*96

RAMBLES NEAR BUXTON.

then bursting into tears, he rushed out of the room. I know not that I ever observed any person more powerfully agitated. I saw him again in the after-part of the day, when he appeared more composed, but I could not succeed in obtaining any part of his attention without a breach of good manners.

I afterwards learnt that the 12th of August was the birth-day of a beloved brother, whom he had lately lost, not by the slow approaches of disease, but by a fall from his horse. On the day of his brother's death the first paroxysms of his grief were succeeded by an intense stupefaction, that made him totally indifferent to all around him: yet, until the day of interment, he would not be removed from the corpse of him whom in life he had so sincerely loved. At this awful moment, as the body was borne from one door of the house, he quitted it by another, and was not heard of for several days afterwards: he was then met with in a state of mental derangement, which afflicted him for many months, and at last left him so depressed in spirits, and so extremely sensitive, that with him existènce could hardly be regarded as a blessing. This acute sensibility and excess of feeling exhibits, it is true, but little of selfpossession; it would, nevertheless, be impertinent and idle, if not cruel, to blame it. No man would willingly devote himself to unpleasant sensations, and voluntarily become miserable: No! misery is instinctively and industriously avoided; and yet the mind that now triumphs in health may soon be sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," and all its energies may be destroyed. Who can say that the fortitude which resists calamity to-day may not be overthrown on the morrow?

The remainder of this day we spent in perambulating the environs of Buxton, and having visited the source of the Dove in the early part of the day, we devoted the afternoon to a short excursion to the source of the Wye, that river which it was our principal object to investigate. Four of the rivers of Derbyshire-the Dane, the Goit, the Dove, and the Wyeare seen from the foot of Ax-edge, and taking different directions, they adorn and fertilise some of the most beautiful dales in the county. On the left of the Macclesfield road, ́in a deep hollow, about one mile from Buxton, we found the cradle of the Wye in as barren and unpicturesque a birth-place as ever infant streamlet had. With the source of a river with whose devious windings and lovely scenery we had been a thousand times delighted, we had associated ideas of the beau

SOURCE OF THE WYE.

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tiful and romantic, and we wished to have found the Wye, where it first issues into day, not nestled amongst fern and rushes, but emerging from a bed of rock, and overhung with branches. Such was the picture our wishes and imaginations had portrayed. It was a sketch of fancy that reality embodied not. But Nature works as she pleases; and if she gives more than she promises, who has a right to complain of the little pledge merely because it has been redeemed with a greater performance?

In the

Nearer Buxton this little rivulet becomes an interesting, and, in some places, a beautiful stream: it winds through a plantation newly made, where a walk is carried along its banks, and as the river ripples amongst the stones or glides smoothly away, it is a pleasing picture to the eye. short space of half a mile several artificial cascades occur, which have but little or no beauty, yet the sound of the water, as it rushes over them, is grateful to the ear: it is one of natures sweetest melodies, and in the quiet retirement of a sequestered dell, where every other sound is hushed to rest, it comes with a delightful influence upon the senses, abstracts the mind from ordinary cares, and sometimes soothes the troubled spirits to repose.

Seated on a rural bench, beneath the shelter of a spreading elm, near one of these little water-falls, we listened to the music that it made until the last faint glimpse of day had departed, and the dark shadows of night, which seemed gradually to ascend from out the valley, had invested the tops of the mountains, and the bat and the beetle, and the glimmering lights of evening, had warned us to depart: such, and so tranquil, was the close of our first day at Buxton.

H

SECTION IV.

Staden-Low.-South entrance into Buxton.-The Crescent.Mr. C. Sylvester's Hot Baths.-St. Anne's Well.-Buxton Bath Charity.-Amusements.-Antiquity of the Warm Baths. ·Demolition of the Shrine and Image of St. Anne.

THE

HE weather continuing fine, we commenced our second day's ramble round Buxton by a visit to Staden-Low, where the remains of some ancient earth-works are said to have been clearly distinguishable until within a very few years. The ground, however, is now enclosed, and the plough has obliterated nearly every vestige of these memorials of former times. The adjoining village of Staden is of great antiquity, and it was once the most important place in the whole district. At this period, the officers of the surrounding hamlets, in consequence of some ancient prescription, were annually chosen, and inducted into their respective offices on the top of StadenLow, where their names were registered in the parochial records on a large flat stone, which occupied that situation for several centuries. This custom has passed away, and the table of stone has disappeared. In this search after antiquities we were disappointed; but, as we passed along a part of the Duke's Ride, we were gratified with a view of the river Wye from the topmost summit of the rock denominated LOVER'S LEAP.

