The innocent observance lingered longer in Derbyshire than anywhere else, and was not abandoned at Ashford-in-the-Water until 1820. The Wye at this point spreads out its waters, turning weedy wheels, and wandering through lush meadow-lands, finely timbered. At Bakewell the stream is of considerable width, and is spanned by a handsome old bridge evidently the work of an architect of imagination. The town itself is of considerable antiquity, and the church, one of the oldest and finest in the county, stands on a commanding hill, and is a picturesque feature in a glorious landscape. Time has made furrow and wrinkle on the grey old fabric, but "Still points the tower and pleads the bell, The solemn arches breathe in stone; Window and walls have lips to tell The mighty faith of days unknown." Bakewell is the Paradise of anglers, and wonderful stories are told of the trophies captured when the May-fly is on the water. The river now narrows, and winds in many a tortuous curve through the Haddon pastures. Below Haddon Hall, at Fillyford Bridge, it receives the limpid Lathkill, a stream to-day as clear as when Charles Cotton described it to "Viator" in "The Compleat Angler" as "by many degrees the purest and most transparent stream that I ever yet saw, either at home or abroad, and breeding the reddest and best trouts in England." [Illustration: THE HIGH TOR, MATLOCK.] After it has welcomed the meandering Wye, the Derwent spreads through an open verdant country of contemplative beauty, with rounded wooded hills in the distance. This spacious golden-green strath is Darley Dale. Lord John Manners (now the Duke of Rutland), viewing this scene from Stanton Woodhouse, a wooded knoll close by, with weather-beaten tors, lofty hunting tower, and Druidical remains, was inspired to crystallise in verse the deep impression that the pastoral scene and its mountain surroundings had made upon his mind:-- "Up Darley Dale the wanton wind In careless measure sweeps, And stirs the twinkling Derwent's tides, Its shallows and its deeps. "From many an ancient upland grange, Wherein old English feeling Still lives and thrives, in faint blue wreaths The smoke is skywards stealing. "The simple cheer that erst sustained The Patriarch Seers of old, Still in these pastoral valleys feeds A race of ancient mould. "And should fell faction rear again Her front on English ground, Here will the latest resting-place Of loyalty be found."