied by a verse of poetry, together with the name, age, and date of death of the virgin in whose honour it was prepared. Lapse of time has made illegible these poetical effusions, but Dr. John Chas. Cox has been able, with considerable difficulty, to decipher the following lines at Ashford : Be always ready, no time delay ; I in my youth was called away. Great grief to those that's left behind, But I hope I'm great joy to find. ANN SWINDELL, Aged 22 years. December 91 h, 1798. It is creditable to the people of Ashford-in-the-Water that they have so tenderly preserved these relics of an innocent and interesting custom. The churches of Derbyshire a hundred years ago were hung with these picturesque relics. Ashford possesses the most perfect collection. There are, in fact, only three other churches in the county in which funeral garlands are preserved. One hangs in the chancel at South Winfield, another at Tansley; and the garlands that were formerly suspended in the church of Matlock may now be found in the vestry. These interesting and innocent memorials have also hung within the memory of man at the following Derbyshire churches : Alvaston, Ashover, Beighton, Bolsover, Eyam, Fairneld, Hayfield, Glossop, Heanor, Hope, Mugginton, Mellor, Tideswell, Tissington, Parwich, and West Hallam. With the Wye. 55 By the banks of the river again. Crossing the four-arched bridge, we pass by Ashford Hall, where the Wye feeds the lakes, with their wooded islands and wild-fowl, which has been compared to Chatsworth as " but a light trinket hung to a costly watch." The ancient ivy-grown mansion, called "The Rookery," where trees dispute the passage of the Wye, crossed by a one-arched bridge, and Holme Hall, with its five old arches duplicated in the stream must not be missed. Comes Lumford Mill, with its ponderous water- wheels, with the Wye making transparent malachite pools, and then whitening the bearded boulders as it recovers its motion ; and then Bakewell, with its quaint bridge, where the river widens into broad sheets of rather weedy water, and the trout dart from the rippling shallows and lie in the deep pools black and motionless, and quite unlike the half- pounder, a wonder of silver and red, that an angler has just landed among the grasses. " Beautiful for situation ; the joy of the whole earth, upon the north side lieth the city of the great King." The exclamation of the Shepherd King rises without the aid of the prompter to the lips as the traveller by the Midland express emerges from the Haddon tunnel, and sees the golden-green Bakewell meadows below him, with the gnarled old trees casting generous shadows on emerald spaces that seem to grow greener for their grateful shade ; with the Wye breaking out here and there in splashes of azure hue, that gleam like lonely tarns ; with the grand old church rising majestically beautiful above the lichened roofs of the dwelling-places that climb half way up to the brow of the hill upon which it stands, and then bend and humbly ask its benediction ; with swelling up- lands, forested to the summit, and with the bleak, brown hills of Peakland beyond, where morose moors are inter- sected with glens of quiet beauty, glades fit only for fairy feet, and silvery threads of water that articulate their mystic meanings in the solitude of silence. Chapter WITH THE WYE. (CONCLUDED.) |UST as the Derwent gliding under the gilded case- ments of the " Palace of the Peak " enhances the interest of Chatsworth, so the Wye murmuring by the time-stained towers and turrets and terraces of Haddon Hall adds new beauties to the most perfect and poetical of England's baronial piles. There is probably no place that has been more written about than Haddon. Poet and painter, pen and pencil, have vied with each other in their enthusiastic endeavours to throw the charm of its ancient architecture and antique pageantries upon paper and canvas. Any attempt at further description of a place which is so well known, and which has taken such a firm hold on the affections of the civilized world, would seem an almost foolish supererogation. The Lady Superior, as we wander through the old-world rooms once again, protests against what she denominates the auctioneer's inventory style of description, and expresses an aversion to the build- ing being gone over in a Clerk of Works spirit. Haddon must, to obtain its inspiration, be taken as a whole. The fine old castle, though feudal, has never been the scene of With the Wye. 57 feud, but rather of frolic and feast. The foundations of the baronial pile were standing in the days of the Norman monarchs ; and in the north-east tower, perhaps, a stalwart Derbyshire knight equipped himself to join the chivalry of Europe against the Saracen possessors of Jerusalem. This is very likely all that Haddon has had to do with the wars, although John Manners, Marquis of Granby, was a General who presided over almost as many fights as he does over taverns. The tumultuous vicissitudes of history have never affected the grand old mediaeval mansion. England was in arms over the rival houses of Lancaster and York ; but Haddon was never the scene of conflict. Royalist and Roundhead, between them, dismantled and demolished halls and castles ; but not a stone of Haddon was touched. The grim, gray towers seem a menace in masonry ; but they have ever been associated with mirth and minstrelsy. The venerable stronghold has never been a fortress, but a place of pleasure, not of protection, of revels, not of resistance. The battlements are ballads ; the masonry is a madrigal ; the architecture an anthem ; turret and terrace a tradition. Most old castles are connected with chronicles of crime, of treachery and bloodshed, of intrigue and murder. Glorious old Haddon has not a stain of guilt upon its character. It is bathed in romance and love, and is eloquent of the hospi- tality and the sports and pastimes of " merrie England." The only shots fired against its time-honoured walls have been those aimed by photographers, an army that increases each year, and whilst taking Haddon away, still leaves it intact and untouched. Haddon Hall has recently been the cause of considerable controversy, and the points raised may not be inappropriately dealt with in these pages. Firstly, some anxiety has been expressed as to the structural security of the ancient edifice; secondly, there has been a battle royal among the antiquaries over the scraping of the panelling by " modernizing bung- lers : " and, thirdly, the authenticity of the sweet love story that tells of Dorothy Vernon's midnight flight with John Manners has been challenged. Let us leave the Lady Superior and the Young Man on the moss-grown terrace while we consider each indictment. Some sensational statements have been spread about the 58 Pictures of the Peak. decaying stone-work of Haddon Hall, and sentimental people have been much alarmed at the prospect of the picturesque old baronial castle, that will probably endure as long as Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London, becoming a dismantled ruin. These agitated souls may compose their feelings. The safety of an ancient building that never suffered from the shock of arms, and remained unmolested through the stormiest passages in our "rough island story," will not be allowed to decay through want of architectural attention in these days, when people reverence almost to idolatry such an eloquent memorial of the past. Its noble owner regards his historic hall as too precious an heir- loom to submit it to neglect. Haddon Hall has been uninhabited since 1703 ; yet a few preparations would make it again fit for a ducal abode. Old castles have been, as a rule, ruined by man, and not by time. Oliver Cromwell has been charged with a vast amount of damage of which his artillery was quite innocent. The Blockheads rather than the Roundheads, are responsible for the demolition of strongholds built for eternity. Many lovely old places that might have been standing in their feudal strength and fair proportions to-day have been wrecked by the economical stewards of apathetic proprietors. The beams and roof- timbers of famous piles have been used for new buildings, and old castles have been converted into general stone quarries. Ancient Hardwick is a case in point. It was pulled down for the sake of the building material it afforded. The proud and sturdy portion that remains is a standing protest against the vandalism of the past. Winfield Manor is another local instance. The Civil War is held responsible for its ruin; but the Roundheads did its noble towers petrified poems little harm, for the Haltons pulled much of the fabric down in 1744 to build the new manor house at the foot of the hill. Haddon Hall may safely be left to the guardianship of his Grace the Duke of Rutland, who holds this hallowed ancestral mansion in trust for the nation. Haddon Hall is something more than private property, and in vain would its noble owner appeal to his title-deeds if he wished to " do what he liked with his own " in opposition to the wishes of the country. National sentiment is stronger than sheepskin engrossings ; public opinion is more potent With the Wye. 59 than parchment ; and the lex non scripta of a people's feel- ings more lawful than any jurisprudence to be found in "Coke upon Lyttleton." With regard to the tampering with the panelling in the Long Gallery at Haddon, the joust a plaisance gave way to the duel a entrance. It was not a fight between Saxon and Norman, steel-clad baron and mailed crusader, White Rose and Red Rose, Cavalier and Roundhead, but between parson and pedant, and the contending sides that scru- tinized the combatants through their blue spectacles were what a Peakrel would describe as "aunty queer 'uns." The engagement recalled Dean Swift's " Battle of the Books," which the reader will remember was fought in St. James' Library. Down into Derbyshire rode one Dr. Furnivall, whose vast learning makes one feel uncomfortably ignorant, for to do justice to his erudition all the letters of the alphabet stagger as they serve as affixes to his name. The unsophisticated people in the Peak must have regarded the great London Doctor, " founder and sole patentee of half-a- dozen learned societies," much as Oliver Goldsmith's rustics looked upon the village schoolmaster : " And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew." But " too much learning," as St. Paul has pointed out, has its mental disadvantages. It was, I think, Robert Hall who said of Dr. Kippis, " he had laid so many books at the top of his head that the brains could not move." Dr. Furnivall attacked the " abominable sham covering " of the oak panel- ling in the Long Gallery at Haddon Hall. Indeed, he " discovered " that the wood-work was oak, a fact previously known to everybody who had any acquaintance with Had- don. He was speedily going to " restore " the noble apart- ment ; but the modest Rector of Barton-le-Street, Malton, Yorkshire, stepped into the breach. This country parson happens to know a little about Derbyshire. He is the editor of the Reliquary, the most important archaeological journal of the day ; whilst he is the unostentatious author of "a magnificent work" (vide the Times) entitled Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire, in four volumes, royal 8vo. For he is none other than the Rev. Dr. John Charles Cox, 60 Pictures of the Peak, F.S.A., who denounced Dr. Furnivall as the "perpetrator of the enormity." Dr. Furnivall's knowledge of old buildings must be very superficial, or he arrives at his judgments with more despatch than discretion. He assumed that because the oak is old, the painting on it is modern. Now anyone who knows anything about old English wood-work is aware that the painting of oak was a common practice all through the middle ages, and later as long as oak was the usual material for joiner's work. Numerous instances could be cited of coeval staining of domestic oak of Elizabethan date. Wood as well as stone was used far more extensively than is generally accepted even by the literary world as a mere vehicle for colour and harmonious effect in mediaeval days. There was not a rood-loft or screen in the kingdom before the Reformation, though all of oak and many ex- quisitely carved, whose panels -were not painted sometimes with pictures of saints, sometimes with set patterns and their mouldings for the most part picked out with gold. Church roofs, again, always of oak, were almost invariably painted, often richly in the wealthy churches, and were stained and picked out with red in the poorer churches. In fact, Dr. Cox has frequently found vestment and register chests of oak with paint and stain upon them certainly original. Probably there is not living a more able antiquary, or a greater authority on architecture, ancient and modern, than Mr. J. T. Micklethwaite, F.S.A., of Dean's Yard, West- minster, and he told the present writer that he has seen accounts for graining as early as 1620, and should not be surprised to find them earlier. (The Long Gallery at Had- don dates from 1624.) Clearly Dr. Furnivall did not appear to understand the value of the work he attempted to dis- figure. For even allowing that the paint is all that he says it is, the matter is not mended by barbarously scraping it off, and with it the surface of the wood, and then daubing the work with filthy oil ! Under these circumstances, it is satisfactory to know that Dr. Cox surrendered many of the calls upon the few hours he can spare from the parish work, which is with him a labour of love, to protect Haddon Hall from enemies more insidious than foemen in hauberk armed with halberd and pike. The angry controversy was not in vain. It arrested further mischief being perpetrated upon a With the Wye. 61 place that is not only one of the proudest possessions of the Peak, but is a national heritage, dear not only to the people of England, but cherished by our kin beyond the seas. For his labours, supported by the Derbyshire Archseological Society, Dr. Cox has received the thanks of his Grace the Duke of Rutland. It is, however, the Duchess of Rutland's pen that has done much to affect the tender legend of dear Dorothy Vernon's Lochinvar-like elopement. In the pages of The Queen, Her Grace uses these iconoclastic words : " It is only right to say that there is no proof whatever that the tradition about the fair Dorothy Vernon's flight is true ; on the contrary, there is reason to believe that the King of the Peak was well satisfied with the alliance of the Vernons and the Manners." Thus, one by one, our cherished beliefs are upset, and our old faiths dispelled. But Dorothy Vernon's love-story is one that the world will not willingly let die; and, perhaps, evidence might be adduced to show that the runaway marriage is not a mere modern fiction. It is not of .artificial growth, but belongs to the sacred mould of the ages. There must be a basis of intrinsic truth in the tradition because it comes down to us with the weight of authority which attaches to the unchallenged belief of cen- turies. In the courts of law, long and undisputed possession is regarded as proof of title ; and in folk-lore, a story that has been accepted from generation to generation may be said to have fairly established a strong case for our sound belief. The Lady Superior and the Young Man are weary of waiting. Let us wander by the Wye again. Immediately below Haddon Hall, the river receives the limpid waters of the Lathkill, or Dakin as it is called at this point. The junction .of the two streams is at Fillyford Bridge, an artist's " bit " of water-colour. Presently comes the " Peacock " Inn, with its shadowy, dreamy, high-pitched gables, its gray clustering chimneys, its heavy mullioned and latticed win- dows, its ivied walls and its gentle gardens sloping down to the whispering river, that make it a very quaint, quiet, retiring bird indeed, and not at all the gaudy gallinaceous fowl with the execrable voice and showy feathers known to ornitho- logists as the pavo cristatus. The " Peacock " is a picture 62 Pictures of the Peak. rather than a place, a ballad and not a building, an idyll and not an inn. A peacock (the crest of that heroic John Manners who ran away with the dimpled Dorothy Vernon, from the ball room of the feudal castle a mile and a half away) is carved over the doorway above the date 1652. But the " Peacock's " existence as an hotel is of modern history. Within the memory of men living it was a farmhouse. It was occupied, if not owned, by the Stephenson family. The old lettering in the stone above the date 1652 when deciphered reads " IONSTE " in one line, and " VENSON " in another, or connected " John Stevenson." Over the Derwent bridge we loiter and listen and linger, undisturbed by the screech of the railway whistles in the shunting sidings below where goods trains are being mar- shalled with many a creak and remonstrance from com- plaining buffers, relieved, however, by a ripple of musical laughter from some lawn-tennisonion girls in diaphanous dresses in the " Peacock's " grounds. We can see where the Wye joins the parent stream, the one slightly