men; merry, noisy country lots of a dozen youths and red-cheeked maidens, with one or two cheerful dames; are to be seen every bright day the summer through. They begin to arrive long before noon, and then meet you at every turn, rambling in pairs after the charms of the dale (and thinking more of each other's), or trying which shall climb the hill's top soonest, or run over the stepping-stones quickest, or else seated in some shady nook partaking of their stores, or-but what could cause such a laugh and shout as ascended from yon hollow? Let us mount the knoll and see.-Make haste, make haste! Oh, you simpleton, you've lost it! Oh, that we were young again! though even now we would not have missed such a chance! Gentle reader, don't be impatient; and when you are told what caused the outcry, don't be angry; it was a game at kiss-in-the-ring played by a score of merry Derbyshire lads and very pretty lasses, and a broad-shouldered oaf, a well built limberlegged lad of twenty lost his-it would have provoked a hermit, and surely we, who do not profess to have forgotten beauty's power, may be forgiven. As we descend the dale, the Staffordshire hills become very precipitous, and at length dip almost perpendicularly into the Dove. Here all progress is barred on the Staffordshire side of the river. The path throughout Dove-dale, as we ought to have mentioned before, is on the Derbyshire side of the dale; there is a roadway carried for some distance along the Staffordshire side from Ilam, but it ends abruptly. We made our way for some space farther, but it was with difficulty, and only by scrambling along the face of the rock at some L There height above the water, and at last, where it appeared impossible to go on and not easy to return, we were glad to get down and escape to the other side by wading across the stream. Reynard's Hall, mentioned above, is a vast cavity in the rocks on the Derbyshire side of the river; it has an arched entrance of about forty feet high, and half as wide, but it is not very deep. The views up and down the dale from its mouth are very fine. Attached to it is another cave, known as Reynard's Kitchen; they have obtained their titles from a tradition that a robber of that name in olden times lived in the one, and used the other to broil his chop and stew his potatoes in. On the opposite side of the river is a projecting mass of rock, called Dove-dale Church, from some fancied resemblance to such an edifice. We may as well get rid of these Dove-dale names at once. is a rare batch of them-almost every lump of rock and every hole has a name-but we, unfortunately, forget best part of them, or we might string them together as Homer did his heroes, and we are not sure that they would make a much more cacophonous jingle. Here are sugar-loaves, and shoulders of mutton; twelve apostles, and foxes' holes; ever so many spires and chests; with tors and caves innumerable. Dove-dale, however, is not alone; before all the world Derbyshire stands pre-eminent in the art of naming thingsevery turn in every cave in the county has a name-some half a dozen-and then every thing in every such compartment, to a stalagmite as big as a thimble, has one appropriated to itself. Such names too! Half the pleasantest places in the county have the edge taken off their enjoyment, by the expectations raised by the name. Think of cottages of contentment, romantic rocks, Calypso's caves, grottoes of Paradise, and so forth, ad infinitum. It must be admitted, however, to the honour of Derbyshire, that within the last century or two the nomenclature has become refined and polite, as well as the county. How much it has been refined may easily be seen by comparing the philosopher Hobbes' poem ' De Mirabilibus Pecci' with the last "Matlock Guide." We shall never get through the dale at this rate. We must stalk along the remainder of it at a pace, we hope our readers, when they visit it, will not imitate. From Reynard's Hall the scenery is more soft and gentle, the hills are not less craggy, but less abrupt in form and more clothed with verdure. Trees of all kinds, now dipping their pendant branches into the water, which reflects them with a softened grace, and now standing firm and erect in well composed groups, or crowded up the hill sides, add their brilliant or sombre colours and tremulous light and shadow to the landscape; gay and lovely flowers crowd every spot, and start as if sown by fairy fingers in the inaccessible crevices of the naked rock; while the river murmurs its quiet tone over its pebbly bed, or dashes in some pretty falls over the dark rock, or collecting in a deep pool where its motion is unseen, reflects an unbroken picture of the hills, trees, flowers, and mossy *The peasantry of this neighbourhood say that the fairies plant the flowers in such places. The writer of a useful guide-book to this district mentions this, but gives a very serious shake of his head at the superstition, as he terms it, with all the emphasis Italics can impart. stones, the bright azure sky, and perhaps some happy group reclining by its margin. Such scenes would touch the heart of the most indurated, they fiil with gladness his who loves nature and who loves man. He is impressed "not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thought 66 Leaving Dove-dale we pass by the Izaak Walton, an inn conveniently situated for those who wish to examine Dove-dale at leisure, and much frequented also by anglers, and speedily reach Ilam, a very beautiful place, and just by, though not upon, our river. Few who visit Dove-dale depart without seeing Ilam, and it is well worth seeing. The village, which is small, is the property of Jesse Watts Russell, Esq., who resides in Ilam Hall. The little village is quite a curiosity; it seems really, as Walton says of one of his Lea scenes, too pretty to look on but only on holidays." The cottages are all new Swiss buildings, as clean and trim as so many architects' models. In the midst of the village stands a cross, erected by Mr. Russell to the memory of his late wife: a copy, it seemed to us, of that at Waltham, and not a paltry imitation, but elaborately and beautifully carved, and with statues of excellent workmanship in the niches. At the foot of the cross flows a fountain of cool and clear water. An inscription, of red and black letters in the olden character, tells her virtues to whom the cross is raised, her gentleness, her sympathy with the indigent and distressed of the village, and, in allusion to the fountain, adds |