While the country round the Peak is wild, bare, and rugged, the line of valleys and dales on which lies the road from Matlock to Burton and Manchester, presents the most charming series of pictures of undulating woodland scenery, adorned by mansions and cottages, that it is possible to imagine.  The high road continually runs along the steep side of valleys,—­on one side are thick coverts climbing the rocky hill-sides, all variegated with wild flowers, briars, and brushwood; on the other side, sometimes on a level with the road, sometimes far below, a river winds and foams and brawls along; if lost for a short distance, again coming in sight of the road, enlivening and refreshing the scene.

In the main avenue of the Crystal Palace, Mr. Carrington exhibited a model which represented with extraordinary accuracy all this country, and which gave a very exact picture of Derbyshire, with all the undulations of its hills and rivers worked to a scale.  Those who have never been in the county should endeavour to see it, as it will teach them that we have a Switzerland in England of which they knew not.

One charm of this part of Derbyshire is the intermixture of cultivation and wild nature, or woods so planted as to well emulate nature.  On bits of level space you meet a cottage neatly built of stone, all covered with roses and woodbines, which flourish wonderfully on the loose soil in the showery atmosphere.  The cottages of Derbyshire are so pretty that you are at first inclined to imagine that they are for show,—­mere fancy buildings.  But no; the cheapness of good building stone, the suitability of the soil for flowering shrubs, and perhaps something in the force of example, create cottage after cottage fit for the dwellings of Arcadian lovers.  And every now and then the landscape opens on a villa or mansion so placed that there is nothing left for the landscape gardener to do.

The farm buildings, and corn mills, and silk mills, are equally picturesque:  game abounds.  Early in the morning and in the evening you may often see the pheasants feeding close to the roadside, and, in the middle of the day, the sudden sharp noise of a detonating ball will set them crowing in the woods all around.

We cannot say that the streams now swarm with trout and grayling as they did when honest Isaac Walton sung their praises in quaint poetical prose, although they still twine and foam along their rocky beds all overhung with willows and tufted shrubs; but, where the waters are preserved, there good sport is to be had.

The roadside inns are not bad.  The half-mining, half-farming people are quaint and amusing.  The caverns of the Peak and the lead mines, afford something strange and new.  Altogether we can warmly commend a trip through Derbyshire, as one affording great variety of hill and dale, wood and stream, barren moors, and rich cultivation, fine parks and mansions, and beautiful hamlets, cottages, and roadside gardens, where English peasant life is to be seen under most favourable aspects.