dusky from its contact with the moorlands above Chatsworth, the other crystalline in its clearness by its passage through the limestone gorges. The alders dip down their protecting arms to prevent the inevitable embrace. The Young Man steps away to enquire about tea-time and train-time, and we leave the Lady Superior looking over the lichen-stained arches, in their setting of green pastures and wooded heights. She is thinking, perhaps, that this flowing stream is some- thing more than mere running water. Chapter HE BAGSHAWE'S CAVERN. j OST people have visited or heard of John o'Groat's house in Caithness, Fingal's Cave at Staffa, Guy's Cliff at Warwick, Mortimer's Hole in Nottingham's Castle crag, and Poole's Hole at Buxton ; but few have penetrated Bagshawe's Cavern. To begin with, the reader will naturally ask where is Bagshawe's Cavern, and when told that it is at Bradwell, he will either conceal his ignorance as to the whereabouts of that place, by consulting the gazetteer to make sure of his geography, or innocently ask in what part of the British Isles this Bradwell may be found. One of the quaintest and not least romantic of the primitive Peak villages, it lies quite off the beaten track, although in the past the lead from its mines has decided many great battles, while to-day its inhabitants supply the London market with felt hats. Bradwell, remote and iso- lated in the midst of rocky valleys and rugged hills, with a decreasing population and decaying industries, seems a suburb of civilization, where living is not life, where existence knows no energy, but is a peaceful process of eating and sleeping, reading old newspapers, and chatting over moss- grown garden walls with old people who have made this picturesque spot their peaceful abode, where they will end 64 Pictures of the Peak. their days in one long happy benediction. No hurry or worry, no rush or push at Bradwell ; although the patriarchs hope to live long enough to see the locomotive steaming down the valley under the shadow of the immemorial hills. They talk, do these graybeards, with half-pleased, half- pathetic expectancy of what the Dore and Chinley Railway will do for Bradwell. The new line will pass within a mile and a half of the antiquated village. Bradwell is two miles from Castleton, fourteen from Sheffield, four from Tideswell, seven from Miller's Dale, and ten from Buxton. The popu- lation has dwindled from 1,500 to 1,050. If the Dore and Chinley extension serves no more useful purpose, it will be the means of introducing Englishmen to, perhaps, the finest crystallized cavern in these realms a cavern that furnishes new studies and speculations to the geologist, sumptuous schemes of colour to the artist, and a world of wonders to the sightseer. A tourist of the Mark Twain temperament would pro- bably ask at Bagshawe's Cavern if Mr. Bagshawe was at home, assuming with solemn pretence that this subterranean abode was his residence, just as at Buxton some people would not be surprised to see Poole, the outlaw, emerge from his chambers in Poole's Hole, in slashed and puffed doublet, velvet cloak, ruff and ruffle, high-crowned and feathered hat, sword and trunk hose, bidding his visitors welcome. Bagshawe's Cavern, although it belongs to Mr. W. H. G. Bagshawe, J.P., of Ford Hall, Chapel-en-le-Frith a descendant of the famous "Apostle of the Peak" has only recently been purchased by that gentleman from its late owner and present guide, Mr. John Hall, Dale End, Bradwell. The cavern, however,, was christened after a member of the Bagshawe family ; and perhaps the associa- tion of name has had something to do with the popular Derbyshire squire's acquisition of a natural curiosity that would supply Mr. Rider Haggard with fresh inspiration. The cavern was explored by Lady Bagshawe, of Wormhill Hall, some sixty years ago, and as she was the first of the fair sex to visit its mysterious depths, it was named after her. An amusing contretemps attended her exploit. She was a lady to whom Nature had been prodigal in the dis- tribution of her gifts, for she weighed seventeen stone, and Hagshawe's Cavern. 65 at a narrow and gloomy aperture of the cavern, 800 yards from daylight, she stuck fast in the niggard space, impaled by the sharp spear points of projecting stalactites. The guide pulled and tugged at the imprisoned lady, but she was bound, like Andromeda, to the rock. His efforts failed to extricate her, and he began to feel ashamed of his exer- tions. In his despair he left her in the awful vault, with two tallow candles for company, while he ran breathless into Bradwell for assistance. The cave itself was discovered quite accidentally in 1806 by four miners searching for lead, who broke down a solid wall of shining stalagmites and saw revealed the glistening grottos, the work of millions of years, never before beheld by mortal eye. It was Shelley's magical cave : " The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling Were stored with magic treasures sounds of air, Which had the power all spirits of compelling, Folded in cells of crystal silence there ; ***** And there lay visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis ; Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint With the soft burthen of intensest bliss : It is its work to bear to many a saint Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, Even Love's and others white, green, gray, and black, And of all shapes and each was at her beck." For the past twenty-three years Bagshawe's Cavern has been in possession of Mr. John Hall, whose pleasant cottage is the first house to the right at the Tideswell end of Brad- well Dale. It has always been open to the public ; but the isolated position of Bradwell does not bring the tourist race in Matlock-Bath-like shoals into the village ; while the cavern is something more than a catchpenny peep-show. Mr. Hall has taken a personal pride in the place, and spent a considerable sum of money in adding to its safety and comfort. He has shown it to his friends, and to his friends' friends, more content with appreciation than pelf. Descrip- tive justice has not been done to the cavern by the innumer- able writers on Derbyshire. The best account is from the pen of Miss Ada E. Goodwin, of Derby, who printed her experiences for private circulation in 1879, entitled A 66 Pictures of the Peak, Lady's Visit to Bagshaive's Cavern, Bradwell. Mention is made of the cavern in Picturesque Excursions in the Peak, published sixty years ago, and also in Hutchinsorfs Tour Through Derbyshire. Mary Sterndale in her Vignettes of Derbyshire (1824) is dumb. Arthur Jewitt in the itinerary of his History of Buxton (1811), says " Bradwell is a rough, cheerless, but rather populous village ; it is, however, worth visiting for the cavern which has lately been discovered there. This cavern belongs to Sir W. C. Bagshawe, of the Oaks, near Sheffield, and from him is called Bagshawe's Cavern. As all Derbyshire caverns do, when newly opened, it displays a profusion of elegant crystallizations, but if every visitor, as in other souterreins, be permitted to carry away part of the stalactites, it will soon, like them, be reduced to a horrid chasm, displaying no brilliancy within the reach of the chisel and the mallet."* Rhodes in his Peak Scenery (1824) writes : " We have heard much of Bagshawe's Cavern, and we wished to visit it ; but the day was now fast closing upon us. . . . We determined to visit it on some future day, but hitherto that day has not arrived." This peculiar author then proceeds to abuse a place he has never seen, much on the same logical principle as the Evangelical Clergy who condemn the Stage without ever entering a theatre to see what it is like. He says : " This place, how- ever, is not likely to be frequently visited ; the timid will shrink from the undertaking with apprehension, and the treasures that it contains must be reserved for those who are not deterred by common difficulties, and can cheerfully submit to the inconvenience of stooping and crawling along the rugged and narrow passages that lead to the inmost recesses of the Peak mountains." Dr. Spencer T. Hall in his two books, The Peak and The Plain and Days in Derby- shire, avoids both Bradwell and its cave. Mr. Croston, F.S.A., in On Foot Through The Peak, treats them with similar neglect. Bemrose's Guide to Derbyshire dismisses Bagshawe's Cave in half-a-dozen lines, although it is con- strained to admit that it is a " beautiful stalactite gem, . . . * His kinsman, Mr. W. H. G. Bagshawe, J.P., does not favour this statement, and tells the present writer that the title deeds of his family do not support it, Bagshawe's Cavern. 67 an exploration of labour and trouble, but also of novel en- joyment." The Rev. Dr. John Charles Cox, in the Tourist's Guide to Derbyshire, says, " Bagshawe's Cavern surpasses the Castleton caves in the beauty of its stalactite formations ; " but he is in error in limiting its extent to only half-a-mile. The omniscient Baddeley, my vade mecum, is disappointing. He writes : " Bagshavve Cavern is accounted by some more interesting than any of the Castleton ones. We have not explored it, but the natives tell us it is so extensive that a party failed to find the end of it in twelve hours, and that the consumption of a pound of ' dips ' left them ' nowhere ' in it." The Bagshawe Cavern, with its intricate windings, is, perhaps, two miles long ; but it has never been explored to its remotest recesses. Mr. John Hall, and a companion, once spent seventeen hours out of the twenty-four in pene- trating its windings, and proceeded in the dark distance beyond where a waterfall of considerable magnitude booms from above and plunges in an abyss to re-appear in the valley far away below in the sunshine as a feeder of the Bradwell Brook. A typical Derbyshire miner, this John Hall, with hair of frosted silver, and a face russet and ruddy as a winter apple. His talk is of " twitchers " i.e., faulty " lodes " of lead and of "th j owd mon," an expression used by the leadminers of the Peak in describing their Roman prede- cessor who delved for ore under the hills, and left relics of his operations in the shape of tools and lamps which, when encountered by the modern workman, are said to belong to " th' owd mon." Mr. Hall's practical education began very early. His uncle took him when he was eight years old into the darkest corner of the Great Peak Cavern at Castle- ton, and blew out the candle, telling him to find his way out, if he ever wished to become a miner. He was a miner thirty-five years, and accustomed to come up the "gates" leading out of a mine seventy fathoms deep in ten minutes without a light. But he shakes his head over present lead- mining prospects in the Peak. Lead ore is actually brought by the hundred tons from Wales, and even Spain, to be smelted at Brough, near Castleton, so unprofitable has it become to work the Derbyshire mineral. Above the Brad- well Brook stands idle and rusty the engine power and 68 Pictures of the Peak. plant of some Sheffield capitalists, who eight years ago lost ^6,000 in attempting to revive a moribund industry. At Moss Rake, on the opposite hill, are the lead-workings started by a Co-operative Company, which were abandoned after the mine had absorbed some thousands of pounds sterling. Yet in the valley, where stands a ruined chimney and a roofless building, by the side of a hillock of shining white debris, colossal fortunes have been made out of lead- mining, and smaller fortunes by re-smelting the refuse by blast furnace, instead of by the old-fashioned cupola. It has been " run over " two or three times with profitable results. If the gleaning in the unwealthy stubble has been golden, what must the original reapers have gained in the rich harvest field ? Bagshawe's Cavern stands on the steep hill-side a few hundred yards south-west of the village. The entrance is denoted by a substantial stone building which Mr. Hall has erected for the convenience of visitors. It is at once a resting place, a wardrobe, and a lavatory, for here the explorer adopts a suitable headgear and waterproof dress before venturing, with guttering wick, into the bowels of the earth, and here he finds a wash very acceptable after his underground wanderings. The open door of this dressing room affords at once a bracing air and a glorious prospect. Immediately below are the gray scattered cottages of Brad- well, with the curling blue smoke ascending from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment, and the little river winding like a silvery ribbon through the main street. In front rises the steep austere height called Bradwell Edge ; across the valley are the rich wide pastures of Hope Dale, a golden green, with their tall, refreshing hedge-rows, so generous looking after the cold gray limestone walls that parcel off the fields in parallelograms ; Win Hill and Lose Hill intervene between the long dusky Kinderscout ridge ; while to the south is Hazelbadge, with its fine old Elizabethan hall, once a residence of the Vernons, and now a farm- house, and architecturally spoiled by the addition of an unharmonious new slate roof; Great Hucklow and Little Hucklow, with their mining memories ; Windmill, Six Lane Ends, and Tideswell, with its grand old minster-like church, its old-world houses, and the open conduit with glancing BagshawJs Cavern. 69 water that makes a gleam of silver in the gray market- square. A door in the little room is the portal to Bagshawe's Cavern, and Mr. John Hall is the pioneer. The Lady Superior, like a sheeted apparition, with her lighted candle and gingham shroud, follows ; the present writer is already filling his note-book with hieroglyphics of melted tallow ; and a sleepy lad, who acts as cup-bearer, brings up the rear. There is a descent of 120 steps, cut out of the limestone rock, with traces of lead veins in walls and roof, together with " crinoids " or " encrinites " " . . . shapes of shells, and forms Of creatures in old worlds, and nameless worms. Whole generations lived and died, ere man, A worm of other class, to crawl began." This brings us to the " Kitchen of the Fairies," where the crystallized conformations and curious stalactite growths are but the preface to the Great Book about to be unfolded to us " a book of common prayer " as Mr. Ruskin has written " a vast illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded with porphyry pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without in letters of enamel and gold."* The miners went no further than this point in search of lead, and it was here they accidentally broke into the cavern. A few more steps, and a narrow passage, where the process of petrification has been going on for countless ages, and where the highest and haughtiest head must bow as humbly as Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, gives access to Three Lane Ends, where the passages diverge. The geological strata are at times bewildering to the student. Carboniferous limestone and gray marble meet overhead ; while underfoot will be found the sand of millstone grit, although the nearest gritstone formation is several miles away. Bands of chert are embedded in the limestone, and the crystallizations bear a vraisemblance to all kinds of things from the sublime to the ridiculous, from church bells and bibles to sheeps' heads and shoulders of mutton. The variety of colour in the crystallizations is surprising. The prevailing hues are snowy white, delicate * Stones of Venice, Pictures of the Peak. amber, and cairngorm yellow ; here and there are tints of blue and gray ; now and again you are surprised by a blood-red radiance, the effect of a diffusion of ironstone, or a sulphurous black, the result of carbon. Inspecting the " Elephant's Throat," the " Giant's Foot," and the " Church Hole," we pause at " The Rock of Ages," where the magne- sium light illuminates a scene as beautiful as it is impressive. The glistening encrustations are like small avalanches of snow arrested in their descent, or foaming waterfalls frozen never to thaw. Yet the snowy scrolls and curves seem to have a silken texture, so soft and down-like is their appear- ance. From the roof the stalactites depend like lustres from a silvery chandelier in fairy-land. We pass on to the " Bell House," where the transparent crystallizations descend in a lace-like cataract, and form a rippling pool at the bottom. There is a glazed appearance about the brilliant mass that suggests melted wax to the incredulous, so soft is the modelling and so skilful the colouring. On the roof of the next low and rocky passage some visitors, years ago, smoked their names and initials with their candles. This is an ingenious way of scrawling one's autograph ; but it has the merit of permanency, for the letters cannot now be rubbed off. Petrification has glazed the initials, and "John Richard Smith " has secured a cheap immortality in these calcareous catacombs. What appeared to be a cul de sac opens in a spacious cave, where a striking scene almost stuns the imagination. It is called " The Bursting of the Tombs," a rather repulsive title for a very romantic picture. The same observation applies to the " Chamber of Worms," and the " Chandler's Shop." More icicle-like stalactites, so fragile as to appear to be "portable property," although they have acquired a " fixity of tenure " that defies " evic- tion " ; more stalagmites, rising from the ground in shining mounds, white, red, and yellow ; more low and curious passages with dark fissures, leading to magnificent grottos. A Sheffield visitor in one of these narrow apertures was heard to exclaim, " O lay a sovereign them rocks 'till know about it. O've gin 'um some rare bumps wi' moi yed." But in the most contracted parts of the cavern there is no impure air. Indeed, at one point " Calypso's Cave "- there is a distinct draught that affects the candles and BagshawJs Cavern. 