"Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses, And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses: That turns his fevered eyes around--_My mother! where's my mother?_ As if such tender words and looks could come from any other! The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him, Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him! Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic eyes, which closed in death to save him! Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth could image that awaking, Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs round him breaking, Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted, But fell those eyes alone, and knew. My Saviour! not deserted!" [Illustration: 0110] [Illustration: 0112] THE PEAK OF DERBYSHIRE [Illustration: 0113] |THE traveller into Derbyshire, unaccustomed to the district, may not unnaturally inquire for "the Peak," which he has been taught to consider one of the chief English mountains, and the name of which has always suggested to him something like a pyramid of rock,--an English Matterhorn. He will be soon undeceived, and then may paradoxically declare the peculiarity of "the Peak District" to be that there is no Peak! The range so called is a bulky mass of millstone grit, rising irregularly from the limestone | formation which occupies the southern part of Derbyshire, and extending in long spurs, or arms, north and north-east into Yorkshire as far as Sheffield, and west and south into Cheshire and Staffordshire. The plateau is covered by wild moorland, clothed with fern, moss and heather, and broken up by deep hollows and glens, through which streamlets descend, each through its own belt of verdure, from the spongy morasses above, forming in their course many a minute but picturesque waterfall. The pedestrian who establishes himself in the little inn at Ashopton, will have the opportunity of exploring many a breezy height and romantic glen; while, if he has strength of limb and of lungs to make his way to Kinderscout, the highest point of all, he will breathe, at the elevation of not quite two thousand feet, as fresh and exhilarating an atmosphere as can be found anywhere in these islands; the busy smoky city of Manchester being at a distance, "as the crow flies," of little more than fifteen miles! It is no wonder that a select company of hard-worked men, who have lighted on this nook among the hills, having a taste for natural history, resort hither year after year, finding a refreshment in the repeated visit equal at least to that which their fellow-citizens enjoy, at greater cost, in the terraces of Buxton, or on the gigantic slope of Matlock Bank.