emphatically observes, "his memory ought never to die; it should be immortal as the spirit that made it worthy to live." In the year 1766, the Rev. Mr. Seward, the father of the poetess of Litchfield, preached a centenary sermon in the church of Eyam, in commemoration of the event recorded in these pages. It was written with great power of description, and appealed so forcibly to the hearts of his auditors, many of whose ancestors had fallen by the plague, that he was frequently interrupted by their tears, and overpowered by his own sensations. The sermon and the effect it produced are yet remembered by some of the villagers of Eyam, and when they recur to the character and the talent of their late minister, they estimate the powers of his mind and the feelings of his heart by their display on this occasion.

About a mile from Riley Grave Stones, and at the contrary extremity of the village, stands CUCKLET CHURCH, which is situated in a deep and narrow dingle called the Delf or Delve. A range of fine ash trees, probably planted from a feeling of veneration for this consecrated place, form the boundary of the little area where it stands. The rock, thus denominated, projects from the side of a steep hill, where it appears like an irregularly-formed building. It is excavated through in different directions, the arches being from twelve to eighteen feet high. From the portico of these arches, in the midst of a romantic dell, and surrounded with the rocks and the mountains of the Peak, Mompesson administered the consolations of Religion to his mourning people, during a period of sorrow and suffering almost unparalleled in Village History.

Cucklet Church consists of a flinty combination of what the miners denominate Chert Balls, and of consequence it is almost impenetrably hard. The dell in which it is placed is rich with verdure, wood, and rock. Its steep and rugged sides are embellished with the hazel, the wild-rose, the dogberry, and the yew; beautifully checquered with the light and silvery branches of the birch, and the more ample foliage and deeper colouring of the oak and the elm. The tall aspiring ash, which from its prevalence in this part of Derbyshire may be called the TREE OF THE PEAK, is likewise profusely scattered throughout the dell. The ash, indeed, is peculiarly entitled to the appellation here bestowed upon it. Wherever

a cottage rears its head, there flourishes the ash: wherever the side of a hill or the base of a rock is adorned with trees, there wave the graceful branches of the ash; and the rivers

that circulate through the dales of Derbyshire, have their banks decorated and their various windings marked by this graceful tree, which universally characterises the woodland scenery of the Peak.

This dell opens into Middleton Dale, the wildness of which it softens and improves by its milder features. Here its extremest width prevails; nearer Eyam the two sides rapidly approximate, and a little above Cucklet Church they form the entrance into a narrow chasm, called by the villagers the SALT PAN. The name is sufficiently undignified, but the picture it presents is exquisite of its kind. Two perpendicular rocks terminate the dell, and on their nearest approach, where they meet within a few paces only, the lofty trees and thick underwood with which they are crested, cast an almost midnight darkness into the deep space that separates them; while the elm and the ash, which flourish at their base, throw their boughs athwart the gloomy cleft, and intermingle their topmost foliage with the descending branches from above.

The trees in this lovely dell have a majestic character, and during the summer months the tufts of brushwood which are scattered along its steep sides, are fancifully festooned with honeysuckles and roses. The wild roses in Derbyshire, wherever the limestone soil prevails, are peculiarly beautiful, and exhibit not only a luxuriance of growth but a richness of colour unsurpassed in any part of the kingdom. The last time I visited this place was in the month of July 1817. The wild rose was then in its greatest glory, and the trees had on their fullest foliage. It was a fine summer's day, and they afforded a delightful shelter from the warm rays of an unclouded sun. The breeze that breathed through the dell, loaded with the fragrance of a thousand flowers, came upon the senses with a voluptuous softness that almost wrapt them in forgetfulness.

"Though a thousand branches join their screen,
"Yet the broken sunbeams glance between
"And tip the leaves with lighter green,

"With brighter tints the flower.

"Dull is the heart that loves not then

"The deep recess of the wildwood glen,
"When the sun is in his power.'

From Harold the Dauntless.