71 delays the ignition of the magnesium wire, although it is a hundred feet or more below the surface. The explorer, therefore, need not fear the fate of the dogs who are sent into the Grotto del Cane, at Naples, to show visitors the deadly effect of the carbonic acid gas. The pathway is tolerably dry ; but at the " Dungeon," where there has been a water-course, it is blocked in places by ponderous boulders that might have been bowled there by Titans in the wantonness of their supernatural strength. But this wildness adds to the adventurous charm of the surround- ings, and people who would like a cave with gas-brackets, papered walls, mirrors, and Brussels carpets had better stay away from Bagshawe's Cavern. The "Hall of State" is a rocky apartment that supplies fresh surprises in the colour and contour of its crystalliza- tions, the "Colonnade" pointed out by the guide being of singular delicacy and beauty. The " Dungeon " justifies its title, and here the water-course previously alluded to dis- appears. The gorge into which it opens leads out into Bradwell far away below, and might be traversed did not a natural limestone trough of water thirty yards long and five feet deep intervene. The crystallizations fashion themselves into shapes now uncouth and grotesque, now picturesque and imaginative. They are of fantastic form and fairy-like colour, of spectacular splendour and sensational surprises. There are delicate honeycombs, sheaves of pillars, and shining organ pipes more burnished than if executed by the best polisher ; there is also a stalagmite that resembles a goose roasting, and there are various similitudes to the elephant. The " Grotto of Paradise " gives the explorer a sense of general splendour on the brain. He might be in the Grotto of Antiparos, for " His foot is on the marble floor, And o'er his head the dazzling spars Gleam like a firmament of stars." They fall in suspended showers from ledge to ledge, forming " exquisite net-work, lawn-like tissues, or delicate mem- braneous curtains." Further on, through the "Straits of Gibraltar," is " Calypso's Cave." One gorgeous mass of glistening icicles depend from the roof, each with a drop of water at the tapering end sparkling like a diamond ; the 7 1 Pictures of the Peak. walls are encrusted with masses of shining honeycomb ; the floor is scattered over with stalagmites from pale pink to pure white. "Calypso" is, however, a far-fetched title; and our Penelope suggests to her Ulysses the " Golden Cave," the abode of the god of wealth in Spenser's Faery Queen, as a better name for this magnificent grotto. There are other rich treats in store for us. Mr. Hall is wishful to show us the rocking-stone, to take us to " Five Lane Ends," and thence to the waterfall, which takes a leap of sixty feet, and even to go beyond that point where all sound of its deafening roar lapses into a solemn silence. But tempus fugit. We have been three hours in the cavern, and are told we have seen about half of it. Another day we hope to resume our explorations, and I hope the pleasure is one that will not long be postponed. In the meantime, we find our way back to the long ascent of steps. The progress down wa.sfaa7is descensus Averni; the toiling upward is hoc opus, hie labor, est. But when we gain the summit, and stand again at the open door of the dressing-room, how bright the sun is, how blue the sky, how blithe the breeze, how green the slopes of the grand old hills ! Bradwell, like other Peak villages, has produced some original natives. Such a character was Richard Jeffries, who died in April, 1887. He was as great a curiosity as the cave. The Prodigal Son was constrained to eat of the husks that the swine had left ; but Jeffries took to a cuisine of " swill " out of choice rather than necessity. A tall, big-boned man, with a ruddy complexion, high cheek bones, and a prominent nose, he was, despite his penu- rious habits, the picture of health. His nose belonged to the Wellingtonius giganteus species. He earned his scanty living by going errands, milking cows, and doing odd jobs. His general appearance was so grotesque, that the tout ensemble would have been an inspiration to a theatrical costumier. A battered old " billycock " hat was tied on his head with twine. Rough sacking covered his shoulders ; a worn piece of the same material, frayed and filthy, served as an apron. His trousers were ragged and patched. These " unmentionables " were as a church made up of all styles of architecture a little " Norman " in a mouldering con- dition ; a sample of the " Perpendicular ; " below the knee, Dagshawjs Cavern. 73 a suggestion of the " Decorated," much " Early English," and a fine specimen or two of the " Depraved " period. These inexpressibles were rayonne in front and flamboyant behind. At one time the Bradwell miser played the drum in the Bradwell Band, and on special occasions, at the request of a well-known friend, he would illustrate his pro- ficiency on that instrument by imitating vocally a cornet solo, with drum accompaniment, executed with his fist on the panels of an open door. But he was most effective as an elocutionist. On inspired occasions he would recite a dithery dialogue of some twenty or thirty dismal verses in length, entitled " Death and the Lady," in which the struggle of a wealthy woman to ward off the fatal summons with coaxes and bribes was graphically and gruesomely set forth. An incident which occurred a few months before he died demonstrates the curmudgeon character of Richard Jeffries. He had been engaged for some time in wheeling small quantities of coal to different houses in the straggling village of Bradwell, and as the weather continued bitterly cold, and the snow accumulated on the ground, he at last was com- pelled to buy a hundredweight of coal to furnish a fire to warm his own frozen limbs in the miserable hovel in which he lived an anchorite's life, with all the devotee's dirt with- out his devotion. But after he had conveyed his sackful of fuel up to his door he could not find it in his heart to be so extravagant as to burn it, so he bethought himself that the work of wheeling the loads of coal to the various places during the winter weather had always warmed him. So he wheeled his own coals about the road till he got warm, and so saved them. After doing this for some time, the weather grew warmer, and then he disposed of the coal for the same sum as it had cost him. Despite his niggardly habits, he was thoroughly honest, and when entrusted with money accomplished his errands with fidelity. He was never known to burn a candle, evidently regarding illumination with the same economical eye as the Scotchman who ob- jected to extreme unction as an " unco' waste of ulzie." Chapter ill! ABOUT AXE EDGE |IR," said Doctor Johnson to his biographer, when they were at a country inn in Warwickshire, " there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is pro- duced 'as by a good tavern or inn." Ursa Major was an authority on many subjects, and was not given to flattery, so his opinion on the old country hostels that so excited the admiration of Washington Irving is worthy of record. As Dr. Johnson, moreover, was a total abstainer for the greater part of his life, and long before teetotalism became popular, the inn to which he alludes must have been a most inviting retreat. Perhaps it was as quaint and old-fashioned as the " Red Lion " at Burbage, with a bluff, hearty, farmer-like landlord, and a glass of honest amber ale, the produce of sound malt and hops, and not a chemical preparation manu- factured to intoxicate instead of invigorate. We have left the Lady Superior behind in the Buxton Gardens, which this August morning never looked more bright or bonnie, for the Lawn Tennis Tournament is in full swing, and the spacious, tree-shaded lawn on which it is held is surely one of the prettiest either at home or abroad. At what other place could you pick such scenic surround- About Axe Edge. 75 ings for the grass courts and the grand stand such com- binations of flowers and foliage, wood and water, with gentle slopes in the middle distance, and a mountain background in the perspective ? The scene is gay and animated enough. The cry of " Love ! " and " Deuce ! " is heard above the chatter of fashionable idlers discussing the "perfect fore- hand drive " of Miss L. Dod, the lady lawn-tennis champion, her " direct upward stroke without side-twist," and her "forward top-spin." Perhaps the game is too frivolous for such a philosopher as the Young Man. Our " forward top- spin " is to the summit of Axe Edge, and the Lady Superior, who does not seem to be interested in springs strongly impregnated with alum, is left behind in the flower-garden of flower-like girls. The sun was shining in a sky of hare- bell blue when we left Buxton ; but when Burbage is reached, a thundercloud has cracked over the moors and the rain is drenching the newly-mown hay in front of the "Red Lion." Above the blasting at the Grin Lime Quarries is heard the deep-mouthed thunder at hollow distance. There is a quaint little room at the " Red Lion," with curious pictures, and a table so massive that the stalwart lime-burner with clenched fist can strike it with sledge-hammer force as he emphasizes his arguments and scarcely make the glasses rattle. The house is an ancient one, and contains some interesting relics. Written on the window with a diamond is the following rhyme by the " Walking and Talking Smiths," two famous Manchester gentlemen of sixty years ago : " O, good ale Tells a tale Over the flail And over the pail." There is an archaic water-jug on which is the face of a man, and the couplet " A learned man I do appear ; But turn me round an ass is there." And the inverted picture is a veritable donkey. Near to an ancient eight-day clock is a picture of a jolly-looking farmer couple who have at the market got plenus bacchi and been placed in the stocks ; and an engraving of Wilkie's " Rent 76 Pictures of the Peak. Day," when " puir tenant bodies, scant o' cash, maun thole a factor's snash." But this little hostelry is worth visiting if only to see the picture of the Tideswell glee singers, with the celebrated Samuel Slack as the central figure. Such strenuous energy is infused into the countenances of these old-time vocalists, such vigour do they give to the fine old glee, " Life's a bumper, filled by fate," that you almost expect the boisterous notes to burst from the picture frame. Samuel Slack, who died in 1822, is buried in Tideswell Churchyard, where a stone is erected to his memory by " admirers of that deep-toned melodist." Many are the stories told of this basso-profundo of the Peak. He once had the honour of singing before the Farmer King, and was told by Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, how delighted His Majesty had been with his efforts. " Oh," replied the Tideswell musician, "he wor pleased, wor he? Ah, aw know'd aw know'd aw could dow't." On another occasion, after drinking not wisely but too well, he stumbled down in a field to sleep off his carouse. At dawn he was discovered by a bull with inquisitive horns. The ferocious animal was just turning Slack over when he woke, and bawled out in such a powerful oratorio style that the bull ran away as if it had lost its wits. Other sights for the archaeologists are there at the " Red Lion," and Mr. George Holme points out framed and glazed on the mantelshelf, the adventures of Joseph Watson, a redoubtable character who died during the reign of Queen Anne, and was buried at Disley Church. He was park-keeper on the Lyme estate for sixty years, during which period he drank 608 thirty-six gallon barrels and two gallons of strong ale. He had no doubt shortened his days by this imbibition of beer, although he lived to the verdant age of 105. In addition to his other remarkable achievements, he drove twelve brace of stags from Lyme to Windsor as a present to the Queen for a wager of 500 guineas ; and in the io3rd year of his age was at the hunting and killing of a buck in Poynton Park. The thunder-claps no longer " buffet round the hills, from bluff to bluff." The sun is bright in a clear sky ; the hills seem to have been brought nearer by the atmospheric clearance ; and the wind from the moors comes with a sweet and cool caress to the cheek. Past Ladmans Low About Axe Edge. 77 Station (1,280 feet) on the High Peak Railway. The rough shed-like station might be the depot on a prairie line in the Far West. Some ruddy-cheeked youngsters are playing on the top of a truck of hay ; and the only intimation that there is any danger is conveyed on a notice board " Beware of the trains ; look up and down the line before you cross ! " We are high up on the shoulders of Axe Edge now, and the Young Man, whose interest in little children grows with advancing years, is very interested in the operations of some youthful bilberry-gatherers who give a human interest to the undulating expanse of bronze-green heath, soft as velvet, under the full flood of the August sun. We are asked by some tourists where Axe Edge is, and they are staggered to learn that they are standing not many yards from the Ordnance Cairn at the summit (1,807 ft-) When strangers to the district read in the guide-books that Axe Edge is " the highest mountain in Derbyshire," they expect to see, perhaps, an isolated peak towering serrated into the pale blue sky, with a white mist clinging to its jagged points, and patches of snow blanching its dark crevices. Such expectations are, of course, doomed to disappointment ; for although Axe Edge attains a respectable height, and is intersected with romantic ravines that are savagely wild in their utter loneliness, it lacks variety of mountain outline, and distinct individual character. Axe Edge is 1,807 f ee t high ; but some parts of Buxton. are 1,100 feet above sea- level, so Buxton reduces Axe Edge to 707 feet. It is a gradual ascent from Buxton to Burbage and Ladmans Low, and the Leek Road ascends to 1,590 feet, thus further diminishing any startling loftiness that " the highest moun- tain in Derbyshire " might present. Axe Edge, however, is Axe Edge. And fascinating enough are its fastnesses, its heathery knolls, its deep glens, musical with soft rills, and its melancholy, far-reaching moorland wastes, desolate and gloomy in shadow and mist, to those who know its secrets and enjoy its confidences, who can interpret the modulations of its murmuring streams, and translate the call of the blackcock, the grouse, and the plover. To ap- preciate the Peak you must not wear an aneroid in your eye, nor measure rivers by their width and hills by their arithmetical proportions ; but pay regard to the picturesque 78 Pictures of the Peak. charm of the scene in which they are contributing features. Behold the view, for instance, from this white and winding road, the common turnpike to Leek, and study the pains with which that great landscape artist Nature has " com- posed " the picture. Far away in the north-east, the morose Kinderscout throws his dark shoulders against the thin gray haze, with Chinley Churn and Eccles Pike for companions. Mam Tor, Lose Hill, and Win Hill rise between the purple ridges of Ashop and Edale, and the Edges that lift their gritstone escarpments above the Dervvent Valley from Lady Bower to Baslow. Combs Moss, Chelmorton Low, and other high Lows of the Peak carry the eye to the hills about Dove Dale and Matlock in the south. The steep stone quarries at Burbage and Harpur Hill no longer look hideous disfigurements, but impart a new interest to the scene the pigmy forms of lime-burners and pigmy horses, drawing pigmy trucks, stand out in strong relief against the pale white smoke, that seems but a vapour. In front, just below, is the Valley of the Dove, glen-like in its wild beauty, with the sugar-loaf peaks of Chrome Hill and Park Hill, and the green mass of High Wheeldon rising above a fair green pastoral country, with soft shadows and slanting shafts of sunlight accentuating or darkening the local colour. We make a detour to the left to reach Turncliff, where at the very foot of Axe Edge is half a mile of canal. It was made in the days of Bridgewater by an engineer named Needham, with a view of providing a water-way between the Peak and the Plain ; but the project remained in the ex- perimental stage, and the canal is now used as a