Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/202

 MAI-LOCK. 177

land. The charity schools connected with it, and which number several hundred scholars, are also kept up en tirely at his expense ; and it gave us pleasure to find that the ladies of the family took personal interest in them. The elevation of industry and merit from obscurity, and their union with an active benevolence and piety, which we have so often been permitted to see in our own dear land, seemed, if possible, to become a still more beautiful lesson, amid the aspiring rocks and romantic glens of Derbyshire.

��It would be most ungrateful not to speak, Matlock ! of thee. Thy dwellings mid the cliffs, Like a Swiss village, or the hanging nest Of the wild bird, thy fairy glens scooped out From the deep jaws of mountain fastnesses, Thy pure, pure air, the luxury of thy baths, Thy donkey-rides amid the pine-clad hills, Or o er the beetling brow of bold Masson, Spying, perchance, in some close-sheltered nook The pale lutea and red briony, Or infant waterfall, that leaps to cast Its thread of silver to the vales below, Thy long and dark descents to winding caves, Where sleep the sparkling spars, the thousand forms Which art doth give them to allure the eye, And decorate the mansion, lamp, and vase, And pedestal, and toy, these all conspire 12

�� �