into his coat-pocket, to be picked thence thereafter by these editorial hands : : 'Farewell, cube and square and dusty college quadrangles! Take the last dust of my shoe; Gladly I bid ye adieu ! Farewell, lustreless eyes and angular faces of Fellows! Reason in motley, vale! Ad mea, decepti juvenes, præcepta venite ! Drink from the fountain-head; Let the dead bury their dead! Come to the breeze of the sea and the heathery bloom of the headland ; Hark, in the cool of the cave, Musical swirls of the wave! Hark, in the midsummer woods the cooing and trilling and purling! Hark, in the summer-night air, Laughter and songs of the fair! Let us forget for awhile Sapiens Stultitia weighing Questions of fiddle-de-dee Frigida verba, vale!” CHAPTER XVIII. 1864, ÆT. 22-23. A Pedestrian Ramble.-The Peak Revisited.-A Beautiful Character. Peveril Castle and Hope-Dale. - Strange Presentiments.-Great Physical Strength.-Miller's Dale and Cressbrook.-Ashford.-Bakewell.-Chatsworth.Letter CIV. Jocular Description of Derbyshire; of Alton Towers.-Through the Vi' Gillies to Dovedale.Letter CV.: "Peveril of the Peak Hotel," Dovedale, and its inmates.-Depression and Forebodings of FellowTraveller.-A Curious Phenomenon.-Sunset from Thorpe Cloud.—"The Happy Valley.”—Peaceful Recollections. FF across the sea, with their knapsacks, as of OFF yore, the two travellers, rejoicing to find themselves reliving old times over again in blissful companionship, found themselves sailing, one morning in the June of 1864, in glad expectation of fair scenes and vigorous tramps among the mountains. Of Derbyshire Armstrong cherished agreeable reminiscences, and he longed to visit it once again, and explore it more thoroughly. After passing through the Pottery-district of North Staffordshire-a hell upon earth which Armstrong subsequently described with some irony in his essay on Coleridge,'-the pedestrians marched eastward toward the Peak, and entered that region 'See "Essays and Sketches."-Ed. at its north-west corner. The scenery of North Staffordshire, bordering on Derbyshire-hills and dales and woods, and picturesque towns and villages-pleased him exceedingly; for, much as he delighted in rough mountainlands, he loved too the softer beauties of the lowland English landscape, and enjoyed, as much as man could, the "harvest of a quiet eye." "One afternoon," wrote his fellow-traveller, "while descending the eastern slope of one of the loftier mountains of the Peak, we came suddenly within sight of the little town of —, nestling in the valley below our feet; and, as we lay down to rest and enjoy the prospect, he remained for a long time silent; and at last turned to me and directed my eyes to a country mansion, with gardens and lawns, on the slope of one of the hills not far away, all girdled with a cincture of pinewoods and leafy plantations. And then he told how, in the summer of 1859, in that season of boyhood when his hopes were high and as yet had known but one shadow, he had wandered about the gardens there with the beautiful Miss S*****, whose home it was; how her intellectual conversation, and graceful, gentle manners had fascinated him; and how for months afterwards the fair image illumined his fancy; and I have thought it possible to trace something of the bright nature which thus awakened his admiration and respect in his picture (com pleted this very year) of one of the two lovely female characters of Ovoca. . . . . .... "Pursuing our journey," this narrative proceeds, "we found ourselves one day-having crossed the mountains, Heaven knows where on the hill overhanging Peveril Castle, and looking across the beautiful valley of Hope-Dale. Approaching the Castle from this side, we descended to it with some difficulty. There was a melancholy grandeur about the view from the old walls that day; for a summer storm was blowing, and cloud-shadows, and mists, and sunshine were sweeping across and up and down the mountains-a magnificent phantasmagoria. It was a day that set the mind thinking involuntarily of by-gone times and the long-buried dead; and incidents in the lives of Scott and Byron presented themselves to our inner eyes with almost painful reality, as we peered down at the mouth of the Devil's Cavern and the little inn and graveyard of Castleton, on either hand, below. . . . "From Castleton we walked towards Miller's Dale and Cressbrook, our path taking us through a tract of grey rock and green grass, peculiarly cold in colour, and desolate. "Some painful, formless presentiment haunted me from time to time throughout these ramblesa sense as of the hovering of death somewhere near; a forefeeling of an inevitable separation to come: : a perception of the absolute isolation and loneliness of the individual, however he may flatter himself with the notion of an intimate communion with his fellow-man and I remember most distinctly, as we sat and talked on this very theme, that dull afternoon, in a grassy hollow between grey rocks, on our way to Cressbrook, how I longed to grasp my companion and hold him to me-though I knew how vain even that was so as to bridge over the gulf that seemed to yawn between our lives. Yet never were our sympathies more perfect than at that moment, and never had he proved himself sounder or more active in body than during our recent marches. Some scenes are more powerful than others to arouse thoughts like these, and among lonely mountains particularly the human form and spirit assume to the mind's perception a vagueness and unreality which are sometimes painful to excess. I can remember experiencing the same sensation-we both felt it-in the preceding summer, as we lay, he and I, one evening, on the northern slope of the great Sugarloaf Mountain, in Wicklow; and I have felt it since among the Alps. But on this occasion it was for a time almost unbearable, and it could not fail to be remembered afterwards, and read by the light of events which followed. Perhaps it was this vague fear which made me more than ever careful to put a gentle restraint upon my |