reservoir for supplying the tanks of the High Peak Railway. At Turncliffe for many years lived the late James Swan, a farmer who was a typical Peakrel, caustic and quaint in humour, gnarled and rugged in character as an old oak, but with the same staunch, sound heart within. The Young Man has many stories to tell of this sturdy hill-farmer. He held his lease from the Duke of Devonshire, and on rent- days repaired to His Grace's Estate Office to pay the Agent. Unkempt as his rugged moorlands was this agriculturist. " Why did you not shave yourself before you came to the office ? " jestingly enquired the Agent. " Aw reckon you'll shave ma clean enough before aw leave," was the ready About Axe Edge. 79 reply of Swan as he fumbled out his hard-earned rent. On another occasion he was told, " We are going to raise your rent." " Aw'm glad to hear it," was his reply, " for it's more than aw can do." The Duke used to give a dinner to his tenants at the rent-audit. That custom belongs to the past, and a certain sum regulated according to rental is allowed to the cultivators of the ducal estates for their dinner. " Peebles for pleasure," said the Scotch- man, disgusted with Paris. " Buxton for a big drink," say the High Peak farmers. Swan had received his three shilling dinner allowance from the Duke's office, and devoted that remittance to the Excise Department of the Government. He returned to his lonely farmstead nearly as " elevated " as his native hills. At daybreak he felt a terrible thirst, such as only is experienced by people who accept fusel oil for matured Glenlivet. He groped his way downstairs to a familiar cupboard. He grasped a bottle, and took a deep draught of its contents. He gasped with a burning sensation. " Maary ! " he choked, " what have ye put in th' bottle in th' cupboard ? " " Paraffin, to be sure, you owd fool ! " "Then its a good job aw wasna smokin'," he shouted up- stairs, " or we should have all been blown to blazes ! " Return we now to the Leek Road, and walk on to Cisterns Clough, with Dove Head visible in front, and the lovely valleys watered by the Dove and Manifold far away below. At Cistern's Clough the coal that has been brought from the bowels of Axe Edge by a tram-line, worked by an endless steel rope, is carted away for consumption. It is a few yards before you come to this opening that you turn off the main road to the right for the Alum Spring. A finger- post is placed at the corner of the road and points to Mac- clesfield, Leek, Earl Sterndale, and Buxton. You follow the rough diverging road, and pass the colliery engine-house and the opening in the hill-side of the low level mine, dark and cavernous. Here and there in the scanty pasturage is a small mere that reflects the silvery gleams of sunlight ; here and there is a low tower above the ventilating shafts of the coal workings. Now comes a rocky gorge that might belong to one of the wildest regions in the Western High- lands. The Dane murmurs over the boulders. Peat is stacked up in square blocks by the roadside ; and peaty 8o Pictures of the Peak. pools show black against the green of the bog myrtle. Everywhere heather and bracken, save where a fern of translucent green grows among the silvery mosses in moist, rocky crevices, or where in a sheep-walk " the shepherd's barometer," the sensitive little pimpernel, opens and closes its scarlet petals. Everywhere ocean-like undulations of moorland a velvet-brown sea arrested in the midst of a hurricane at the height of its fury and petrified for ever. Wave after wave rolls away to the horizon in dusky rollers. But it is a silent sea. The only sounds are the babble of water, the bleating of distant sheep, the bold " go-go, go-back, go-back " of the grouse, and the wailing " pee-wit, pee-wit " of the plover. There are two habitations in sight on either side of the rugged valley. There are farmhouses, almost desolate in their isolation. One is called " The Orchard," but the only fruit is the bilberry and the cran- berry ; the other is known as Black dough. They seem hermitages sooner than houses. The noisy cannonade of the Battle of Life must come up to these lonely places muffled into a mere murmur. They look on the world from a distance, and its tumult is but a faint echo. Further on in this defile, leaving the cluster of cottages known as Notbury to the right, the Alum Spring gashes with bubbling force from the rock and passes under the road to the Dane, flowing alongside. The water is tawny of colour, and so strongly impregnated with the triple sulphate of alumnia and potassa, that at its- junction with the river it turns the banks black, and for a considerable distance down the moorland stream, which naturally tastes only of peat- reek and moss, and is soft and pleasant to the palate, is tainted with this acrid mineral salt. The Young Man says that the medical virtues of this powerful spring are but little known to the medical world ; although the hill-farmers use the alum water for their cattle, and its curative properties are esteemed among country people. In the close neigh- bourhood of the Spring we are struck with the preternatural verdancy of the moorland, the green is as vivid as emerald. A mile or more from the Spring are the Three Bridges where Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Cheshire meet in an impressive moorland solitude. Here the scenery reaches a climax of wildness, and the most prosaic of mortals cannot About Axe Edge. 81 help but feel the poetic spirit of the scene, its spiritual influence, and its emotional power. In the distance, the Roches project their dark fantastic headlands against the sky-line, and more remote hill ranges rest on the horizon like intangible clouds, blue, gauzy, and visionary. " All we loathe is far away ; Far away the spiteful neighbour, far away the candid friend ; And the stale and hideous street, Where men prate, and sneer, and cheat, And the fulsome daily faces, and the cares which know no end." At the Buxton gardens again, bright and beautiful, with the gay Grand Stand, and the fashionable fringe outside applauding the crack antagonists. It is a pretty spectacle, champagny and sparkling, on these smooth lawns, with their environment of green leaves. But " Deuce " and " Love," " back-handers," " lightning services," and " well-judged vol- leys " seem, however, very frivolous and fleeting sensations after the sweet, stern astonishment afforded by the solemn silences, the sunlight and shadows, and the Eternal Presence of the austere and hoary hills, mystic and immutable ! Chapter ABOUT ST. ANN E'S. F it were customary for towns to adopt aliases, Buxton might fitly be denominated St. Anne's-in- the-Peak. St. Anne is the Patron Saint that pervades the place. St. Anne is everywhere and everybody at Buxton. With her you take your waters and exercises. She sits down with you at the table, and kneels with you in the pew. A modern Duke has said that a man does not know what a good dinner is until he has dined at St. Anne's Hotel. The pump-handle at St. Anne's drinking- well is so popular " from early morn to dewy eve," that its constant action suggests the mechanical possibilities of per- petual motion. St. Anne's Cliff is the Parnassus of the valetudinarian who has lost his liver and gained a limp. The best box-seat views of Derbyshire scenery are obtained from St. Anne's coach, and deponent speaketh favourably of St. Anne's Square, in the Market Place. There was as early as 1280 a well-chapel of St. Anne at Buxton; the present Roman Catholic Church is called St. Anne's ; while the old Church, swept and garnished, and now the most fashionable place of worship in the Spa of the Peak, has been dedicated to St. Anne, I am downright ashamed of About St. Anne's. 83 my ignorance, and shall, no doubt, be held up to public scorn by some erudite ecclesiastic ; but 1 must contritely confess that my studies of hagiology have been so neglected that they have never made me acquainted with St Anne. Yet, of course, she must have her days, her eves, and her morrows. Who was St. Anne, and what did she do to be canonized ? I think of Queen Anne of England, and Queen Anne of Denmark, likewise of Queen Anne of Cleves and poor Anne Boleyn ; but they are comparatively modern celebrities ; besides they did nothing to entitle them to a place in the calendar of saints. Donna Anna, the lady beloved by Don Giovanni, and Anne, the sister of Fatima, the seventh and last of Bluebeard's wives, could have had nothing to do with the Buxton waters ; and I give up the research in despair when I find that a certain Anne in- vented a derisive fan with which, when your vocabulary of vehement contempt is exhausted, you may express your contumacy by placing your thumb to your nose, and spread- ing your fingers. A ladylike example of etiquette, truly ! The Mother Church of Buxton comes in but an indirect line of historic succession to the Christian Chapel that stood near the well at the time of Archbishop Peckham's Visitation in 1280, and was dedicated not to St. Anne, but to St. John, not St. John the Baptist as some writers have supposed. At the old AVell Chapel the votaries of the bath offered prayer and praise, and mass was celebrated ; but centuries ago prior to its existence there would probably have been erected heathen altars on its site, for the healing, health-inspiring waters of Buxton bubbled up in their grate- ful warmth and ice-blue colour ages before " The glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome." The ancient Briton, painted with woad, and clad in the skins of the wild animals he hunted, has left many traces of his presence at Buxton ; and in the spirit of the untutored savage may have paid adoration at the ancient spring to the Infinite Spirit above him. The Druids from Arbor Low and Hu-Gaer may at the same font have performed their mysterious ceremonies and their awful sacrifices. It is no random supposition to conclude that the Romans built their 84 Pictures of the Peak. Pagan temple to Mars at this spot centuries before the Sermon on the Mount, for the tramp of their armed legions was heard in the Peak long before the dawn of the Christian Era. We can imagine the Saxon, converted to the true faith, worshipping at the well, and seeing in its wondrous waters the emblem of truth and the mirror of virtue. Then comes a long procession steel-clad Normans and feudal chiefs, fierce barons and mitred prelates, mailed crusaders and shaven monks until the annals of St. Anne's become Elnglish history written in stone. Here heroes have wor- shipped and martyrs have died. At the time of Henry the Eighth the Chapel walls were diversified with the crutches of pilgrims, who left them as testimonials of the benefit they had derived from the waters presided over by St. Anne. But when that truculent monarch, in his blind rage, over- threw monastic establishments, the image of St. Anne was destroyed, and a big Protestant bonfire made of the crutches of the cured cripples. The Chapel was desecrated, and a seal set upon the waters. The Buxton Bethesda, however, did not remain long closed, and hither came the lordly and the lowly, the prince and the peasant, the impotent, and halt, and withered, to be made whole by the water moved by the angel. In that ancient Well Chapel might, no doubt, have been seen the lovely face of Mary Stuart, clouded with the shade of her dark and dramatic destiny. With the Scottish Queen would be her custodians the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, a womanly man and a manly woman, for she is none other than inflexible " Bess of Hardwick." St. Anne's was then a Protestant place of worship, for Elizabeth's Papal Penalties were in force ; and among the worshippers would be her courtiers, Leicester and Burleigh, in slashed and puffed doublets, cloaks of silk and velvet, jewelled belts, and plumed hats with bands of goldsmith's work. The ancient Chapel of St. Anne stood on the Hall Bank side of St. Anne's Cliff. In 1698 a new level was driven to the bath by Mr. White of the Old Hall. The foundations of the memorial shrine were then laid bare, and various Roman antiquities discovered. It is believed that intelli- gent excavation conducted by such a responsible body as the Derbyshire Archasological Society, whose work at About St. Anne's. 85 Dale Abbey has proved of such historic value, would tend to some interesting discoveries. When the Slopes were formed in 1818 Sir Jeffrey Wyatville, the celebrated architect, several fragments of early English ecclesiastical architecture were revealed, the base of some of the pillars being then and there witnessed. The hollow sound that emanated from the use of pick and shovel also indicated a subter- ranean chamber, probably the crypt. It is to be much regretted that the agent of the Duke of Devonshire at that time ordered the filling up and levelling of the soil. At the present time, the Lord of the Manor is a nobleman of scholarly attainments and antiquarian tastes ; and such a Society as the one referred to, might confidently look for his encouragement and support in an exploration that would be of no ordinary interest outside Buxton, and one that would add to our knowledge of those pristine days when law and literature, music and painting, were cherished by their foster-mother the Church. The ancient Church of St. Anne is in Higher Buxton, and at the end of the highest market place in England. The latest Ordnance Survey makes it 1,030 feet above sea- level, but guide-books and histories published years ago give it a much greater altitude. Perhaps places, like persons, as they become old grow downward. If the fashionable Spa down the hill boasts of its stately Crescent and historic Old Hall, Higher Buxton has many " bits," lying off the ancient cross in the wide and breezy Market Square, to detain the archaeologist, delight the antiquary, and delay the artist. There are shadowy nooks and corners, quaint and old- fashioned, that seem to have hid themselves up here as if not caring for the frivolous town below, with its well-dressed idlers, and grand concerts, and balls, and receptions. There is an odd, old world nonconformity about their style of architecture. They are essentially Peak in character, with their whitewashed walls built of rubble, with projecting " throughs," making natural outside steps to the bedrooms, their ochre-coloured dadoes and sanded steps, and their little windows bright with fuchsia and geranium. Lower Buxton cannot very well look down on Higher Buxton, but the fashionable quarter sometimes turns up its nose (for which Nature has already done much in the way of elevation) 86 Pictures of the Peak. towards its plebeian neighbour so much above it. Social distinctions are, however, adjusted by Lower Buxton coming up to Higher Buxton to say its prayers. To St. Anne's flock the begums of the Broad Walk, the potentates from the Palace Hotel, the magnates of Manchester Road and Maryborough Road. How they manage to find St. Anne's is to me a perpetual puzzle. There is certainly a bell, the exasperating anguish of which, when tolled, reminds you equally of a cracked pancheon, the superannuated gong of a boarding-house, a street muffin-bell in a London fog, the town-crier's bell at Little Pedlington, and the bell that rings up the curtain at an East End theatre. But this un- mellifluous invitation would sooner repel than attract the worshipper \ and the sound would appear to proceed from either the Swan, with its pointed gables, or the Wheat Sheaf, perhaps as old as the Church itself, which is hidden behind these well-frequented houses of call. " Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The devil always builds a chapel there," says Defoe, and St. Anne's is certainly strongly garrisoned by the licensed victuallers, as if to establish the connection between the spiritual and spirituous, and to endorse the advice given to Timothy by St. Paul to take a little wine for his stomach's sake. The Dog and Partridge, the Sun, and the Cheshire Cheese bid the pious pilgrim pause, the latter hostel, with its quaint bow-window reaching into the road, being known among the farmer-folk who stable their horses in its yard as " the first hotel in Buxton," which it is in position, if not in precedence. St. Anne's is so closely hemmed in by tenements of an uninteresting character a huddle of houses that crush up to its very walls that much of the quaint individuality of the Church is destroyed, or the tender lines of the poet might be appropriately applied to the time-honoured fane : " And a bell o'er the eastern gable, In a cross-topped belfry swung ; When the Litany was beginning, The gable-bell was rung. A quaint little roof o'er the gateway, Where funerals paused with the bier, When the priest came forth, in his surplice, lie began the service there. About St. Anne's. 87 The rich and poor, all together, On the south of the Church were sown, To be raised in the same incorruption, When the trumpet, at last, is blown. The nave it was dim, for its ceiling Was dark with its timbers of oak ; Of the Militant Church 'twas the symbol ; And here knelt the worshipping folk." The Churchyard