it ; and all the banks one way are wooded, in a gentle slope for near a mile high, quite green; the other bank, all inaccessible rock, of an hundred colours and odd shapes, some hundred feet perpendicular.

I am told that one may ride ten miles further on an even turf, on a ridge that on one side views the river Severn, and the banks steeper and steeper quite to the open sea; and, on the other side, a vast woody vale, as far as the eye can stretch; and all before you, the opposite coast of Wales beyond the Severn again. But this I have not been able to see; nor would one but in better weather, when one may dine, or lie there, or cross a narrow part of the stream to the nearest point in Wales, where Mr. Allen and Mr. Hook last summer lay some nights in the cleanest and best cottage in the world, with excellent provisions, under a hill on the margin of the Severn. Let him describe it to you; and pray tell him we are much in fear for his health, not having had a line since he left us.

The city of Bristol itself is very unpleasant, and no civilized company in it: only the collector of the customs would have brought me acquainted with merchants, of whom I hear no great character. The streets are as crowded as London; but the best image I can give you of it is, 'tis as if Wapping and Southwark were ten times as big, or all their people ran into London. Nothing is fine in it but the square, which is larger than Grosvenor-square, and well builded, with a very fine brass statue in the middle, of King William on horseback; and the key, which is full of ships, and goes round half the square. The College Green is pretty, and (like the square) set with trees, with a very fine old cross of Gothic curious work in the middle, but spoiled with the folly of new gilding it, that takes away all the venerable antiquity. There is a cathedral, very neat, and nineteen parish churches.

Once more my services to Lady Gerard. I write scarce to any body, therefore pray tell any body you

judge deserves it, that I inquire of, and remember myself to, them. I shall be at Bath soon; and if Dr. Mead approves of what I asked him of the Bath water mixed, I'll not return to Bristol; otherwise I fear I must: for indeed my complaint seems only intermitted, while I take larger quantities than I used of water, and no wine; and it must require time to know, whether I might not just as well do so at home? Not but that I am satisfied the water at the Well is very different from what it is any where else; for it is full as warm as new milk from the cow; but there is no living at the Wells without more conveniencies in the winter. Adieu. I write so much that I have no room to tell you what my heart holds of esteem and affection. Pray write to me every Thursday's post, and I shall answer on Saturday; for it comes and goes out the same day, and I can answer no sooner what you write on Tuesday.

LETTER VI.

TO THE SAME.

MADAM,

June 22.

I PROMISED you an account of Sherborne before I had seen it, or knew what I undertook. I imagined it to be one of those fine old seats of which there are numbers scattered over England. But this is so peculiar, and its situation of so uncommon a kind, that it merits a more particular description.

The house is in the form of an H. The body of it, which was built by Sir Walter Rawleigh, consists of four stories, with four six-angled towers at the ends. These have since been joined to four wings, with a regular stone balustrade at the top, and four towers more that finish the building. The windows

and gates are of a yellow stone throughout; and one of the flat sides toward the garden has the wings of a newer architecture, with beautiful Italian windowframes, done by the first Earl of Bristol, which, if they were joined in the middle by a portico covering the old building, would be a noble front. The design of such an one I have been amusing myself with drawing; but it is a question whether my Lord Digby will not be better amused than to execute it. The finest room is a saloon fifty feet long, and a parlour hung with very excellent tapestry of Rubens, which was a present from the King of Spain to the Earl of Bristol, in his embassy there.

appears

This stands in a park, finely crowned with very high woods on all the tops of the hills, which form a great amphitheatre sloping down to the house. On the garden sides the woods approach close, so that it there with a thick line and depth of groves on each hand, and so it shews from most parts of the park. The gardens are so irregular, that it is very hard to give an exact idea of them, but by a plan. Their beauty arises from this irregularity; for not only the several parts of the garden itself make the better contrast by these sudden rises, falls, and turns of ground; but the views about it are let in, and hang over the walls in very different figures and aspects. You come first out of the house into a green walk of standard limes, with a hedge behind them, that makes a colonnade; hence into a little triangular wilderness, from whose centre you see the town of Sherborne, in a valley interspersed with trees. the corner of this you issue at once upon a high green terrace the whole breadth of the garden, which has five more green terraces hanging under each other, without hedges, only a few pyramid yews and large round honeysuckles between them. The honeysuckles hereabouts are the largest and finest I ever You'll be pleased when I tell you the quarters

saw.

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of the above-mentioned little wilderness are filled with these, and with cherry-trees of the best kinds, all within reach of the hand. At the ends of these terraces run two long walks, under the side walls of the garden, which communicate with the other terraces that front these, opposite. Between the valley is laid level, and divided into two irregular groves of horse-chesnuts, and a bowling-green in the middle of about one hundred and eighty feet. This is bounded behind with a canal, that runs quite across the groves, and also along one side, in the form of a T. Behind this is a semicircular berceau, and a thicket of mixed trees, that completes the crown of the amphitheatre, which is of equal extent with the bowling-green. Beyond that runs a natural river through green banks of turf, over which rises another row of terraces, the first supported by a slope wall planted with vines; so is also the wall that bounds the channel of the river. A second and third appeared above this; but they are to be turned into a line of wilderness, with wild winding walks, for the convenience of passing from one side to the other in shade, the heads of whose trees will lie below the uppermost terrace of all, which completes the garden, and overlooks both that and the country. Even above the wall of this the natural ground rises, and is crowned with several venerable ruins of an old castle, with arches and broken views, of which I must say more hereafter.

When you are at the left corner of the canal, and the chesnut groves in the bottom, you turn of a sudden, under very old trees, into the deepest shade. The walk winds you up a hill of venerable wood, over-arched by nature, and of a vast height, into a circular grove, on one side of which is a close high arbour, on the other a sudden open seat, that overlooks the meadows and river with a large distant prospect. Another walk under this hill winds by the river side, quite covered with high trees on both

banks, overhung with ivy; where falls a natural cascade, with never-ceasing murmurs. On the opposite hanging of the bank (which is a steep of fifty feet) is placed, with a very fine fancy, a rustic seat of stone, flagged and rough, with two urns in the same rude taste upon pedestals, on each side; from whence you lose your eyes upon the glimmering of the waters under the wood, and your ears in the constant dashing of the waves. In view of this is a bridge, that crosses this stream, built in the same ruinous taste: the wall of the garden hanging over it is humoured so as to appear the ruin of another arch or two above the bridge. Hence you mount the hill, over the hermit's seat (as they call it) described before, and so to the highest terrace again.

On the left, full behind these old trees, which makes this whole part inexpressibly awful and solemn, runs a little, old, low wall, beside a trench, covered with elder-trees and ivys; which being crossed by another bridge, brings you to the ruins, to complete the solemnity of the scene. You first see an old tower penetrated by a large arch, and others above it, through which the whole country appears in prospect, even when you are at the top of the other ruins; for they stand very high, and the ground slopes down on all sides. These venerable broken walls, some arches almost entire of thirty or forty feet deep, some open like porticoes with fragments of pillars, some circular or inclosed on three sides, but exposed at top, with steps, which time has made of disjointed stones, to climb to the highest points of the ruin. These, I say, might have a prodigious beauty, mixed with greens and parterres from part to part; and the whole heap standing as it does on a round hill, kept smooth in green turf, which makes a bold basement to show it. The open courts from building to building might be thrown into circles or octagons of grass or flowers; and even in the gaping rooms