“—­they ran, they flew,
From their foundation loos’ning to and fro,
They pluck’d the seated hills with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in their hands—.” 
Book VI., 1. 642.

I seemed to fancy to myself that I actually saw an angel there standing and plucking up a hill before me and shaking it in the air.

When I came to the last village before I got to Matlock, as it was now evening and dark, I determined to spend the night there, and inquired for an inn, which, I was told, was at the end of the village; and so on I walked, and kept walking till near midnight before I found this same inn.  The place seemed to have no end.  On my journey to Castleton I must either not have passed through this village or not have noticed its length.  Much tired, and not a little indisposed, I at length arrived at the inn, where I sat myself down by the fire in the kitchen, and asked for something to eat.  As they told me I could not have a bed here, I replied I absolutely would not be driven away, for that if nothing better could be had I would sit all night by the fire.  This I actually prepared to do, and laid my head on the table in order to sleep.

When the people in the kitchen thought that I was asleep, I heard them taking about me, and guessing who or what I might be.  One woman alone seemed to take my part, and said, “I daresay he is a well-bred gentleman;” another scouted that notion, merely because, as she said, “I had come on foot;” and “depend on it,” said she, “he is some poor travelling creature!” My ears yet ring with the contemptuous tone with which she uttered, “poor travelling creature!” It seems to express all the wretchedness of one who neither has house nor home—­a vagabond and outcast of society.

At last, when these unfeeling people saw that I was determined, at all events, to stay there all night, they gave me a bed, but not till I had long given up all hopes of getting one.  And in the morning, when they asked me a shilling for it, I gave them half-a-crown, adding, with something of an air, that I would have no change.  This I did, though perhaps foolishly, to show them that I was not quite “A poor creature.”  And now they took leave of me with great civility and many excuses; and I now continued my journey much at my ease.

When I had passed Matlock I did not go again towards Derby, but took the road to the left towards Nottingham.  Here the hills gradually disappeared; and my journey now lay through meadow grounds and cultivated fields.

I must here inform you that the word Peake, or Pike, in old English signifies a point or summit.  The Peak of Derbyshire, therefore, means that part of the country which is hilly, or where the mountains are highest.

Towards noon I again came to an eminence, where I found but one single solitary inn, which had a singular inscription on its sign.  It was in rhyme, and I remember only that it ended with these words, “Refresh, and then go on.”  “Entertainment for man and horse.”  This I have seen on several signs, but the most common, at all the lesser ale-houses, is, “A.  B. C. or D. dealer in foreign spirituous liquors.”