verdure, fringe the banks of the Derwent, the Wie, and the Larkin, on their passage through the Peak scenery, and form a more rich and beautiful curtain than the taller, the straggling, and pale-hued willow.

Matlock is not justly called Nature's rudest child. If his rocks were without clothing, he might properly be so called. Rude gives an idea of bar. renness, and Matlock is luxuriantly umbraged; much more luxuriantly than Dove Dale; while every traveller through Derbyshire must recollect, how rich and smiling the Matlock-scenery, compared to the savage magnificence of Eyam-Dale, commonly, though not properly, called Middleton-Dale.

There, indeed, we see rocks piled on rocks, unfoliaged and frowning. They form a wall, of vast height, on either side the white limestone bottom of that deep and narrow valley, with the little sparkling rill which speeds through it.`

In several reaches of the curves, made by this Salvatorial Dale, it is from the temperature of the air alone that the seasons can be ascertained; since there are no trees, to mark by their foliage the reign of sylvan beauty; no grass, to denote it by its lively hue. Nothing but the grey, the barren, and lonely rocks, with, perhaps, a few straggling Scotch firs waving on the tops of the cliffs above; and their dusky sprays neither winter strips nor spring enlivens.

This dale is, indeed, " Peak's rudest child." Of late years, injury has been done to the towery and fantastic forms of many of the rocks, from their having been broken in pieces by gunpowder explosion, for the sake of mending the turnpike roads. The mills, for smelting the lead-ore in this dale, blot the summer noon, and increase its sultriness by those volumes of black smoke which pour out from their chimnies; but in the night they have a grand effect, from the flare of the pointed flames which stream amid the smoke, and appear like so many small volcanos.

Mr. Longston, of Eyam, has adorned a part of this scene by a hanging garden and imitative fort. The steep, winding paths of the garden are

planted with wild shrubs, natives of the sterile soil, · and which root their fibres in the fissures of the rocks. The effect, in descending those paths from the cliffs above, is very striking. They command the stupendous depths of the vale below and a considerable portion of its curve.

About the year 1777, Dr. Darwin purchased a little, wild, umbrageous valley, a mile from Lichfield, amongst the only rocks which neighbour that city so nearly. It was irriguous from various springs, and swampy from their plenitude. A mossy fountain of the purest and coldest water imaginable,

had, near a century back, induced the inhabitants of Lichfield to build a cold bath in the bosom of the vale. That, till the Doctor took it into his possession, was the only mark of human industry which could be found in the tangled and sequestered scene.

One of its native features had long excited the attention of the curious; a rock, which, in the central depth of the glen, drops perpetually, about three times in a minute. Aquatic plants border its top and branch from its fissures. No length of summer drought abates, no rains increase its humidity, no frost congeals its droppings. The Doctor cultivated this spot,

"And Paradise was open'd in the wild."

In some parts he widened the brook into small lakes, that mirrored the valley; in others, he taught it to wind between shrubby margins. Not only with trees of various growth did he adorn the borders of the fountain, the brook, and the lakes, but with various classes of plants, uniting the Linnæn science with the charm of landscape.

For the Naiad of the fountain, he wrote the following inscription:

SPEECH OF A WATER NYMPH.

If the meek flower of bashful dye,
Attract not thy incurious eye;
If the soft murmuring rill, to rest
Encharm not thy tumultuous breast,
Go, where Ambition lures the vain,

Or Avarice barters peace for gain!

Dr. Darwin restrained his friend Miss Seward's steps to this her always favourite scene till it had assumed its new beauties from cultivation. He purposed accompanying her on her first visit to his botanic garden, but a medical summons into the country deprived her of that pleasure. She took her tablets and pencil, and, seated on a flowerbank, in the midst of that luxuriant retreat, wrote the following lines, while the sun was gilding the glen, and while birds, of every plume, poured their song from the boughs :

O, come not here, ye Proud, whose breasts infold

Th' insatiate wish of glory, or of gold;

O come not ye, whose branded foreheads wear

Th' eternal frown of envy, or of care;

For you no Dryad decks her fragrant bowers,
For you her sparkling urn no Naiad pours;
Unmark'd by you light Graces skim the green,
And hovering Cupids aim their shafts unseen.

But, thou! whose mind the well attemper'd ray
Of Taste, and Virtue, lights with purer day;

Whose finer sense each soft vibration owns,
Mute and unfeeling to discorded tones;

Like the fair flower that spreads its lucid form
To meet the sun, but shuts it to the storm;
For thee my borders nurse the glowing wreath,
My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe;
My painted birds their vivid plumes unfold,
And insect armies wave their wings of gold.

And if with thee some hapless maid should stray,
Disastrous love companion of her way,

O lead her timid step to yonder glade,

Whose weeping rock incumbent alders shade!

There, as meek Evening wakes the temperate breeze,
And moonbeams glimmer through the trembling trees,

The rills, that gurgle round, shall sooth her ear,

The weeping rock shall number tear for tear;
And as sad Philomel, alike forlorn,

Sings to the night, reclining on her thorn,

While, at sweet intervals, each falling note

Sighs in the gale, and whispers round the grot,
The sister-woe shall calm her aching breast,
And softest slumbers steal her cares to rest.

Thus spoke the *Genius as he stept along,

And bade these lawns to Peace and Truth belong;

By the Genius of the place is meant its first cultivator, Dr. Darwin.