is a green oasis amid which the hoary old fane rises like a rock. It is a small building of no particular style of architecture, with walls of rubble lime- stone, faced with slap-dash stucco, with here and there a protruding "through." The steeply-pitched roof is of stone like gray slate, silvered with lichen and softened with moss. The windows are square-headed with small diamond panes in deep old recesses. Incised over the porch is the date 1625 ; but the porch itself is comparatively modern, the doorway under the small portico being the original entrance. It was in 1625 that this Church in Upper Buxton was built, and the inhabitants obtained the rights of burial and bap- tism. From that date, until the opening of St. John's Church, it served as the Parish Church, a fact which shows that the religious demands of Buxton for upwards of a century and a half were easily satisfied. The building under notice was not known as St. Anne's until a year or two ago. When the new St. John's Church was opened seventy-six years ago, St. Anne's became known as " the old Church " a simple, suggestive title which ought never to be disturbed, especially seeing that there is a Roman Catholic Church of that name in the town. The old Church has no right to the name of St. Anne's. There never was a Protestant place of worship dedicated to St. Anne in Buxton, and the misnomer may lead to misunderstanding. " For instance," argues the Young Man, who is much attached to the old spot " suppose by some capricious turn of Fortune's wheel I became a millionaire, and some day ' God puts it in my heart ' I like that old-fashioned phrase to write, ' Enclosed please find cheque for ,100,- which kindly distribute among the poor,' and I address it to the priest or minister of St. Anne's Church, Buxton. What is the worthy post- master to do ? How is he to discriminate ? Being a staunch Anglican, he may compromise with his conscience Pictures of the Peak. and deliver it to the wrong spiritual pastor. Names should be given to distinguish, not to confuse." But to return to the history of a sacred edifice that answers to Schiller's feeling that " Time consecrates ; And what is gray with age becomes religion." Before the present St. John's was opened, the ancient building showed serious structural defects. It had become dilapidated, and decay was apparent in roof and walls. At the beginning of the century Divine service was held for visitors "in the large room of the hotel in the Crescent." In 1811 the Duke of Devonshire obtained an Act of Parliament for the "building and establishing" of St. John's at his own expense. It was opened in 1812. From this period, until its restoration in 1841, the old Church was seldom used as a place of worship, but served as the free school for Buxton, the boys and girls being educated in the same room. The youngsters made a playground of the Churchyard, and balanced their " queedling " planks athwart the grave- stones ; but that was not so great a desecration as takes place in " God's acre " to-day, when the sacred enclosure, as consecrated as the Church itself, is polluted in an unspeak- able manner. The condition of the burial ground is by no means creditable to the Churchwardens. What should be a pretty little cemetery is an unkempt, untidy, and neglected place, with straggling grass, nettles, and other weeds. Com- plaint was recently made by Mr. Baker, J.P., to the Local Board; and about a year ago (1888) Dr. Robertson, J.P., appeared before the Buxton Petty Sessions and represented to the Magistrates that drunken people are taken into the Churchyard and left there until they are sober. This is an abrupt transition " from gay to grave, from lively to severe." A cemetery is certainly the last place in the world where a sober man would voluntarily make his bed ; and it appears that the Buxton Bacchanalians have to be " carried " there when they are buried alive. Apart from the ghostly and " uncanny " associations, the grandest mausoleum is not so comfortable as a common mattress. The melancholy waking thoughts in the chill, early morning of the inebriates who About St. Anne's. 89 have made the last resting-place their midnight couch, may be better imagined than described, and it is to be hoped that the experience has a permanent sobering effect. The Churchyard is still used as a place of interment, but the blasting of the limestone rock to form the graves does not tend to the structural stability of the building. There are the graves of actors in this little cemetery. Buxton, at one period or another, has boasted of four theatres. One was in Church Street, close to the old Church, where G. F. Cook performed, and of which he writes " The Church is a wretched place, worse than the theatre." At the east end of the Churchyard, close to the fence-wall, is a head- stone placed at the foot of the grave, the inscription facing westward, while every other tombstone in this campo santo is placed at the head, and every inscription faces the east. The inscription reads as follows : THIS Stone is placed here IN memory of JOHN KANE, Comedian who departed this life december the loth 1 799, Aged 58 years. A pathetic story is associated with this strolling player's grave. John Kane was about to dine off roast beef. He went out for some horseradish, but instead of horseradish, he pulled up the roots of hemlock or monkshood (aconite), and died in dreadful agony two hours after he had dined. For a poor actor, who perhaps seldom had a good dinner, the feast was a terribly ironical punishment. Mr. Toole reverently stood in the rain before this grave, and, deploring its neglected condition, he commissioned the present writer to have it restored. This has been done, and the inscription on the cnrbing reads : " This grave was sympathetically restored by John Laurence Toole, one of the most eminent comedians of the Victorian Era, who visited it on the i4th of August, 1889, on the occasion of the opening of the New Theatre." A large recumbent slab in the same corner of the Churchyard is the memorial of a very respectable theatrical family, the Thornills, who performed at the old theatre in Spring Gardens, and the more' modern one at the foot of Hall Bank. It is inscribed as follows : 90 Pictures of the Peak. Here Lie interd the remains of Sarah Thornill wife of George Thornill of Buxton who departed this life July the 6th 1784 Aged 33 years With grief and sorrow she was sore oppress, d But now we hope She, gone to joy and rest. Heaven, s the place of joy and rest most shure Which Blessed souls for ever do inshure Allso Inter,d here the remains of Edwd Thornill son of George and Sarah Thornill who departed This life August the 6th 1782 Aged 2 years Allso inter,d the remains of Robert Thornill son of the above George and Sarah Thornill who departed this life July yth 1 783 Aged 2 years Also Here lieth the Remains of The above George Thornill Who departed this life December the 24th 1801 aged 52 years what earthly care can death prevent My glass was run, my time was spent. Over these graves Hamlet might soliloquise : "Alas, poor Yorick ! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar?" There are older stones in this little Churchyard, mouldering and moss-grown memorials of people who, no doubt, lived good and useful lives, but left no enduring mark behind, no " foot-prints on the sands of time." Even their names have been obliter- ated ; but, perhaps, they are inscribed on imperishable tablets above, which is far better. The Church doors are always open. Let us enter. We learn in the porch that the Church is entirely self-supporting, and that out of the offertories the stipend of the minister and all expenses have to be paid ; while any surplus from the collections is devoted to extinguishing the debt incurred by some necessary alterations. In contemplating the interior, one is immediately struck with the almost incon- gruous contrast between the old and new; between the About St. Anne's. 91 ponderous black tie-beams under the open roof, and the painfully modern pine-wood pews ; between the gaudy pictures of the Stations of the Cross, that make patches of inflammatory colour on the gray old walls, and the ancient font, the old oak reading desk with its handsome carvings, of the 1 7th century, and the oak chairs in the chancel, with its chaste altar and subdued appointments, so much more in sympathy with the quaint character of the building. The font is of an unusual oblong shape, and was at one time used as a pig-trough. It bears on one side the date 1625, on another the initials " T. Y.," on the third a shield charged with a saltire, and on the fourth the Greek character Q,. It is lined with lead, and there is an ugly discharge spout outside the basin. Immediately behind the font hangs the rope that agitates the bell whose discordant voice is not conducive to divinity. There are a few mural monuments of marble of a plain character, the earliest being to the memory of William Wallace, who died in 1788. They are not of special interest, except the memorial to William Cheetham and Wife, whose runaway marriage at Gretna Green is one of the incidents of local history. At the porch a statement of the offertories of the previous Sunday is displayed. They amounted to 6 95. 9|d., a small sum surely to come from two crowded congregations at Buxton in July. The " sidesmen " would rebuke human niggardliness by substituting an open collecting plate for the muffled bag. There would not then be so much complaint as to the meagre character of the offertories. The method of collecting at chapels is much more effective than the bag system. Fashionably dressed people, portly and opulent, are not ashamed to sneak a copper into a bag, where their meanness is not seen of men. But they would place silver on an exposed plate. The Church funds would thus be materially increased by their regard for appearances. At chapels a prosperous deacon is usually delegated to the sidesman's duty of passing round the plate. He places a piece of gold on the pewter dish as a decoy duck to encourage the generous and to shame the selfish. It thus happens that those members of the congregation who were only meditating giving copper are lured into sixpences ; the 9 2 Pictures of the Peak. sixpenny people are encouraged into shillings ; the shilling people into half-crowns, and so on in proportion, until the daring deacon's golden coin is challenged by one of similar colour and value in the Queen's currency. The altar at once appeals to the artistic eye and the reverent mind. It is vested in a magnificent white silk frontal, embroidered in a rich scheme of gold and colour. On the re-table, on either side of the Cross, in addition to the two altar lights, which are only kindled at the celebra- tions, are ten vesper lights, and twenty vases of fresh flowers, placed there by fair devotees. The altar is a mass of beauti- ful blooms, and the pulpit is similarly decorated. The choir is, of course, a surpliced one, and the snowy purity of the linen and the uniformity of the violet cassocks suggest a harmony to the eye that assists the music conveyed to the ear. The sense of sight and sound are thus both gratified. Probably the choir, in their orderly neatness, profit by the example of the priest-in-charge, the Rev. William Lear, M.A., who is the very ne plus ultra of circumspection in the matter of vestments. The stoles that are from time to time worn by him, some of them emblazoned with jewels, are beautiful specimens of art needlework. The accommodation for the choir is most inadequate, and the height of the building does not afford space for an organ. The enthusiasm which Mr. Lear has brought to bear upon the spiritual life of St. Anne's has been contagious. He has infected by his zeal all his workers. He has infused vitality into a moribund cause, and galvanized dead and dry bones into vascular vigour. There was a distinct opening in Buxton for the ornate Ritual service that Mr. Lear has introduced with such pleasing acceptance to both residents and visitors. Captious critics might urge in a spirit of un- gracious depreciation that the Vicar of Buxton has boxed the theological compass in making the three Churches under his control interpret the conflicting schools of Episcopalian thought. St. John's is Low Church, St. James's Broad Church, and St. Anne's High Church. The positive, com- parative, and the superlative degrees are thus represented ; and the arrangement shows the wide, tolerant, liberal catho- licity of the Vicar. Without losing sight of the essentials, About St. Anne's. 93 he ministers to all tastes. He does not believe in minor religious differences, and has a contempt for the disputatious Christians " Who fight like devils for conciliation And hate each other for the love of God." Archaeologists seem to have missed sight of the venerable parsonage that stands in a field, called Parsonage Field, at the back of Hartington House, in West Street. The building, guarded by two noble ash trees, is of the same date and of the same kind of stone as the Church. The heavy mullions of the windows are notable. Some years ago this house was converted into two cottages ; but now it is used as a stable and cow-shed by Mr. Wheeldon, the tenant. Close by, on the other side of the road, stood John Knox's pulpit, a bold rocky promontory where, according to local legend, the Scottish Apostle of Puritanism " Announced the coming doom, and fulminated Against the scarlet woman and her creed." Othapter $. BOX SEAT VIEWS CCORDING to Dr. Johnson, " the finest thing in life is to drive outside a fast stage coach with a pretty woman." Probably the Fleet Street philosopher never uttered a neater saying, and the wonder is that some painter of genius has never idealized the opinion by giving us a picture of the burly Doctor, with the big wig, the brown coat with the brass buttons, the bloated face, the blinking eyes, and blustering manner, sitting with Gold- smith's coquettish ''Jessamy Bride" on the box-seat of the famous "Tally-ho" or the "Quicksilver" of ancient renown. Coaching is just now a fashionable revival, and of all ways of seeing the country it is at once the most exhilarating and instructive. The train, of course, whirls you from Buxton to Matlock in a matter of so many minutes ; but travelling to the lover of scenery becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity. "Going by railroad," says Mr. Ruskin, "I do not consider as travelling at all ; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel." The Peak of Derbyshire, as seen between the tunnels and cuttings of the line, and the same enchanting region of hill Box Seat Views. 95 and dale, wood and water, from the top of a coach, are two different countries. The coach, moreover, takes you off the beaten track to places not yet profaned by steam, and there is an old-world flavour about this kind of travelling along historic highways and old bye-roads, with the mellow horn awaking the echoes in quaint villages, and calling out little crowds of admirers to see the four-in-hand dash past. It puts back the fingers of the clock of Time for two or three generations, and recalls the mail-coach locomotion of last century, which was so spirited that we find English gentle- men of that period declaring "five years of life" to be " worth giving up " for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, and noblemen desiring their favourite steeds to make at least one journey with the letter mail. It was only natural that Buxton, which by road commands so many places of pictorial beauty and historic charm, should take some interest in the revival of coaching, and the hand- some coach, the "Atalanta," is a favourite throughout the season. The more rivalry it encounters the better, for com- petition always tends to excellence. The "turn-out," in its saucy smartness, is worthy of one of the famous coaches of the olden time. The team is strong and spirited, the wheelers being of the necessary bone and substance to cope with the steep Derbyshire hills ; the harness is unexception- ally neat ; and the reins are cleverly handled by a thorough workman who combines nerve with judgment. It is the second Saturday in June, and at the stroke of nine in the morning the well-equipped "Atalanta," before a critical and complimentary gathering, swings round the corner of the Crescent with Dove Dale for its destination. With a lusty blast from the horn, the leaders, tickled by a dexterous "one, two, three, and a draw," skilfully admin- istered under the bar, spring into a cheerful canter, and we are soon bowling along the London Road. The trees on this broad, straight and stately reach of grass-bordered road might have just stood back to allow the coach to pass. Ever and anon they meet overhead in Gothic arches of green, the foliage filtering the light of the sun that falls on the white road in a tracery of leaf-shadows. It is " the sweet of the year," and the foliage is of that translucent tint that is as transient as it is tender. There is no dust, for a 96 Pictures of the Peak. week's welcome rain has done the work of the water-carts, and it has given to the trees the vivid verdancy that the sunlight is developing for our admiration. The sycamore seems to be the favourite in these parts. Its flowers droop in long tassels, while its leaves have not yet deepened into their dark summer green. The white flowers of the horse- chestnut rise above the fan-shaped leaves like the wax-lights of a glowing chandelier. The mountain-ash is full of flower- clusters that promise a prodigal display of coral-like berries in the wane of the year ; the laburnum falls in cascades of gold ; the lilac perfumes the air ; the elm is crowded with leaf-shaped flowers of pale pea-green ; the sun flames the copper-beech, and glints on the silvery white lady birch ; the leaves of the oak are yet yellow, and the ash has only just burst its jet-black buds. " Heads ! " shouts our bugler, as we dip under a labyrinth of leaves, garlanded and inter- laced, or dodge an over-hanging bough that threatens the passenger with summary decapitation, or, if his hair is long enough, with the fate of Absalom. There is a sudden stoppage of the coach. For the rest of the journey we are not to be a four-in-hand, but a six-in-hand. Two pilot horses are put on at Sherbrook, with a postilion to urge them up the steep gradients, which are conquered at a creditable pace. The views behind are panoramic in extent, taking in Harpur Hill, the Axe Edge and Burbage range, Combs Moss, the nebulous masses of Kinderscout, and the rugged and broken line of gritstone " Edges " that dominate the Derwent Valley from Stanage to Baslow. In front is Chel- morton Low (1,474 feet), with the octagonal spire of the Church, which claims to be the highest in England ; and to the right the " sky-scraping " High Peak Railway, with its corkscrew curves, that seem to have been laid out by a mad Archimedes endeavouring to square the circle. Cheerily we pull up hill, passing old-fashioned carriers' conveyances, redolent of rural life and rustic scenes, and country carts, laden with farm produce, on their way to Buxton market. There is a smart shower of thunder rain, followed by curious atmospheric effects in the landscape, and when it has passed we have left Earl Sterndale behind, with its little inn, with the quaint satirical sign " The Quiet Woman " a lady with her head cut off! Why should tavern signs, like pro- Box Seat Views. 