From Derby to the baths of Matlock, which is one of the most romantic situations, it was still fifteen miles.  On my way thither, I came to a long and extensive village, which I believe was called Duffield.  They here at least did not show me into the kitchen, but into the parlour; and I dined on cold victuals.

The prints and pictures which I have generally seen at these inns are, I think, almost always prints of the royal family, oftentimes in a group, where the king, as the father of the family, assembles his children around him; or else I have found a map of London, and not seldom the portrait of the King of Prussia; I have met with it several times.  You also sometimes see some of the droll prints of Hogarth.  The heat being now very great, I several times in this village heard the commiserating exclamation of “Good God Almighty!” by which the people expressed their pity for me, as being a poor foot passenger.

At night I again stopped at an inn on the road, about five miles from Matlock.  I could easily have reached Matlock, but I wished rather to reserve the first view of the country till the next day than to get there when it was dark.

But I was not equally fortunate in this inn, as in the two former.  The kitchen was full of farmers, among whom I could not distinguish the landlord, whose health I should otherwise immediately have drank.  It is true I heard a country girl who was also in the kitchen, as often as she drank say, “Your health, gentlemen all!” But I do not know how it was, I forgot to drink any one’s health, which I afterwards found was taken much amiss.  The landlord drank twice to my health sneeringly, as if to reprimand me for my incivility; and then began to join the rest in ridiculing me, who almost pointed at me with their fingers.  I was thus obliged for a time to serve the farmers as a laughing-stock, till at length one of them compassionately said, “Nay, nay, we must do him no harm, for he is a stranger.”  The landlord, I suppose, to excuse himself, as if he thought he had perhaps before gone too far said, “Ay, God forbid we should hurt any stranger,” and ceased his ridicule; but when I was going to drink his health, he slighted and refused my attention, and told me, with a sneer, all I had to do was to seat myself in the chimney-corner, and not trouble myself about the rest of the world.  The landlady seemed to pity me, and so she led me into another room where I could be alone, saying, “What wicked people!”

I left this unfriendly roof early the next morning, and now quickly proceeded to Matlock.

The extent of my journey I had now resolved should be the great cavern near Castleton, in the high Peak of Derbyshire.  It was about twenty miles beyond Matlock.