When I was past Bakewell, a place far inferior to Derby, I came by the side of a broad river, to a small eminence, where a fine cultivated field lay before me.  This field, all at once, made an indescribable and very pleasing impression on me, which at first, I could not account for; till I recollected having seen, in my childhood, near the village where I was educated, a situation strikingly similar to that now before me here in England.

This field, as if it had been in Germany, was not enclosed with hedges, but every spot in it was uninterruptedly diversified with all kinds of crops and growths of different green and yellowish colours, which gave the whole a most pleasing effect; but besides this large field, the general view of the country, and a thousand other little circumstances which I cannot now particularly enumerate, served to bring back to my recollection the years of my youth.

Here I rested myself a while, and when I was going on again I thought of the place of my residence, on all my acquaintances, and not a little on you, my dearest friend, and imagined what you would think and say, if you were to see your friend thus wandering here all alone, totally unknown, and in a foreign land.  And at that moment I first seriously felt the idea of distance, and the thought that I was now in England, so very far from all I loved, or who loved me, produced in me such sensations as I have not often felt.

It was perhaps the same with you, my dearest friend, when on our journey to Hamburg we drove from Perlsbeg, to your birthplace, the village of Boberow; where, among the farmers, you again found your own playmates, one of whom was now become the bailiff of the place.  On your asking them whether they knew you, one and all of them answered so heartily, “O, yes, yes—­why, your are Master Frederic.”  The pedantic school-master, you will remember, was not so frank.  He expressed himself in the stiff town phrase of, “He had not the honour of knowing you, as during your residence in that village, when a child, he had not been in loco.”

I now came through a little place of the name of Ashford, and wished to reach the small village of Wardlow, which was only three miles distant, when two men came after me, at a distance, whom I had already seen at Matlock, who called to me to wait for them.  These were the only foot passengers since Mr. Maud, who had offered to walk with me.

The one was a saddler, and wore a short brown jacket and an apron, with a round hat.  The other was very decently dressed, but a very silent man, whereas the saddler was quite talkative.

I listened with astonishment when I heard him begin to speak of Homer, of Horace, and of Virgil; and still more when he quoted several passages, by memory, from each of these authors, pronouncing the words, and laying his emphasis, with as much propriety as I could possibly have expected, had he been educated at Cambridge or at Oxford.  He advised me not to go to Wardlow, where I should find bad accommodations, but rather a few miles to Tideswell, where he lived.  This name is, by a singular abbreviation, pronounced Tidsel, the same as Birmingham is called by the common people Brummidgeham.