97 verbs, be directed against the daughters of Eve ? Hogarth painted a sign still to be seen by those who walk up and down Oxford Street of " Man loaded with Mischief." It is the picture of a man whose bending shoulders bear the weight of a very substantial wife. The view now is of Park Hill* (1,100 feet) and Chrome Hill (1,000 feet), two isolated, fortress-like hills, sharply ridged and peaked ; of High Wheeldon, smooth, green, and fair ; of Hollins Clough, as wild and lonely as a Highland glen. Slanting shafts of sunshine and softly shifting shadows, make the hills now an intense emerald, and now a dusky yellow. Half of the landscape will be radiant in a great flood of strong sunlight ; the other dark under a veil of rain. Of course jokes pass freely, and as we approach Glutton, a facetious passenger asks if it is "any relation to Hungry Bentley?" " They are big eaters at Glutton," says the coachman, with a chuckle. " I remember a sale there was here, and the quantity drank and devoured by the hill farmers was awful. Two rounds of beef and a lamb gone in no time. Six eighteen gallons of ale, ten gallons of gin, and brandy and wine in abundance, all went down 'red lane.' But" he added " it was a rare sale."t Through Glutton Dale, an Alpine pass seen through a lessening lens, and presently we cross the Dove, a mere brook, just escaped "From old well-heads of haunted rills And the hearts of purple hills." We are now in Staffordshire, and begin to climb above the rich and fertile Dove Valley to Longnor. The view as we leisurely make the stiff ascent is one of remarkable extent and infinite variety. Valleys intersect valleys, and hills rise behind hills, retreating ridge upon ridge, fold upon fold to the dim and distant horizon line, sun and shadow making natural effects of chiaroscuro, both with the pastoral basin of golden green immediately below, and the remote landscape waves beyond, fading into a faint purple almost as blue as the azure of the sky. * I have employed the spelling adopted by the last Ordnance Survey. Locally the hills are known as Croom and Parker, although Park Hill was formerly called Pikeous Hill. t This is corroborated in Mr. W. H. Goss's admirable Life of Llewellyn n Jewitt, G Pictures of the Peak. We do not pause at the pleasant little market town of Longnor, although the music of the horn stirs the drowsy place into a spasm of temporary excitement and activity; but bowl along at a rattling pace along the prosperous pastoral land watered by the Manifold, which we presently cross. It is a land of Devonian richness, with tall hedge- rows, whose refreshing green is grateful to the eye after the cold, gray limestone walls that partition off the pastures of the Peake Countrie. The mossy banks on either side the road are bright with wild-flowers and feathered with ferns. We pass great branches of flowering hawthorn, and where the wayside is not blue with the wild hyacinth, the forget- me-not, the speedwell, and the borage, it is golden with gorse. The buttercups make of each lush meadow a Field of the Cloth of Gold ; while all the time, above the rattle of the coach and the laugh and chatter of its occupants, lark and blackbird and thrush keep up their trilling opera, the cuckoo reserving for himself a solo whenever an interval in the chorus gives him a chance to tell his name to all the hills. Past pretty cottages, embowered in trees, and orchards that are a mass of red and pink and white bloom, with a brief pause at Hulm End by the side of the Dove, to water the horses, and then with fresh mettle we renew the journey. One word en passant about the " Atalanta's " cattle. They don't stop several times on the journey at roadside inns to wash out their mouths. I know horses who always want their mouths washing out, for which pur- pose the humane drivers considerately stop at places where they are "licensed to get drunk on the premises." Ecton Hill, with its famous copper mine, is the next object of interest. The mine is still worked, and the shafts observed on the side of the steep hill are a great depth, one sinking to 1,400 feet. A hundred years or more ago the Ecton mine was a most lucrative undertaking. Out of the profits of one twelvemonths, the fifth Duke of Devonshire built the Crescent at Buxton, at a cost of ; 120,000. Past Harting- ton to the left, past Beresford Dale, with its historic fish- ing-house and tender memories of the friendship of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton ; past Wetton, with Thor's Cave and the romantic scenery of the Manifold ; and we pull up with a flourish at the somnolent little village of Box Seat Views. 99 Alstonefield, having accomplished the fourteen odd miles of hill country in two hours and a half. The coach now goes empty to the Peveril Hotel, and the passengers alight to explore the beauties of Dove Dale. The entire length of the Dale from Mill Dale to Thorpe Cloud (942 feet), a distance of four miles, is thus spread before the charioteers, without the trouble of retracing their steps, which would be necessitated by approaching the valley from the other end. To those who know this enchanting ravine no description will satisfy, and to people who have yet to make its acquaintance, the best of word-painting would fail to convey its exquisite charm. Izaak Walton wrote at the end of Charles Cotton's excellent account of their little fishing temple, " Some part of the fishing-house has been described, the pleasantness of the river, mountains, and meadows cannot, unless Sir Philip Sydney were again alive to do it." What Izaak Walton gave up in despair would be presumption for the present scribe to attempt. Dove Dale never looked more lovely than it does to- day, the foliage is so delicately articulated ; although I have known the river paths to be less muddy. More than one inflexible Dissenter is to be observed "standing on slippery places," and more than one consistent Churchman proves a "backslider." But the gentle, generous rain, which took the polish from our boots, has renewed rill and rivulet and river, has given vernal freshness to bud and bough, and filled the perfumed sunlight with the fragrance of sweetbriar and hawthorn. Lunch at the Peveril, with a thunderstorm accompani- ment. Peal after peal of thunder crashes overhead, and then the boom of Heaven's artillery rumbles away down the dale in deepening diapasons, repeating its impressive re- verberations from bluff to hollow and hollow to bluff, until they die away in the far-off and silent windings of the tortuous defile. The white objects in the landscape gleam whiter for the lurid blackness of the sky. Every object stands out in strange and sharp relief against the dark background, and grass and trees become metallic in their lustrous colour. And now down comes the rain, throwing a gray blanket over the hills. The lines of the landscape are blotted and blurred, and the appearance of the wooded iob Pictures of the Peak. heights is that we should get if we looked upon them through the smoked glasses that amateur astronomers use for con- templating a solar eclipse. The deluge is better for the country than the coach ; but we are cheerful charioteers, and at half-past three leave the Peveril for the homeward journey, too magnanimous to place the pleasures of a small party before the anxious agricultural interests of Great Britain and Ireland. Our whip sends his team at a slash- ing trot up the hill; and by-and-bye the rain clears, and there are silvery gleams in the gray and gusty clouds. If the Peak of Derbyshire is the backbone of England, the Ashbourne road to Buxton is on its very ridge. It is a bleak, hungry, gray, stone-wall country, with here and there a scattered plantation set in the midst of the undulating pasture land, like a tufted island set in a grassy sea, furnish- ing a chord of colour in the monotonous scene by the con- trast of the yellow-green of the larches against the sombre shade of the firs. Mr. Ruskin must have travelled along this dreary turnpike when he wrote : " In Derbyshire the whole gift of the county is in its glens. The wide acreage of field or moor above is wholly without interest; it is only in the clefts of it, and the dingles, that the traveller finds his joy, and in those clefts every charm depends on the alternate jut and recess of rock and field, and on the suc- cessive discovery of blanched height and woody hollow ; and, above all, on the floretted banks and foam-crisped wavelets of the sweetly-wilful stream. Into the very heart of this, and mercilessly bending with the bends of it, your railway drags its close clinging damnation." The rain has left behind some misty effects very Scotch in character, giving to the distant prospects a more mountainous majesty than they really possess ; while the sun struggling with the humid atmosphere produces some Turner-like tricks of aerial perspective. We pause at Newhaven Inn, and admire its solid, spacious rooms and long, wide passages. It was a busy house in the old coaching and posting days, when the " Red Rover " carried its eighteen passengers from Manchester to London in twenty-four hours, a journey now accomplished by the Midland express in four hours and a quarter. The old house seems haunted with the ghosts of bygone grooms and Box Seat Views. 101 ostlers, and the spirits of the valiant, double-chinned, many- caped and coated coachmen of yore. Its silent stables recall exciting incidents of the time when every lad on the great main lines had his favourite coach, which he backed heartily, if not heavily, whenever opportunity offered. Reminiscences crop up how the " Lady Nelson," with the opposition coach close behind, was coming down-hill rapidly into Buxton when one of the wheelers broke a leg ; how on three legs it did the last quarter of a mile, to be quickly unharnessed and led limping to the kennels, where it was shot as food for the hounds ; how the " Peveril " and " Bruce " were racing from Manchester when the driver of the latter recklessly dashed down an unused old road, whilst his rival took a longer sweep by the new road, and thus got the start into the town at the risk of horses' limbs and passengers' lives ; how horses would drop dead from exhaustion ; and how unmerciful coachmen would fasten a button at the end of their whips in order to fetch out what remained of the energies of their flagging horses. Our driver, however, puts his whip in the manger, and off again we start, with the horn sounding. Up and down hill we go, with further trumpetings as we pass a cluster of houses or a time- honoured inn. To the right of Parsley Hay Wharf, where the road has attained an elevation of 1,200 feet, stands Arbor Low, a Druidical circle of solemn stones on a wind- scourged plateau, that is the Stonehenge of the Peak. Past Hen Moor and Hurdlow ; past the Duke of York, where the turnpike reaches its greatest height, 1,238 feet, with the High Peak Railway for a time running almost parallel with the road, and then at Brierlow we join again the highway along which we bowled this morning, having crossed and re-crossed the old Roman road from Buxton to Wirksworth. At ten minutes to six the horn is heard again in the Crescent, and we alight, the eye surfeited with scenery, but the appetite aroused by the stimulating mountain air. At the table d'hote more than one charioteer tells how diversified and delighful has been the drive. " Let a coach be called, And let the man who called it be the caller ; And in his calling let him nothing call, But coach, coach, coach ! Oh for a coach, ye gods ! " Chapter FROM DORE TO CHINLEY BEFORE THE RAILWAY. ilT is not ordinary obstacles that cause the Iron Horse to "shy." The Steed of Steam takes a snorting delight in proclaiming the triumph of mechanism over matter and speed over space. If it cannot climb over some rocky and apparently insur- mountable obstacle, it winds round it, or dodges under it. Derby, Sheffield, and Manchester were amongst the earliest stables of the Iron Horse, where it was put through its paces, and had its stud-farms. It soon wished to plunge, with its white, waving mane, into the Peak of Derby- shire, just to enjoy the grandeur of the scenery, and to bid the eternal forces of Nature to surrender to the sovereignty of Steam. The line from Sheffield to Man- chester was a preliminary gallop over the gritstone flanks of Kinderscout, and the Iron Horse had some of its mettle (not " metal " my punning friends) taken out of it by the Woodhead Tunnel. The High Peak Railway, connecting the Cromford Canal, near Whatstandwell, with the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge, was a stiff cross-country canter for the Iron Horse. But the steep ascents made From Dore to Chinley. 