Contemplating the scenery of this secluded spot, and calling to recollection the sublime incident by which it has been dig

nified and hallowed, I have always regarded it as a subject admirably adapted for the pencil. Historic landscape painting is one of the most exalted departments of art, and one that powerfully affects and elevates the mind. Hannibal's march over the Alps, which Turner has treated with great force of imagination and genuine poetic feeling; Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, by Martin, a picture that cannot be beheld without the sublimest emotions; John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, by Salvator; and many others might be enumerated, if necessary, in illustration of this opinion. And what artist would wish for a finer opportunity for the display of his talents than the dell near Eyam presents? The foreground is a happy composition of rock, and hill, and wood, and verdure. Cucklet Church, the place consecrated by Mompesson to the most awful and solemn of all human purposes, might be made an extremely picturesque object. The jutting crags on which his hearers sat, the verdant slopes where they reclined in melancholy sadness, the dark rocky cleft behind crested with trees, the whole backed in distance with the mountains of the Peak, furnish altogether, an assemblage of objects but rarely combined in nature. Water is, perhaps, the only adjunct wanted in the composition; and this, though sparingly, is sometimes supplied : during an inundation of heavy rains a troubled stream issues through the chasm called the Saltpan, and foams and bubbles down the dell.

SECTION V.

L

Eyam Church-Yard.- Ancient Stone Cross. The Rev. R. Cun-ninghame. Miss Seward.

THE church-yard of Eyam was the next object that attracted our attention. The traveller fond of antiquarian research will be pleased with the rare relique it contains. Near the entrance into the chancel of the church stands an old stone cross, which, according to village tradition, was found on some of the neighbouring hills. It is curiously ornamented and embossed with a variety of figures and designs characterised by different symbolic devices; and its sides are liberally adorned with Runic and Scandinavian knots.

Were the value of this antique specimen of the workmanship of former times more accurately appreciated, it might easily be made a more engaging object: as it now appears, the earth covers a portion of its shaft, no part of which should be so obscured: lifted from its present bed, a distinction which it eminently deserves, it would not only be a valuable fragment, rich with the uncouth sculpture of former times, but an ornament to the church-yard and the village of Eyam. This cross has suffered dilapidation from the culpable neglect of those who ought to have felt an interest in its preservation. About two feet of the top of the shaft is wanting, as may be seen by referring to the engraved sketch which was taken in the year 1815. The present sexton of the church, who is an old man, well recollects the part now missing being thrown carelessly about the church-yard as a thing of no value, until it was broken up by some of the inhabitants, and knocked to pieces for domestic purposes.

The cross at Eyam is probably indebted for its present appearance to the circumstance of its having, about thirty years ago, attracted the attention of a man who had spent the ripest years of his existence in mitigating the horrors of a prison, and ameliorating the condition of a forsaken and friendless class of his fellow creatures. When the benevolent

ANCIENT STONE CROSS.

45

HOWARD visited the village of Eyam he particularly noticed the cross, even though at that time the finest part of this vestige of antiquity was laid prostrate in a corner of the church-yard, and nearly overgown with docks and thistles. The value this hitherto unregarded relique had in the estimation of Howard made it dearer to the people of Eyam: they brought the top part of the cross from its hiding-place, where it had long lain in utter neglect, and placed it on the still dilapidated shaft, where it has ever since remained. Condemning, as I most cordially do, the little attention which has been paid to the cross at Eyam, it is, nevertheless, some gratification to know that it owes its present state of preservation to the intervention of no less a man than Howard.

Other crosses, similar in appearance and workmanship, have been found on the hills of Derbyshire, particularly one in the vicinity of BAKEWELL, which is now in the churchyard there. It evidently originated with the same people as the one at Eyam, though it is extremely inferior in its embellishments, and more mutilated in its parts. These crosses are of remote antiquity, and, from their prevailing character, and the rude sculpture they exhibit, they have generally been regarded as Saxon or Danish structures. The interlaced and curiously involved tracery work, with which they are frequently invested, have been denominated Runic and Scandinavian knots; but I have not yet learnt that any of them are marked with characters decidedly Runic, and it is highly probable that the ornaments they contain were adopted from buildings of a different nature, for they do not appear to have any thing peculiarly national about them. That they are not Roman may perhaps be inferred from the very uncouth figures sculptured upon them, and the general inferiority of their workmanship. They must therefore have originated amongst a people less acquainted with art than the Romans were at the time they invaded this country; and the Danes being only" almost and not altogether Christians," and being moreover but little removed from barbarism, were, perhaps, not likely to indulge in the erection of these external emblems of their newly acquired faith; nor am I inclined to adopt the supposition that the civilised Britons were the founders of those crosses, which have generally been regarded as Scandinavian. On the whole the probability is in favour of a Saxon origin of this monument. The Saxons used the sign of the cross on many occasions; and so highly did they venerate this