“Have you ever seen that fine monument by Chantrey there?” asked the gentleman.

“No,” said my brother in astonishment, knowing the wild nature of the country thereabouts.

“Well,” he said, “mind you go and see it!  Here is my card, and when you have seen it, write me whether you have seen a finer monument in all your life.”

My brother found the monument in a small church about three miles from the hotel in the hills above.  He was very much astonished and deeply impressed by the sculpture, acknowledging in his promised letter that it was by far the finest he had seen.  The origin of it was as follows: 

The owner of the estate had an only child, a daughter, lovely, clever, and accomplished, but slightly deformed in her back.  When she was twenty-one years old she was taken by her parents to London to have her back straightened, but never recovered from the operation.  The statuary represented the daughter lying on a couch, her father standing at the head looking down into the eyes of his dying daughter, while her mother is kneeling at the foot in an attitude of prayer.  The daughter’s instruments of music and painting, with her books, appear under the couch, while every small detail, from the embroidery on the couch to the creases in the pillow, are beautifully sculptured.

This great work of art cost L6,000, and was exhibited in London for some time before it was placed in the small church of Hafod.  It was said to have made Chantrey’s fortune.

[Illustration:  THE CHANTREY MONUMENT IN HAFOD CHURCH.]

Beauchief Abbey, we were informed, was built by the murderers of Thomas a Becket in expiation of their sin, but only a few fragments of the buildings now remained.  We halted for rest and refreshments at the “Fox House Inn,” which stood at a junction of roads and was formerly the hunting-box of the Duke of Rutland.

We had by this time left the county of York and penetrated about four miles into Derbyshire, a county we may safely describe as being peculiar to itself, for limestone abounded in the greater part of its area.  Even the roads were made with it, and the glare of their white surfaces under a brilliant sun, together with the accumulation of a white dust which rose with the wind, or the dangerous slippery mud which formed on them after rain or snow or frost, were all alike disagreeable to wayfarers.  But in later times, if the worthy writer who ventured into that county on one occasion, had placed his fashionable length on the limy road when in a more favourable condition than that of wet limy mud, he might have written Derbyshire up instead of writing it down, and describing it as the county beginning with a “Big D.”

[Illustration:  THE PLAGUE COTTAGES, EYAM.]