103 short and sharp its breathings, and its bronchial tubes showed signs of congestion, that were acute, if not chronic. In fact, the High Peak Railway made the Iron Horse " broken-winded." The Midland Company, who have always trained and groomed the Iron Horse with assiduous care, next placed the Highlands of Derbyshire before it as if they were a mere steeplechase of hurdles and water- courses ; but the Bucephalus of the line refused to respond to the rider's call. At Ambergate it waited for some years. By a prick of spur it cantered as far as Rowsley. Here the " steam was taken out of it," and a rest of some years was required to get it into condition for the next two fences, which were Buxton and New Mills in 1863. It is a quarter of a century since the Iron Horse has shown any leaping performances of note in the Peak. Perhaps it is want of " corn " that has made it " shy" at a country that may be the railway race-course of the future. But let us set aside metaphor and simile. Railways are too realistic for rhetoric, and much too substantial for sentiment, although you may find beauty in such unlikely places as block signal-boxes, and poetry in points and crossings. For many years the wild mountainous moorlands that stretch in sharp ridges and deep hollows from the borders of Sheffield to the frontiers of Manchester, across the north- east of Derbyshire, have been the despair of constructive engineers. The same isolated district has likewise been a terra incognita to the ordnance surveyors ; for, in their despondency or desperation, they have shaded it black in a promiscuous manner on the map, and given it the absurd and arbitrary title of " The Peak," as if it were a steep, pointed, sugar-loaf mountain rising out of a plain, instead of a wide, wild region of irregular uplands, indented with deep valleys, and voiceful with vivacious streams. In the board- rooms of the competing railway companies the directors scrutinized the military maps that are hung from the walls, as big as a schooner's main-sail, and, like it, taken up in " reefs." Their permanent way stretched from Sheffield to Manchester, and from Stockport to Derby, like the "feelers" of a gigantic iron octopus. The map in this Derbyshire district resembled a gridiron or a cobweb, so interwoven and intersected were the lines of rail. But one remarkable 1 04 Pictures of the Peak. stretch of country defied the invasion of the railway engineer, a region as surprising in its scenic beauties as to make a new holiday-ground for English tourists, so full of undeveloped mineral resources as to arouse the avarice of commercial speculators, so advantageous to traffic managers as to upset the strategy of rival routes. This blank space, quite off the line, remained for years the grave of railway hopes. The schemes of the Midland, the London and North Western, and the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln- shire were entombed in the dark caverns of Castleton. The London and North Western Directors at Euston consulted their board-room map, and wept wept not because they had no more worlds to conquer, but _ because the Peak seemed an insuperable difficulty. The voice of the charmer whispered, " You are at Buxton ; why not get into Sheffield, from which you are shut out ? " The great map was lowered by its pulleys, but thirty miles of line with ten miles of tunnel frightened even the owners of the Menai Straits. The Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire pored dili- gently over their board-room map at London Road Station, Manchester. A line of rails from their connection at New Mills to their central station at Sheffield, with stations at Castleton, Hathersage, and Grindleford Bridge ("Change here for Eyam "), for cheap trippers, would bring them into the position of a railway company of the first rank. But the M. S. and L. chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, who is pre- pared by means of the Channel Tunnel to abolish the only good thing between England and France, was frightened at the Peak of Derbyshire. The astute administrators of the Midland Railway Company watched the timidity of their competitors. They saw it was a waiting game. There was an interval of suspense. Then some Sheffield capitalists started the Dore and Chinley scheme in an embryo form. The Ruskinites raged and roared against the realms of ro- mance being reduced to a vulgar utilitarian level. But the dwellers in these poetic places are practical men, and they clamoured for a railway. Surveys were made. At first it was proposed to call the line "The Dore, Hassop, and Castleton Railway." Parliamentary powers were sought in 1872. The opposition came from only one landowner; but the scheme under the title quoted languished for some From Dore to Chinley. 105 years. A far-seeing genius then discerned that the only way to make a railway profitable through the Peak was to have substantial feeders at either end. A through line, and not a mere branch, was the thing wanted. And thus the idea of the Dore and Chinley line was developed a line con- necting the Midland main line to the north at Dore, near Sheffield, with the Midland main line to Manchester and Liverpool at Chinley. The Dore and Chinley Railway Company received, in 1884, Parliamentary sanction for their undertaking. The Midland Railway Company were willing to become substantial shareholders, and to work the line on a guaranteed percentage of receipts. But the magnates of the Money Market, the lords of Lombard Street, the kings of Cornhill, the rulers of the Royal Exchange, looked at the map of the country, just as did the Railway Directors at Euston, and London Road, Manchester. The required capital was not forthcoming. Bogus gold and diamond mines abroad were more alluring to English investors than a Derbyshire Railway, coupling Sheffield and Manchester, and backed by the Midland Railway Company. The Dore and Chinley Company, Limited, as a private concern, would have died of inanition had not the Midland Company seen in the scheme advantages not to be forfeited. It was the constant prayer of a Saint of the Middle Ages to see the things of to-day with the eyes of to-morrow. Mr. John Noble possesses in an essential degree this pre- rogative of the sagacious, as his clear, penetrating policy has proved on many critical occasions. He saw the advantages the line that had to be pioneered by private enterprise offered to his own powerful Company, in giving an alternate route to Manchester in case of blockage on the Matlock and Millers Dale section, in enabling the Midland to' com- pete with the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Company for the Sheffield and Manchester traffic, besides opening out a new holiday ground and an undeveloped mineral district. The Midland Directorate took up boldly the Dore and Chinley line on their own account. The shareholders authorized a capital of one million sterling for the construction of the line, and the necessary Act of Parlia- ment was obtained during the Session of 1888. The line will be twenty miles in length. For four and a half miles it io6 Pictures of the Peak. will burrow under the hills ; the remainder of the distance it will be carried along the valleys. Considering the character of the country, the gradients are fairly good, and the curves not severe. The steepest incline will not be less than i in 90, and the most acute curve not more than half-a-mile radius. The line leaves the Midland main line from Chesterfield to Sheffield at the Dore and Totley station, where the longest tunnel on the line, 5,280 yards in length will be made, and joins the Midland main line to Man- chester between Chapel-en-le-Frith and Chinley, after emerg- ing from a tunnel 2,977 yards in length. There will be stations at Grindleford Bridge, Hathersage, Bamford, Hope, and Edale. The contract for the construction of the line was let in the summer of 1888; shafts for the tunnels have been driven; and the work at both ends of the line is (1889) in active progress. The Dore end was taken by Messrs. Oliver, of Bristol, and the Chinley end by Messrs. Edwards, of Birmingham. The engineers are Messrs. Parry and Storey, of Nottingham and Derby. It is estimated that the line will be opened for traffic within the next five years. So much for facts. Now for sentiment. There is much to be said in favour of the Dore and Chinley line. There is something also to be urged against it. It will stimulate trade in a decaying district among a decreasing population. It will open out the neglected mineral resources of a hitherto isolated neighbourhood. It will offer excellent intercommunication to a people abso- lutely remote from travelling facilities. It will abolish that satanic usurper of the highway, the tyrannical traction- engine. It will give a new through route across a healthful tourist district at the present moment inaccessible save to the sturdy pedestrian, and to the passenger on the weather- exposed coach, crossing moorland ranges of mountain height. It will raise to the surface the natural wealth of Derbyshire that lies underground. If the engineering works are of the same elegance as those on the Rowsley and Buxton, and the Settle and Carlisle lines, lovers of the picturesque will not have much to grumble at, for the triumphs of scientific enterprise add by their splendid viaducts and graceful curves to the old wonders of Nature. But the opponents of the scheme would negative all these advantages by telling From Dore to Chinley. 107 us that the Dore and Chinley line will carry a noisy and obnoxious civilization into the virgin hills and unsmirched valleys of "undiscovered Derbyshire" that unexplored re- gion whose romance becomes religion where the austere heights stand out lonely and lovely as if they belonged to a new-made world where man is unknown ; where the river runs in radiant reaches in dusky depths of dingle and dell and dale, tawny, amber, or topaz in the sunlight (for it has come from the heart of the moors, and is coloured with the pigments that peat and moss and bracken mix on Nature's palette) ; and glassy green where it reflects the hanging trees, where fern and foxglove and wild-flowers innumerable mirror themselves in the liquid looking-glass ; sometimes restful in shady and deep pools, where the rising trout or grayling make a sudden plunge, followed by widening rings in the reposing stream ; always voiceful, whether it be the mere murmur and lullaby of lapping water or the tumultuous shout of the swift and eager rock-impeded current. The hills are eloquent in their silence ; the Derwent is eloquent in its voiceful revelations ; and which speaks more directly to the soul of man the solemn and eternal heights, or the sequestered and soliloquizing stream I know not. Both appeal to him who goes straight to Nature, a willing and wishful pupil " Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her." The Iron Horse, with its steam and scream, its rattle and roar, will enter this uncontaminated Derwent Valley, one of the few unspoiled stretches of river scenery in Derbyshire. When the utilitarian and the sentimental are weighed to- gether, the selfish side of the argument must not be left out of the question. The spirit of personal exclusiveness has much to do with the hostility to new railways as any other considerations, real or chimerical. Private landowners are sometimes desirous of keeping a paradise intended for all men to themselves. Greed would enclose the great generous ocean if it could. Greed succeeds pretty well in fencing round seas of undulating heather. The latest act of aggrand- izement has been the enclosure of Lindrick Common by opulent land-grabbers, who thus deprive the poor of the io8 Pictures of the Peak. possession they have enjoyed for centuries, and who divert ancient foot-paths, traditionary and venerable, that have been trod by the feet of humanity for many generations. These time-honoured rural lines of English liberty are steadily and stealthily being rubbed off the fair face of the country. They are older than the title-deeds of the most patriarchal estate they may cross, and the people should resent their obstruction. " 'Tis an offence in man or woman, To steal a goose from off a common : But what can be that man's excuse, Who steals the common from the goose ? " Wordsworth, when the railway to the Lake District was projected, called upon the mountains, vales, and floods to " show the passion of a just disdain " against " that whistle." But selfishness had surely something to do with the remon- strative rage of the recluse of Rydal Mount. If the poet worshipped Nature so much himself, would he deny her magical influences to people shut up from year to year in the tainted and torturing town? Lord Houghton answers Wordsworth's objections admirably. He thus addresses him : " And thou, the patriarch of these beauteous ways, Canst never grudge that gloomy streets send out The crowded sons of labour, care, and doubt, To read these scenes by light of thine own lays." There are no finer moorlands in Derbyshire than those dominated by the famous Fox House Inn. The hills may not have the true mountain form ; but there is a variety in their undulations, in their deep hollows and ferny dingles, and in the ponderous masses of gritstone that here and there rise out of the short green grass, or the flowering heather more royal in its purple than the mantle of a mon- arch. Fox House is to the eastern side of the Peak of Derbyshire what the Cat and Fiddle is to the western border, although, while the latter is a mere cottage among the highlands, the former is a time-honoured house of im- portance, boasting some fine oak carving, an ancient table from North Lees, and other relics of antiquity. It is certainly far .pleasanter to go over this wide wild sea of moorland, rolling away in dusky waves against the distant From Dore to Chinley. 109 sky line, oceanic in their grandeur, past Fox House and the overhanging mass of rock called Toad's Mouth, and along the un- fenced road by Millstone Edge, bordered with bilberry, cis- tus, and purple heather, than to go under it in a noisy tunnel, sunless and sooty,the moun- tain ozone dis- tilled into a " draught " and the sweet smell of wild -thyme reduced to sul- phuric fumes. But the Iron Horse declines to climb over the Brown Edge moors (1,302 feet), preferring a short cut un- der them. The first portion of the Dore and Chinley Line is, therefore, a subterranean and subterfugeous route. The tunnel (5,280 yards long) is entered immediately after leaving the Totley Brook near Dore station. As this quiet little place on the borders of the moors is likely to become an important rail- way junction, it is interesting to know that Dore has played a part in what Green, the historian, calls " the making of England." " Here, in 827, Egbert, having united the Mid- land and Southern Saxon Kingdoms under his sway, had arrived in his march against the Northumbrians. Then it appears that even in those rude times, wisdom did some- times prevail. Peace was made. The Northumbrian thegns met Egbert at Dore, and accepted him as their overlord. no Pictures of the Peak. That was a memorable day, and it is quite possible that but for the invasion of the Danes, who began about that time to infest our coasts, England's great start in the race of civilization might have been traced to the peaceful com- pact made at Dore." The three-mile-long tunnel from Dore perforates the Derbyshire Dukeries, for here the estates of their Graces of Devonshire, Rutland, and Norfolk meet. You might shoot at a grouse on the moorland territory of one Duke, for it to fly over land the property of another Duke, and drop dead on the estate of a third Duke. When the Iron Horse emerges into glad daylight, lo and behold ! pictur- esque Padley, with the Burbage Brook taking its clear and shining waters to the Derwent. Derbyshire abounds in romantic nooks, but there is no sweeter dell than this, with the slender stream singing on its way from the moorlands, down a ravine, ribbed with rock, and canopied with trees. What a scenic surprise this glimpse of fairy-land will be to the railway traveller of the future, after three miles of fuliginous flue ! This will be, perhaps, the most purely picturesque point of the new line. The carriage windows will frame wider landscapes in the Vale of Hope, but here the scenery is concentrated into a poetical vignette, dainty as a sonnet. The brook enters the river amid the sylvan surroundings of Padley Wood, and the Burbage Valley and Derwent Dale meet in the leafy solitude of a scene that is the despair of painters. Crossing river and turnpike, our imaginary train pauses at the first station on the line. The Iron Horse has ceased coughing the hot cinders out of its metallic lungs as it struggled up the incline, and steam is shut off for the gradient is now a falling one of i in 150, and the Westinghouse brake is applied pretty sharply to bring the coaches to a stand at Grindleford platform. Shall we wait here for the next train and wander off on the moors to Longshaw Lodge, the shooting-box of the Duke of Rut- land? Visitors are allowed to walk through the grounds, which contain a lake and some beautiful effects produced in rockery and wild-shrub gardening. Or shall we visit the ruins of Padley Hall and Chapel, the ancient house of the Eyres? Here the mind sees more than the eye, for this interesting fragment of mediaeval domestic architecture is from Dore to Chinley. ni used as a hay-loft above and a cow-house beneath. It is in a tottering condition ; the windows are either mutilated or destroyed, the old screen dividing the family from the re- tainers, has disappeared ; but in the chapel still exists the beautiful old hammer-beam roof, with angels holding shields, evidently the work of an architect of imagination. Padley Hall and its private chapel were the scene of much religious persecution in Elizabeth's reign. The story is a sickening one to read, and says little for the Protestant toleration of the Maiden Monarch. Dr. John Charles Cox has told it in full. Enough here to say that at the Reformation the Eyres, like their kinsfolk the Fitzherberts of Norbury, remained constant to the old state of things, and during the reign of Elizabeth underwent much persecution. Padley Hall, in the remote fastnesses of the Peak, afforded religious refugees a place of shelter. In 1587 the premises were searched, and two priests were found hiding there. Their names were Nicholas Garlick and Robert Ludlam. They were confined in the loathsome prison at Derby for some period, and then, with another priest, Richard Simpson, were hanged, drawn, and quartered. The barbarous ceremony took place on the 25th July, 1588. Padley Hall was then in the occupation of John Fitzherbert. He, for harbouring the priests, was imprisoned, and died in confinement. The Hall and estates were confiscated, and became the property of the notorious Richard Topcliffe, a ruffianly agent of the Privy Council. And all these outrages in the name of the Man of Sorrows and the Gospel of Peace and Good Will towards all men ! Or shall we make our way to the grand rocky platform called Higgar Tor (Hu-Gaer), whose huge blocks of dark weather-worn gritstone, arched so as to make a