Few who visit Chatsworth will omit Haddon Hall, and while a single visit to the modern palace may suffice, a hundred to Haddon, it seemed to us, would leave one still unsatisfied. Who could ever weary of the indescribable beauty of the ancient house or cease to delight in its atmosphere of romantic story? Nowhere in England is there another place that speaks so eloquently of the past or which brings so near to our prosaic present day the life, manners and environment of the English nobleman of three or four centuries ago. No sight in England is more enchanting than the straggling walls and widely scattered towers of Haddon, standing in gray outline against the green of its sheltering hill--the point of view chosen by the painter of our picture. Yet, with all its battlements and watch-towers, Haddon was never a fortified castle--a circumstance to which we owe its perfect preservation. The wars of the Roses and the Commonwealth left it scathless; it was an actual residence until 1730, since which time every care has been exercised to maintain it in repair. We will not rehearse the well-known legends of the place, nor will we give ear for an instant to the insinuation that the romance of the fair Dorothy was fabricated less than a hundred years ago. What tinge of romance will be left to this prosaic world if these busybody iconoclasts are given heed? They cannot deny that Dorothy married John Manners, Duke of Rutland, anyway, for it was through this union that Haddon Hall passed to its present owners. [Illustration: HADDON HALL FROM THE RIVER. From the Original Water Color by C. F. Allbon.] After a long, loving look at her ancestral home, we turn away and follow the dusty road to Bakewell, where we stand before her tomb in the fine old church. Here in effigy she kneels facing her husband and below are the indescribably quaint figures of her four children. The caretaker, who is loudly lecturing a group of trippers, catches a glimpse of us as we enter and his practical eye differentiates instantly the American tourist. He hastens to us and begs us to wait a little--the party is large--he will soon give us his personal attention. The trippers are hurried along and dismissed with scant ceremony and we are shown about in detail that encroaches upon our time. Still, there are many things of genuine interest and antiquity in Bakewell Church and the dissertations of our guide concerning them is worth the half crown we bestow upon him. Outside, we pause to contemplate the grand old structure. Its massive walls terminate in castellated battlements and its splendid spire, a miniature of Salisbury, in slender yet graceful proportions, rises to a height of two hundred feet. All around is the spacious churchyard, thickly set with monumental stones, and upon one of these we noted the quaintest of the many quaint old English epitaphs we read. Happy indeed the parish clerk immortalized in the following couplets: