ELIZABETHAN STAIRCASE, HARDWICKE HALL.
The ruins of the old hall, almost overgrown with ivy, are picturesque, but from everywhere on the ancient or on the modern hall there peer out the initials "E. S.," with which the prudent Bess was so careful to mark all her possessions.
BOLSOVER CASTLE.
BOLSOVER CASTLE.
The noted Bolsover Castle, which Bess also built, though her son finished it after her death, stands in a magnificent position on a high plateau not far from Chesterfield, overlooking a wide expanse of Derbyshire. The present castle replaced an ancient structure that had fallen into ruin, and was supposed to have been built by "Peveril of the Peak;" it was fortified during King John's time, and traces of the fortifications still remain; it was repeatedly besieged and taken by assault. The present building is a square and lofty mansion of castellated appearance, with towers at the corners built of brown stone; in it the Earl of Newcastle, who subsequently inherited it, spent on one occasion $75,000 in entertaining King Charles I., the entire country round being invited to come and attend the king: Ben Jonson performed a play for his amusement. Lord Clarendon speaks of the occasion as "such an excess of feasting as had scarce ever been known in England before." It now belongs to the Duke of Portland, and has fallen into partial decay, with trees growing in some of the deserted apartments and ivy creeping along the walls. Visitors describe it as a ghostly house, with long vaulted passages, subterranean chambers, dungeon-like holes in the towers, and mysterious spaces beneath the vaults whence come weird noises. When Mr. Jennings visited Bolsover recently he described it as like a haunted house, and after examining the apartments, in which most things seemed going to decay, he went down stairs, guided by an old woman, to the cellars and passages that are said to be the remains of the original Norman castle. A chamber with a high vaulted roof was used as a kitchen, and an ancient stone passage connected it with a crypt; beneath this, she told him, there was a church, never opened since the days of Peveril. Their voices had a hollow sound, and their footsteps awakened echoes as if from a large empty space beneath: the servants, she said, were afraid to come down where they were, excepting by twos and threes, and she added: "Many people have seen things here besides me: something bad has been done here, sir, and when they open that church below they'll find it out. Just where you stand by that door I have several times seen a lady and gentleman—only for a moment or two, for they come like a flash; when I have been sitting in the kitchen, not thinking of any such thing, they stood there—the gentleman with ruffles on, the lady with a scarf round her waist; I never believed in ghosts, but I have seen them. I am used to it now, and don't mind it, but we do not like the noises, because they disturb us. Not long ago my husband, who comes here at night, and I could not sleep at all, and we thought at last that somebody had got shut up in the castle, for some children had been here that day; so we lit a candle and went all over it, but there was nothing, only the noises following us, and keeping on worse than ever after we left the rooms, though they stopped while we were in them." The old woman's tale shows the atmosphere there is about this sombre and ghostly castle of Bolsover.
THE WYE AND THE DERWENT.
THE CRESCENT, BUXTON.
These two noted rivers take their rise in the Derbyshire hills, and, coming together at Rowsley near the pretty Peacock Inn, flow down to the sea through the valleys of the Wye, the Trent, and the Humber. Rising in the limestone hills to the north of Buxton, the Wye flows past that celebrated bath, where the Romans first set the example of seeking its healing waters, both hot and cold springs gushing from the rocks in close proximity. It stands nine hundred feet above the sea, its nucleus, "The Crescent," having been built by the Duke of Devonshire; and the miraculous cures wrought by St. Mary's Well are noted by Charles Cotton among the Wonders of the Peak. From Buxton the Wye follows a romantic glen to Bakewell, the winding valley being availed of, by frequent tunnels, viaducts, and embankments, as a route for the Midland Railway. In this romantic glen is the remarkable limestone crag known as Chee Tor, where the curving valley contracts into a narrow gorge. The gray limestone cliffs are in many places overgrown with ivy, while trees find rooting-places in their fissures. Tributary brooks fall into the Wye, all flowing through miniature dales that disclose successive beauties, and then at a point where the limestone hills recede from the river, expanding the valley, Bakewell is reached. Here are also mineral springs, but the most important place in the town is the parish church, parts of which are seven hundred years old. It is a picturesque building, cruciform, with a spire, and is rich in sepulchral remains, containing the ancestors of the Duke of Rutland—who owns the town—in the tombs of a long line of Vernons and Manners. In the churchyard are several curious epitaphs, among them that of John Dale and his two wives, the inscription concluding,