As our observations had hitherto been confined to the modern part of Buxton, we determined, on our return from Staden, to join the Ashbourne Road near Shirbrook, and enter the town at the other extremity. Here nothing is presented to the eye but a mean country village, surrounded with barren hills. The houses, which are built of limestone and thrown promiscuously together, equally in despite of order and taste, and the old church, one of the first objects that strikes the eye, and certainly one of the humblest places of worship I ever beheld, seem to mark out this little town as the residence only of

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meanness and poverty. These observations must be understood to relate solely and entirely to the first appearance of the town as seen from the road, near a small inn, known by the name of the Cheshire Cheese. Strangers entering Buxton in this direction must be greatly disappointed in their expectations. The Crescent, and the numerous buildings by which it is surrounded, together with the whole of the modern part of the town, are hid in the deep hollow below, over which the eye passes to the hills beyond, and nothing is seen but a miserable village placed in as miserable a country as the mind can possibly conceive. Approaching the Eagle Inn, the place improves; but it is not until we arrive at the brow of Saint Anne's cliff that the new part of Buxton, with its elegant buildings and splendid hotels, is beheld. The transition is so sudden, and the change of scene so complete and entire, that the mind, bewildered and confused, almost doubts the reality of so extraordinary a contrast. The upper part of Buxton is truly a Derbyshire village; the lower, in the elegance of its buildings, its show, and its parade, approximates to Bath. Nothing can be more instantaneous or more forcibly felt than the change of passing from one part to the other of this fashionable bathing-place; and the company who visit it during the summer season, furnish a contrast equally striking and impressive. The bloom of health and the sallow hue of disease the elastic bound of youth and the failing step of infirmity wealth and poverty, and all the gradations that society produces between, are here mingled together, teaching a salutary lesson to the observing stranger as he passes along. Buxton would indeed be a melancholy place were it not that fashion has made it her resort: hence the scene is variously chequered, and those gloomy impressions, which are sometimes produced by a sight of human nature under affliction, are dissipated by gayer and more cheering objects. Here a man may learn properly to estimate that best of blessings, health: he who possesses it, will be almost every moment reminded of the treasure he enjoys; and he who has it not, may indulge the hope of finding it, and anticipate returning vigour.

As early as the reign of Elizabeth, Buxton was so much frequented, that it became necessary to erect new buildings, and furnish additional accommodations to the numerous visitors who even then resorted here both for health and pleasure. In the legislative enactments of this period, the itinerant migrations of the poor were restrained, and they were more closely

confined to their own parishes. Mendicity now became an offence, and in an act made in the thirty-ninth year of Elizabeth, it is provided, that the poor who from disease or infirmity might have occasion to resort to Bath or Buxton, should have relief from their parishes, and a pass from two magistrates, fixing the period of their return-a provision which evinces not only a solicitude to guard against vagrancy and begging, but the high estimation in which the Buxton waters were at this time held.

The old Hall, over the Baths, was erected about this period, and other buildings were added as the wants of a progressivelyincreasing number of visitors appeared to require; but it was reserved for the Dukes of Devonshire to bestow architectural splendour on Buxton. The Crescent is a noble pile of building, and the Hotels of which it is composed are admirably adapted to furnish the best and most elegant accommodations. A Crescent is not one of the finest forms a building can take: unless it be a portion of a very extensive circle indeed, it is far from being an imposing object. Nearly seen, or seen from any point of view besides the centre of the circle which the Crescent describes, some of the parts appear either distorted or out of proportion; hence it is, I presume, that the Crescent at Buxton fails to produce impressions commensurate with its grandeur: buildings of equal magnitude in almost any other form, would have a more magnificent effect. The architectural detail of inns and dwelling-houses, is not included within the plan of these excursions, yet having been favoured with the following particular account of the Crescent in manuscript, by Mr. H. Moore, of Derby, the accuracy of which is fully confirmed by my own observations, I have not hesitated to use his communication, for which I now publicly return him my thanks.

"The Crescent at Buxton has three stories; in the lower one is a rusticated arcade, that forms an agreeable promenade: above the arches, an elegant balustrade stretches along the whole front and the ends of the fabric: over the piers of the arcade arise fluted Doric pilasters, that support the architrave and cornice: the trygliphs of the former and the rich planceer of the latter have a beautiful appearance. The termination above the cornice is formed by another balustrade, that extends along the whole building, in the centre of which are the Devonshire arms finely sculptured. In the space between the windows runs an enriched string course.