Karl Philipp Moritz

“ I had felt something not very unlike this on my journey hither, as I was sitting opposite to a hill, whose top was covered with trees, and was reading in Milton the sublime description of the combat of the angels, where the fallen angels are made, with but little regard to chronology, to attack their antagonists with artillery and cannon, as if it had been a battle on earth of the present age. ”

“ My companions on the top of the coach were a farmer, a young man very decently dressed, and a blackamoor.
The getting up alone was at the risk of one's life, and when I was up I was obliged to sit just at the corner of the coach, with nothing to hold by but a sort of little handle fastened on the side. I sat nearest the wheel, and the moment that we set off I fancied that I saw certain death await me. ”

“ When I came to the last village before I got to Matlock, as it was now evening and dark, I determined to spend the night there, and inquired for an inn, which, I was told, was at the end of the village; and so on I walked, and kept walking till near midnight before I found this same inn. The place seemed to have no end. On my journey to Castleton I must either not have passed through this village or not have noticed its length. Much tired, and not a little indisposed, I at length arrived at the inn, where I sat myself down by the fire in the kitchen, and asked for something to eat. ”

“ Towards noon I again came to an eminence, where I found but one single solitary inn, which had a singular inscription on its sign. It was in rhyme, and I remember only that it ended with these words, "Refresh, and then go on." "Entertainment for man and horse." ”

“ At Castol there were three inns close to each other, in which, to judge only from the outside of the houses, little but poverty was to be expected. In the one at which I at length stopped there was only a landlady, a sick butcher, and a sick carter, both of whom had come to stay the night. ”