Thus I again spent a very agreeable evening; and when I had breakfasted in the morning, my bill was not more than it had been at Sutton. I at length reached the common before Derby on Friday morning. The air was mild, and I seemed to feel myself uncommonly cheerful and happy. About noon the romantic part of the country began to open upon me. I came to a lofty eminence, where all at once I saw a boundless prospect of hills before me, behind which fresh hills seemed always to arise, and to be infinite.
The ground now seemed undulatory, and to rise and fall like waves; when at the summit of the rise I seemed to be first raised aloft, and had an extensive view all around me, and the next moment, when I went down the hill, I lost it.
In the afternoon I saw Derby in the vale before me, and I was now an hundred and twenty-six miles from London. Derby is but a small, and not very considerable town. It was market-day when I got there, and I was obliged to pass through a crowd of people: but there was here no such odious curiosity, no offensive staring, as at Burton. At this place too I took notice that I began to be always civilly bowed to by the children of the villages through which I passed.
From Derby to the baths of Matlock, which is one of the most romantic situations, it was still fifteen miles. On my way thither, I came to a long and extensive village, which I believe was called Duffield. They here at least did not show me into the kitchen, but into the parlour; and I dined on cold victuals.
The prints and pictures which I have generally seen at these inns are, I think, almost always prints of the royal family, oftentimes in a group, where the king, as the father of the family, assembles his children around him; or else I have found a map of London, and not seldom the portrait of the King of Prussia; I have met with it several times. You also sometimes see some of the droll prints of Hogarth. The heat being now very great, I several times in this village heard the commiserating exclamation of “Good God Almighty!” by which the people expressed their pity for me, as being a poor foot passenger.
At night I again stopped at an inn on the road, about five miles from Matlock. I could easily have reached Matlock, but I wished rather to reserve the first view of the country till the next day than to get there when it was dark.
But I was not equally fortunate in this inn, as in the two former. The kitchen was full of farmers, among whom I could not distinguish the landlord, whose health I should otherwise immediately have drank. 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.