It Is True I Heard A Country Girl Who Was Also In The
Kitchen, As Often As She Drank Say, "Your Health, Gentlemen All!"
But I Do Not Know How It Was, I Forgot To Drink Any One's Health,
Which I Afterwards Found Was Taken Much Amiss.
The landlord drank
twice to my health sneeringly, as if to reprimand me for my
incivility; and then began to join the rest in ridiculing me, who
almost pointed at me with their fingers.
I was thus obliged for a
time to serve the farmers as a laughing-stock, till at length one of
them compassionately said, "Nay, nay, we must do him no harm, for he
is a stranger." The landlord, I suppose, to excuse himself, as if
he thought he had perhaps before gone too far said, "Ay, God forbid
we should hurt any stranger," and ceased his ridicule; but when I
was going to drink his health, he slighted and refused my attention,
and told me, with a sneer, all I had to do was to seat myself in the
chimney-corner, and not trouble myself about the rest of the world.
The landlady seemed to pity me, and so she led me into another room
where I could be alone, saying, "What wicked people!"
I left this unfriendly roof early the next morning, and now quickly
proceeded to Matlock.
The extent of my journey I had now resolved should be the great
cavern near Castleton, in the high Peak of Derbyshire. It was about
twenty miles beyond Matlock.
The country here had quite a different appearance from that at
Windsor and Richmond. Instead of green meadows and pleasant hills,
I now saw barren mountains and lofty rocks; instead of fine living
hedges, the fields and pasture lands here were fenced with a wall of
grey stone; and of this very same stone, which is here everywhere to
be found in plenty, all the houses are built in a very uniform and
patriarchal manner, inasmuch as the rough stones are almost without
any preparation placed one upon another, and compose four walls, so
that in case of necessity, a man might here without much trouble
build himself a house. At Derby the houses seem to be built of the
same stone.
The situation of Matlock itself surpassed every idea I had formed of
it. On the right were some elegant houses for the bathing company,
and lesser cottages suspended like birds' nests in a high rock; to
the left, deep in the bottom, there was a fine bold river, which was
almost hid from the eye by a majestic arch formed by high trees,
which hung over it. A prodigious stone wall extended itself above a
mile along its border, and all along there is a singularly romantic
and beautiful secret walk, sheltered and adorned by many beautiful
shrubs.
The steep rock was covered at the top with green bushes, and now and
then a sheep, or a cow, separated from the grazing flock, came to
the edge of the precipice, and peeped over it.
I have got, in Milton's "Paradise Lost," which I am reading
thoroughly through, just to the part where he describes Paradise,
when I arrived here and the following passage, which I read at the
brink of the river, had a most striking and pleasing effect on me.
The landscape here described was as exactly similar to that I saw
before me, as if the poet had taken it from hence
" - delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champion head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied." - Book IV. v. 132.
From Matlock Baths you go over Matlock Bridge, to the little town of
Matlock itself, which, in reality, scarcely deserves the name of a
village, as it consists of but a few and miserable houses. There is
here, on account of the baths, a number of horses and carriages, and
a great thoroughfare. From hence I came through some villages to a
small town of the name of Bakewell. The whole country in this part
is hilly and romantic. Often my way led me, by small passes, over
astonishing eminences, where, in the deep below me, I saw a few huts
or cottages lying. The fencing of the fields with grey stone gave
the whole a wild and not very promising appearance. The hills were
in general not wooded, but naked and barren; and you saw the flocks
at a distance grazing on their summit.
As I was coming through one of the villages, I heard a great
farmer's boy eagerly ask another if he did not think I was a
Frenchman. It seemed as if he had been waiting some time to see the
wonder; for, he spoke as though his wish was now accomplished.
When I was past Bakewell, a place far inferior to Derby, I came by
the side of a broad river, to a small eminence, where a fine
cultivated field lay before me. This field, all at once, made an
indescribable and very pleasing impression on me, which at first, I
could not account for; till I recollected having seen, in my
childhood, near the village where I was educated, a situation
strikingly similar to that now before me here in England.
This field, as if it had been in Germany, was not enclosed with
hedges, but every spot in it was uninterruptedly diversified with
all kinds of crops and growths of different green and yellowish
colours, which gave the whole a most pleasing effect; but besides
this large field, the general view of the country, and a thousand
other little circumstances which I cannot now particularly
enumerate, served to bring back to my recollection the years of my
youth.
Here I rested myself a while, and when I was going on again I
thought of the place of my residence, on all my acquaintances, and
not a little on you, my dearest friend, and imagined what you would
think and say, if you were to see your friend thus wandering here
all alone, totally unknown, and in a foreign land.
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