window for the sunshine, might have been hurled together by Titans in the very frolic of their supernatural strength; and to the ancient British stronghold, rising out of the boggy moor, called Carl's Work (the work of the Celt), although these places may be equally well visited from Hathersage, the next station ? Pleasant to linger awhile over the gray arches of Grindleford Bridge, chatting with the fishermen, and noticing the fine outlines of Bamford, Millstone, Burbage, Curbar, and Froggatt Edges rising like fortresses above the Derwent, with an emerald space of lawn-like verdure 112 Pictures of the Peak. between the boulder- bestrewn water and the dark, long, broken line of crags. On the other side of the river, Sir William sentinels the green valley in burly majesty. Grin- dleford Bridge will be the station for Eyam, one of the most re- mote villages of the Peak, and consecra- ted by the memory of the Great Plague which decimated its population in 1666, and whose church- yard boasts of the finest Runic Cross in England ; for Stoney Middleton and Leam Hall, Curbar and Calver, Bubnell and Baslow ; while it will bring nearer to the Sheffielder Tideswell and the mountain hamlets around that bonnie little town. It was almost worth while con- structing a railway to bring the citizens of dusky Steelopolis within measurable distance of Tideswell's fourteenth century Church, which disputes with Bakewell, Youlgreave, and Ash- bourne the. title of " The Cathedral of the Peak." Restora- tion, so far as it has progressed, could not have been more carefully and intelligently carried out, and Canon Andrew is to be congratulated upon his enthusiastic labours in this direction. Apart from the architectural beauties of the building, Tideswell Church contains many interesting monu- ments, notably fine brasses and other memorials : Bishop Pursglove (1579), Sir Robert Litton and his wife Isabel (1483, ancestors of Bulwer Lytton), Sir John Foljambe (1358), Sir Sampson Meverell (1462), and the effigies of From Dore to Chintey. Sir Thurston de Bower and his wife Margaret, temp. Richard II. etr sftuntan Up the Derwent Wm f/ ' valley runs the train to Hathersage, whose ancient repose is aroused by the shriek of the steam whistle. The line will give a stimulus to the needle and hackling-pin factories that are the staple industries of the place, and enable lovers of old churches to climb up the hill to the venerable fane sur- rounded by towering heights. The brasses to the Eyre family will captivate the eye of the archaeologist, but the cheap-tripper will be most interested with the grave of Little John, the faithful lieutenant of that famous outlaw, Robin Hood: " Though he was called Little John, his limbs they were large, And his stature was seven feet high ; Wherever he came they quaked at his name, For soon he made them to fly." The grave is distinguished by two small upright stones, about ten feet apart, between two solemn yews that must have kept silent vigil over the dead for centuries. Hather- sage is very tenacious in claiming the village to be both the birth-place and burial-place of Little John, and the validity of this insistance has the support of historical authorities, who state that the weight of evidence seems more in its favour than for its rejection. The romantic outlaw was born at Hathersage, and fought in the ranks of Simon de Mont- H Pictures of the Peak. fort's barons at Evesham in 1265. After the many vicissi- tudes of his adventurous life, he returned to his native village to die. Until within the memory of the present generation "Little John's Cottage" a small ancient tene- ment stood near the church, and his green cap and bow used to hang up in the church itself, but have been removed to Cannock Hall, Barnsley. Gone, too, are the funeral garlands, to the memory of maidens, that were sus- pended in the aisles of the church. In the churchyard the body of a Mr. T. Ashton was disinterred. He was buried in 1725, and his remains were discovered in 1781, quite perfect and petrified, retaining the flesh-colour as when entombed. A mile north of the church is North Lees, one of the most interesting old Elizabethan halls in the country. It is a pleasant ramble by ancient field paths, with sweet smells that are grateful to the town-tainted taste : messages of scent from newly-mown hay, from the snowy elder tree, from woodbine and honey-suckle ; resinous perfumes from pine and fir, cool odours from bracken and fern. The air is cool and caressing in its uncontaminated purity ; and in contrast with the stern, sombre, solemn moors are From JDore to Chintey. 1 1 5 the ferns and grasses of the most exquisitely vivid green at our feet. There are hedgerows by this footpath, with white and red roses and a prodigality of wild-flowers and tangle that afford a sweet confusion of colour, for the whole of the Peake Countrie is not ruled off in cold stone parallelograms and trapeziums ; and a tributary water- thread makes the silence musical. North Lees is a charming relic. Its solitary old stone tower, its lichened mullioned windows, its lonely situation and mountain en- closure, make it a picture more than a place a picture framed with trees and hung on rocky walls. Once the manor house of the Eyre family, it is now the property of Mr. G. H. Cammell, of Sheffield. Brookfield Manor, close by, is the romantically placed residence of that merchant prince. North Lees, although now used as a farmhouse, retains its quaint architectural features. The mouldings of the ceilings are of excellent character. Round the walls run Latin inscriptions. A staircase from basement to roof is of so substantial a character that it shows that the ancient builders reversed the practice of their nineteenth century descendants, who build only for to-day and charge for all time. It is spiral in shape, and the stairs, which consist of solid pieces of oak, run round a massive newell. The view from the flat lead-covered roof of the tower is a revelation in scenery. Farmstead and cottage, mansion and hall, wooded slope and wandering stream, green valley and gray moorland expanse are the outlines of a picture full of local colour ; but the landscape is too large in its projection for the artist to attempt to "compose." Close by are the ruins of a small Roman Catholic chapel, built by the Eyres in 1686, and destroyed by a Protestant mob in 1688. They stand in a dark plantation. How much the Eyres suffered at the hands of "pious" persecutors ! In the days of Eliza- beth they were hunted down by the sleuth-hounds of the bigots, but remained true to their faith, and were sustained by their sincerity through times of terror and dark days of devastation. Dr. Spencer Hall remarks of Hathersage : " It is one of the few places from which neither the persecution of kings and queens, the exercise of delegated power by local authorities, or the force of public opinion, have ever been able to extirpate Roman Catholicism. Even during 1 1 6 Pictures of the Peak, the bitterest times mass was said, and confession made in the chamber of a cottage ; while the present chapel stood a scathed and roofless ruin, here in the valley, by the moaning rivulet's side." Back to Hathersage, a quaint old-world retreat, with moorland barriers and bluffs of millstone grit enclosing it from the world. No two houses are alike, and the restful influence of the Middle Ages seems to fall like a benedic- tion upon the place. Two chimney shafts belonging to the afore-mentioned needle works, certainly spout out a sooty protest against their poetical surroundings, and the scream of the locomotive reminds us that we must return to the railway (I hope the Company's architect will design pretty stations). We leave the Derwent north-east at Mytham Bridge, where the tributary river Noe joins the parent stream. The Noe gives a healthful account of itself, for its face is tanned with moss and heather, and the merry little moorland trout are jumping gleefully. Here will be the third station Bamford a starting point for a tramp to Ashopton, Derwent Chapel, and the Woodlands. And now the line winds along the pastoral Noe Valley to Hope, the fourth station on the line, giving access to Castleton and Brough and Bradwell. The picture the carriage window now frames includes to the right of the line the grassy slopes of Win Hill (1,532 feet) and to the left Lose Hill (1,572 feet), with lesser hills and interlacing valleys. The prospect is as fair as any that ever inspired poet's pen or painter's pencil. Win Hill and Lose Hill owe their names to a battle having been fought here between two Saxon kings. The victorious were encamped on the one height, and the vanquished on the other. Win Hill is the subject of one of Ebenezer Elliott's most charming poems. Here is one of the Corn-Law Rhymer's verses : "King of the Peak, Win Hill ! thou, throned and crowned, That reign 'st o'er many a stream and many a vale ! Star-loved, and meteor-sought, and tempest-found ! Proud centre of a mountain-circle, hail ! The might of man may triumph or may fail ; But, eldest brother of the Air and Light, Firm shall thou stand when demi-gods turn pale ! For thou, ere science dawned or reason's night, Wast, and will be when mind shall rule all other might. " From Dore to Chinley. 117 There is no vale in the Peak more beautiful than the vale of Hope. There are others more romantic, more rugged, more grand, but for sweet, pastoral beauty, almost Devonian in its rich softness, with mountain surroundings, it is the most engaging of those Derbyshire Dales of which Eliza Cook has so ecstatically sung. Castleton is a place so full of interest as to require columns of elaborate word-painting to do it anything like descriptive justice. It recalls the Peak Castle of Sir Walter Scott's Pevertl, the best of the Waverley novels. It conjures up caverns more wonderful than any dreamt of by Mr. Rider Haggard the Great Peak Cavern, with its grand vestibule and Cyclopean porch, the Blue John Mine with its spectac- ular beauty, the Speedwell Mine with its Cimmerian gloom and grim ferryman, and the solemn grandeur of its Pantheon- like spaces ; and the Odin Mine, with its historic renown, dating back to the time when the Romans made it a Siberia. Castleton, too, is interesting because of its innocent old English observances. Just as the sturdy lead-miners of the Castleton country are tenaciously attached to their native homes, content with scratching a bare living out of the bleak hill sides sooner than earn big wages at iron works and collieries, so time- honoured customs, that " fast" people would deem childish, cling to the villages of the Peak. One of the most interesting of these immemorial observances is what is called " Garland Day " at Castleton. It occurs on the " Twenty-ninth of May, Oak-apple day." Peveril's little town then abandons itself to a fete as interest- ing as it is innocent. There is a procession, mediaeval in its character, with a mounted King and Queen carrying a large garland of flowers. A band of music and morris dancers enliven the odd old-world streets, with their quaint nooks and shadowy corners. At sunset the great garland is hoisted by means of a pulley to the summit of the Church tower. It is secured on the central pinnacle, which it decorates until the succeeding anniversary, when it is renewed with similar festivities. In the chancel of the venerable Church is the "Adoration of the Magi," by Vandyke. The vestry is the n8 Pictures of the Peak. Free Library of the village. A former Vicar some seventy years ago bequeathed his collection of books (600 in num- ber) for the use of the parishioners. The works are standard literature, and are let out at the discretion of the Vicar. One of the "lions" of the library is a "Breeches Bible," published in the year 1611. There are other volumes of great value, and it is matter for mingled regret and indig- nation that many of the books have been mutilated and defaced, pages and pictures being cut out. Some people in the village must have an absorbing love for literature, for they regard useful learning so precious as to steal it. Some of the old pews are magnificent examples of carving, the names of their former occupants and the dates are inscribed in an ornamental manner in oak that is black with age. The names of the Halls, for the most part, occur on these ancient pews, the earliest date being Thomas Hall, 1661. At Brough is a Roman Camp, the isolated position of which has given it less attention from the people of the Victorian Era than it enjoyed in the days when Rome was a republic and Jesus Christ yet unborn. Bradwell has a considerable population. The people make felt hats, besides delving for lead. The village possesses two saline springs of sufficient potency to rival the thermal waters of Buxton ; but the attraction of the place is Bagshawe's Cavern, which we have previously attempted to describe. The Dore and Chinley Railway will give this wonderful cavern an European reputation, for it combines the beauties of the other Derby- shire caverns, with all their awe and mystery. From Hope and Castleton (as the station will be called) the line climbs six miles a gradient of i in 100, and we hear our imaginary Iron Horse again coughing at the collar-work. The scenery reaches its climax at Edale. It is the fifth station on the line, and the "jumping-off place," as the Americans say, for kingly Kinderscout. At Barber Booth are to be noticed coal measures on the surface, a gratifying sign for capitalists, a bad one for lovers of the beautiful. Colliery shafting, slag-heaps, and cinder-tracks would cer- tainly not add to the scenic interest of Edale. The railway winds by Edale End, along Edale itself, and past Edale Chapel and Edale Head. Of Edale permit a less enthusiastic From Dore to Chinley. 119 writer than myself to speak. A more blase book than Mr. Louis J. Jennings' Rambles Among the Hills in the Peak of Derbyshire could not be found. He has nothing whatever to say in favour of Buxton, Matlock, or even Dove Dale, His volume is, generally speaking, a defamation of Derby- shire, but he is constrained to say of Edale : " It is almost impossible to do justice to the view which charms the eye. It may be doubted whether there is anything finer to be seen in England, for it includes almost everything which goes to form magnificent scenery except water. To the north the lovely valley of Edale lies spread below, guarded by a range of hills at each end. On the other side is the equally fine valley of Hope, with heather-covered hills stretching away for many miles. These hills are not, as we all know, as high as the mountains of Switzerland ; but they are beautiful in form and appearance, and present a very noble and even grand appearance. Fresh from a visit to Switzerland, it seemed to me that I had seen nothing more beautiful and attractive." The Highland hamlet of Grindsbrook forms part of Edale. There is an ancient hostelry there surrounded by finely-grouped hills, glens of rocky beauty, and moors sombre and stern. It is called the Nag's Head, and is well known to sportsmen. The landlord is Mr. Isaac Cooper, a hale and hearty Peakrel of 90 years of age. The house is worth visiting for a peep at the old oak furniture it contains and for many curiosities, including a family register in needlework which hangs on the wall, bearing the names and nativities of eleven children, the first born in May, 1829, and the last in July, 1847. The oat-cake, cheese, and milk are relished after tramping over the heathery slopes of the Derbyshire Highlands. But the greatest curiosity of Grinds- brook is Mr. Isaac Cooper himself. His supreme earthly desire is to live to witness the Dore and Chinley line (the Cowburn tunnel shaft is to be seen from his house) opened for goods and passenger traffic. The patriarchal pate shakes with pleased expectancy as he tells of what the Dore and Chinley line will do for the Castleton country. Let us hope that his best wishes may be realized, and that the new line will not introduce an unclean civilization into a district at present so picturesque and unpolluted. 120 Pictures of the Peak. On goes the train, with a rush and a rattle and a roan arousing strange echoes in regions hitherto unprofaned by other sounds than the cry of the plover and the call of the grouse. Presently there is a startling scream from the engine. It has plunged into the second tunnel of the line, which burrows under the Cowburn range of hills, that reach a height of 1,636 feet above sea-level. The tunnel is 2,977 yards in length, and descends on a grade of i in 176. When its pitchy obscurity is exchanged for the sunlight, the train glides with swift motion down an incline of i in 90. Spread with abrupt suddenness before the eye is the wide vale of Chapel-en-le-Frith. This view is a coup de theatre in scenery, with Chinley Churn and scowling Kinderscout the principal contributing characters. The line forks to Chinley and Chapel, and the entire distance from Dore and Totley is twenty miles. Can the Iron Horse discover twenty more such miles free from its invasion in this country ? ASSEMBLY ROOM, BUXTON, OF LAST CENTURY. Chapter