l of us made you the principal object of our thoughts and our talk
since you left us, and I travelled with you all your journey to your
present delightful home. We had all but one feeling of the purest
pleasure in the prospect of the true domestic comfort to which we
fully believe you to be now gone, and we rejoice that all your
endearing qualities will now be employed to promote the happiness of
one whom we think so worthy of them as your dear husband, who has left
us in the best opinion of his good heart, as well as his enlightened
and sound understanding. His late stay with us has endeared him to us
all. Never did man enter into the married state from more honourable
motives, or from a heart more truly seeking the genuine happiness of
that state than Mr Airy, and he will, I trust, find his reward in you
from all that a good wife can render to the best of husbands, and his
happiness be reflected on yourself." It would be difficult to find
letters of more genuine feeling and satisfaction, or more eloquently
expressed, than these.

The narrative of the Autobiography will now be resumed.

"I had been disappointed two years before of an expedition to
Derbyshire. I had wished still to make it, and my brother wished to
go: and we determined to make it this year (1824). We were prepared
with walking dresses and knapsacks. I had well considered every detail
of our route, and was well provided with letters of introduction,
including one to the Rev. R. Smith of Edensor. On June 29th we started
by coach to Newmarket and walked through the Fens by Ramsay to
Peterborough. Then by Stamford and Ketton quarries to Leicester and
Derby. Here we were recognized by a Mr Calvert, who had seen me take
my degree, and he invited us to breakfast, and employed himself in
shewing us several manufactories, &c. to which we had been denied
access when presenting ourselves unsupported. We then went to Belper
with an introduction from Mr Calvert to Jedediah Strutt: saw the great
cotton mills, and in the evening walked to Matlock. Up to this time
the country of greatest interest was the region of the fens about
Ramsay (a most remarkable district), but now began beauty of scenery.
On July 9th we walked by Rowsley and Haddon Hall over the hills to
Edensor, where we stayed till the 12th with Mr Smith. We next visited
Hathersage, Castleton, and Marple (where I wished to see the canal
aqueduct), and went by coach to Manchester, and afterwards to
Liverpo