HARDWICK HALL may take rank among the more stately of the “homes of England.” Stately in its outer aspect, stately in its antique furniture and its interior fittings and appointments, and truly stately in its associations, it is one of the most historically interesting, and one of the most singular and picturesque, of the many “homes” whose countless stores of natural beauties and acquired treasures are, through the kindness and liberality of their owners, made accessible alike to peer and peasant; while it is one of the fullest in its historical associations, and in its power of carrying the mind of the visitor back through a long vista of years to those stirring times when “Good Queen Bess,” the strong-minded and strong-headed “master” of its noble owner, sate on the throne of England. Hardwick and its surroundings belong essentially to those times, and to the people who moved prominently in them: the very furniture we see to-day pertains to that eventful era—for not only is the building itself of the period to which we refer, but so are even the “fittings;” the beds—for here is the very bed used by Mary, Queen of Scots, and covered with needlework, the work of her own fair hands; the tables around and at which sate “Bess of Hardwick” with her historic family and brilliant friends; the tapestry is that which then hung around them, and on which the eyes of royalty and nobility have rested and “feasted with admiration;” the screens, the chairs, the couches,—nay, almost all the objects that meet the eye are of those stirring times, and have about them an historic air which seems irresistibly to subdue the mind and to expand the thoughts of the visitor. Even a _glance_ at the graces and beauties of Derbyshire would demand far greater space than we can accord to them: for it is the shire of all the English shires in which natural beauties are most happily combined with cultivated graces; hill and dale alternate at every mile; rich valleys, through which run fertilising rivers, shut in by mountain rocks, tree-clad from base to summit; singular peaks, that seem as if not formed by Nature, but the work of giant hands; delicious dells, where rivulets sing perpetually, and myriad birds rejoice in spring or summer. Other counties may be more sublimely grand, and others more abundantly fertile, but there is none so truly rich in the picturesque; whether of distant views or of by-paths up hill-sides, or through lanes clothed in perpetual verdure. And then its history, a page of which may be read at every turn—the Celt, the Roman, the Saxon, the Dane, the Norman, all the “peoples and nations” that have made Britain their home, have left in this shire enduring evidence of possession and progress; and many of its customs remain unchanged, not only since the beacons were lit on Blakelow or on Bruncliffe, but since the Baal fires were burning on Axe-Edge or Chelmorton.