WRITER on Derbyshire scenery somewhere says, that when Nature had completed Switzerland, there was left one romantic fragment for which she had no further use in that country, so she set it in England, and it was called Matlock. The happy conceit hits off Matlock better than many pages of diffuse description. Enthusiastic people, who have never crossed the channel, compare Oban to the Bay of Naples, Grasmere to Lucerne, and Torbay to Nice; the Grand Parade at Cheltenham is to them the Unter der Linden of Berlin, and they bestow upon the Devonshire Dart and the Monmouthshire Wye the designation of "The English Rhine." It is no doubt satisfactory to our insular pride to know that we compare favourably in the matter of beautiful scenery with other countries,

This delightful engraving of Matlock's High Tor
appears on p.298 as the frontispiece to this chapter about Matlock.

Matlock Bath has but a modern history. Defoe, who visited the place in the eighteenth century, writes of it:
"The Bath would be a much more frequented than it is, if a sad stony way which leads to it, and no accommodation when you get there did not hinder." But when good roads were made, and hotels sprung up, the waters of the Bath were in great request. The " Old Bath Hotel" became an establishment of repute. Gough describes the Matlock of his day as being "much frequented by the neighbouring gentry for health and amusement, without the infection of southern manners." Here Lord Byron met Mary Chaworth, heiress of Annesley, and here the episode happened, recorded by Moore, which was destined to govern the life history of both the bard and the beauty. Byron's letters abound in illusions to the beauties of Matlock. The original Old Bath Hotel is not in existence. Near its site is erected a new building of large proportions, called the Royal Hotel. In the "Visitor's' Book" of the New Bath Hotel, Mr. Ruskin's name occurs more than once. This comfortable caravanserai is one of the institutions in a town or hotels, of which the Temple, Hodgkinsons, the Devonshire, and the Old English at Matlock Bridge, will be recalled by the readers of this page. All lovers of trees should see the ancient lime tree in the pleasant gardens of the New Bath Hotel. This tree has weathered more than 300 winters, and is a marvel of arboreal growth, its wide spreading branches covering a space of more than 300 square feet. It is justly considered a wonder among trees.

In 1815, Scarthin Rock was cut through, and the present road made. Then the era of railways came. The Midland line, which at first halted at Ambergate—the very threshold of the Peak country—blasted its way through rocky cuttings and trecherrous tunnels to reach Matlock and Rowsley, where it was arrested, and, after a long pause, forced its civilizing way to Buxton and Manchester. The railway made Matlock. It destroyed the former social splendour of the "Old Bath Hotel," but it has transformed the chrysalis-grub of a lead-mining hamlet into the gay butterfly of a fashionable watering place. The wilderness Defoe deplored is now covered wih houses, and hotels, and shops. Every old lead-working has become a "natural cavern," with a showy name, to catch the loose sixpences of the excursionists who come from the mills of Manchester and the stithies of Sheffield, and the lace looms of Nottingham, and the workshops of Birmingham, and from the centres of industry even more remote, to breathe the "caller" air of this "English Switzerland", much to the genteel disgust of the elegant residents of the place. But even excursionists cannot vulgarize Matlock, for her limestone crags are everlasting in their grandeur, and the trees which clothe their sides with garments of green renew their beauty every year.

The Lovers' Walks wind under those cliffs among those trees, with the Derwent making graceful curves by their side. A ferry across the river gives access to this charming locality in which wood, water, and rock are blended with pleasant scenic effect. The Walk leads under a Gothic archway of embracing elms, whose leaves shed a trembling tracery of light and shade on the path. Matlock spreads itself out like a picture on the other side of the river. The Lovers' Walks deserve their amorous title. They are just the plce for Strephon and Chloe to pursue their reveries, and exchange their sweet confidences and whispered confessions. The musical river whispers wooingly to the hanging greenery of the banks, and the plash of oars is heard in the stream, as a light skiff shoots past, with a fair Undine giving a dash of picturesque colour at the helm. It is pleasant to sit in the sylvan shade in the springtime, when the trees behind are jubilant with feathered builders, and the jackdaws are calling to each other in the ivy of the crags, and the leafage is of that luminous, tender, delicate green which the scorching sun soon dims into a dingier hue. Pleasanter still, perhaps, is this retreat in the autumn time, with "the deep colour of the woods and the silence of the birds," when the beech leaves are burnished like bronze, and the sycamore covered with tints of red, and the birch splashed with yellow, and ever and anon a dying leaf falls with an audible sigh of regret at your feet.

Side paths diverge from the main paths of the Lovers Walks, and climb up the Hag Tors, magnificent pieces of rock scenery, whose gray limestone turrets are trellised with clinging trees, and wild flowers, and glossy ivy, and whose rocky recesses are luxuriant with vegetation. Here and there a retiring bower, at some "coign of 'vantage," offers a rest and a panoramic prospect, embracing all that is beautiful between Masson and Harp Edge, and the view is one of the finest that you can obtain in Matlock. Far away below, the Derwent glances among the trees, as it glides on to the weir, beyond which it lends beauty to the green slopes crowned by Willersley Castle, the mansion of the Arkwrights, first becoming useful at Cromford, "the cradle of the cotton manufacture," where are the mills founded by Sir Richard Arkwright, the Preston barber's apprentice.

Next to the Lovers' Walks, the Heights of Abraham attract lover of the picturesque. "Why Heights of Abraham?" is the natural query of the visitor to Matlock who climbs up the wooded hill which is really a lower slope of Masson. He may perhaps fancy that the name has some occult collection with the petrifying spring in the street below, which, going into the primitive ages for a patron, is advertised as "Jacob's Well." These heights, however, owe their name to a supposed resemblance they bear to the Heights of Abraham at Quebec. The whole hill-side is a woodland mass of varied shape and diversified hue. A church, Swiss-like cottages, and castellated buildings, break the monotony of the billowy mass of green. A prospect tower too much like a chimney for picturesque effect, crowns the summit. Much has been done, by winding walks, and the provision of rustic seats at frequent intervals to modify the difficulty of the ascent; and one is rather surprised when he is informed that the mountain, after the expenditure of the energy required to reach the summit, is only a trifle over a thousand feet high. The

The Chapter continues on the next page