for the defile has no superior and few equals in all Derbyshire. Miller's Dale afterwards opens out its picturesque features, although its idyllic charm is marred by the screaming railway junction and by the quarrying operations that are toppling bastions of rock--ancient landmarks--into lime-kilns. Two miles from Miller's Dale is Tideswell, with its grand old church--"the Cathedral of the Peak"--its secluded valleys and immemorial hills. Litton Dale and Cressbrook Dale follow--both wild glens that will repay lovers of rocks, ferns, and flowers. At Monsal Dale the scenery is no longer savage as it was at Chee Tor, but is of winsome loveliness. The Wye winds in green meadows below wooded heights, with here and there a rocky pinnacle jutting out like a spire; "lepping" stones cross the stream, and rustic cottages, with blue filmy smoke curling from their chimneys, stand just where an artist would have placed them. Well might Eliza Cook sing-- "And Monsal, thou mine of Arcadian treasure, Need we seek for Greek islands and spice-laden gales, While a Temple like thee, of enchantment and pleasure, May be found in our native Derbyshire Dales?" Close by is Taddington, an abode of miners, which contests with Chelmerton the claim of being the highest village in England. There is a quaint church, and in the churchyard an ancient cross which archæological authorities argue is the work of the monks of Lindisfarne, who introduced Christianity into Derbyshire. The Peakrels, in their caustic humour, gravely furnish the visitor to Taddington with the information that "only blind, deaf, and dumb persons, and those who do not live in the parish, are buried in the churchyard." Past Demon's Dale, and we are at the pleasant village of Ashford-in-the-Water, celebrated for its inlaid marble manufactures. In the old church are hung five paper garlands. They are the relics of the obsolete custom of carrying garlands before the corpses of maidens in the funeral procession, and subsequently suspending them in the church. The custom is alluded to by Shakespeare. These garlands are Ophelia's "virgin crants" in _Hamlet_. The Priest tells Laertes that but for "just command" Ophelia would have been buried--as a suicide--in "ground unsanctified," and "shards, flints, and pebbles" only would have been "thrown on her"-- "Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants, Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home Of bell and burial."