storms of more than three hundred winters, and is a marvel of arboreal growth, its wide-spreading branches covering an area of 350 square feet. Byron was a frequent visitor to Matlock, and in one of his letters to Thomas Moore he declares "there are prospects in Derbyshire as noble as in Greece or Switzerland." Mr. Ruskin visits the New Bath Hotel, and the author of "Modern Painters" writes in a characteristic manner:--"Speaking still wholly for myself, as an Epicurean Anchorite and Monastic Misanthrope, I pray leave to submit, as a deeply oppressed and afflicted Brother of that Order, that I can't find anything like Derbyshire anywhere else. '_J'ai beau_,' as our polite neighbours untranslateably express it, to scale the precipices of the Wengern Alp with Manfred, to penetrate with Faust the defiles of the Brocken--the painlessly accessible turrets of Matlock High Tor, the guiltlessly traceable Lovers' Walks by the Derwent, have for me still more attractive peril and a dearer witchery. Looking back to my past life I find, though not without surprise, that it owes more to the Via Gellia than the Via Mala, to the dripping wells of Matlock than the dust-rain of Lauterbrunnen." Leaving Matlock Bath, the Derwent is utilised for commercial purposes by the Arkwrights, in connection with their mill machinery, and a very dangerous weir is the _bête noir_ of the oarsman. Cromford, the cradle of the cotton manufacture, follows. Here are the immense but cleanly factories founded by Sir Richard Arkwright, the Preston barber's apprentice; and here is Willersley Castle, the seat of the family whose fortunes he made, looking down from a natural rocky plateau, embowered in trees, upon the windings of the river. Cromford bridge is a curious old structure. The arches on one side are pointed Gothic in style, and on the other side they are of a semicircular character. The same incongruity in architecture is to be observed in the bridges at Matlock Town and Darley. This is to be accounted for by the fact that they were once pack-saddle structures, and have been widened with no regard to the preservation of uniformity. [Illustration: MARKEATON BRIDGE.] [Illustration: ALLESTREE.]