The Manchester Road leaves Derby by way of Friar Gate: the town extending rapidly in that direction, too. As I came this way, gangs of navvies were excavating for the new electric tramway, and there I saw, amid the churned mud, a crushed white butterfly; and it seemed to me to typify these developments.

The road onward to Ashbourne is lonely, except for the offshoots sent out in the coaching age by adjacent villages. Thus Mackworth is represented by a wayside fringe of houses, the old village lying below, with its fine church and old castle gate; while Kirk Langley, in like manner, lies to the other side of the road. Quarndon, further off to the right, neighboured by Kedleston Park, is brother to Quorndon in Leicestershire; the only wonder being that the other is written with an “o”: the natural rural disposition being to change an “e” (here the “e” in “quern”) into “a” wherever possible in speech.

There was a time when Quarndon enjoyed a considerable reputation as a spa. It possessed the most frightful sulphureous water, which only expert chemists, past-masters in stinks and nauseous flavours, can match; and a big hotel was built near by the spring, to accommodate invalids; who, however, seem to have presently found the healing waters too awful. Like the famous Lord Derby who suffered from gout, and tasting a special sherry that was recommended to him, remarked that he “preferred the gout,” they rather preferred their ailments than this cure for them. And so the hotel has for the last forty years ceased to be an hotel, and is now a farmhouse—and a very ugly one it is, too.

Dr. Johnson, who was shown Lord Scarsdale’s noble residence of Kedleston Hall, near by, affected not to be impressed by it. He objected to it as “costly but ill-contrived,” and was of opinion that more cost than judgment had gone towards the building. The bedrooms, he justly pointed out, were “small, low, dark, and fitter for a prison than a house of splendour,” and the kitchen was so disposed that the fumes of it were plentifully dispersed over the house, so that you dined sufficiently on the smell in the process of cooking, and were much more than satisfied before you sat at table. Indeed, he thought Kedleston Hall to be nothing better than “a big town-hall.” Robert Adam designed and built it, after the requirements of the age, which delighted in such unhomely homes: and nearly all the great mansions of that period have similar objections: that they are a congeries of mean and awkward rooms, built around a central hall designed to strike neighbours with astonishment and envy. Here the great hall, with its twenty Corinthian columns of pale primrose Elvaston alabaster, is noble enough for an Emperor, but most of the other rooms are mean.

Brailsford, on the way to Ashbourne, still tells in no uncertain way, to those interested in these things, of coaching days. Here still stand the “Rose and Crown,” the “Saracen’s Head,” where the old “Manchester Defiance” changed horses, and a number of farmhouses that were once inns of various grades. And now the scenery grows bold and lovely with thickly wooded hill and dale. Down on the left hand you see a magnificent castellated building of dark limestone, seated in a park where deer are roaming. This is Osmaston Manor, whose grandeur would be calculated to astonish the original Osmund who gave this particular “aston” his name, in far-off Saxon times. It is the seat of Sir Peter Walker, son of Sir A. B. Walker, the first baronet, widely known as the donor of the great Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, where his wealth—his will was proved for three millions sterling—was acquired in the brewing of beer. In the park of Osmaston Manor there roam Chitrali goats and Iceland and Siberian sheep.

The country round about is spangled with another collection of “aston” villages; Ednaston, Edlaston, Ellaston, Hognaston. Muggington is the grotesque name of a place on the right hand of the road.

A long and steep hill leads down into Ashbourne, but the way was steeper and more winding before this road was cut, in coaching days, replacing the hazardous descent of Spital Hill. “Romantic Ashbourne,” says Canning; and there it lies, far below, in the valley of the Dove, so dwarfed by distance; and the almost sheer look down upon it that the huddled houses look like some sediment, collected at the bottom of the green vale.