feet into the bowels of the earth, with a floor of fallen fragments of rock and sand; jagged walls, which seem as if they would fit closely into each other if they could be brought together, sheeted, in many places, with a glittering, calcareous deposit, and gradually approaching each other overhead—­imagine this, and you will have an idea of the Blue John mine, into which we descended.  The fluor-spar taken from this mine is of a rich blue color, and is wrought into vases and cups, which were extremely beautiful.

The entrance to the Peak Cavern, as it is called, is very grand.  A black opening, of prodigious extent, yawns in the midst of a precipice nearly three hundred feet in height, and you proceed for several rods in this vast portico, before the cave begins to contract to narrower dimensions.  At a little distance from this opening, a fine stream rushes rapidly from under the limestone, and flows through the village.  Above, and almost impending over the precipice, is the castle of the Peverils, the walls of which, built of a kind of stone which retains the chisel marks made eight hundred years since, are almost entire, though the roof has long ago fallen in, and trees are growing in the corners.  “Here lived the English noblemen,” said our friend, “when they were robbers—­before they became gentlemen.”  The castle is three stories in height, and the space within its thick and strong walls is about twenty-five feet square.  These would be thought narrow quarters by the present nobility, the race of gentlemen who have succeeded to the race of robbers.

The next day we attended the parish church.  The young clergyman gave us a discourse on the subject of the Trinity, and a tolerably clever one, though it was only sixteen minutes long.  The congregation were a healthy, though not a very intelligent looking set of men and women.  The Derbyshire people have a saying—­

  “Darbyshire born, and Darbyshire bred,
  Strong o’ the yarm and weak o’ the yead.”

The latter line, translated into English, would be—­

  “Strong of the arm, and weak of the head;”

and I was assured that, like most proverbs, it had a good deal of truth in it.  The laboring people of Edale and its neighborhood, so far as I could learn, are not remarkable for good morals, and indifferent, or worse than indifferent, to the education of their children.  They are, however, more fortunate in regard to the wages of their labor, than in many other agricultural districts.  A manufactory for preparing cotton thread for the lace-makers, has been established in Edale, and the women and girls of the place, who are employed in it, are paid from seven to eight shillings a week.  The farm laborers receive from twelve to thirteen shillings a week, which is a third more than is paid to the same class in some other counties.