But by far the most interesting spot in the neighbourhood of Bath is Prior Park, built by Allen the bookseller, the friend of Pope and the original of Fielding's Allworthy, afterwards the property and residence of Warburton, and now the site of a Roman Catholic college.

I shall never forget my first visit to this most beautiful place, on a sunny, dewy day, between May and April, the first of one month or the last of the other, the very fairest moment of the year, all nature smiling around me, and every pleasure enhanced by the delightful manners of Dr. Baines, the then principal of the establishment.

The house is an elegant and stately erection, separated by long corridors from two wings almost equal to itself in size and extent. The portico is of the noblest architecture, and double flights of steps, flight after flight, exquisite in design and proportion, stretch down from the magnificent colonnade to the sloping lawn. Standing under the lofty pillars, leaning over the marble balustrade, with a splendid peacock close beside me expanding his gorgeous plumage to the sun, I thought I had never beheld a scene that formed so perfect a picture to the eye and to the mind.

In the foreground the turfy lawn, dotted here and there with graceful shrubs, descended to a sweep of calm, bright waters as clear as crystal,

giving back the fleecy clouds and the deep blue sky, and fringed in on either side by downdropping elms, columnar poplars, and majestic cedars. Across the lake the city presented itself in its most picturesque point of view: the old buttressed abbey, church towers and spires, streets, squares, and crescents rising each over each, mixed with park and gardens, and crowned by the high hills of Lansdown and Mr. Beckford's tower. All was gay and glittering in the tender verdure of spring, leaves just bursting or just burst, a sweet balminess in the air, and the odour of woods and flowers. floating around us, with the song of birds and the thousand sounds of new-born insects. It was an hour never to be forgotten!

He whose intellect and kindliness lent attraction even to that loveliest scenery died soon after. The charm of Dr. Baines's conversation is difficult to describe. He was the son of a Yorkshire farmer, and had risen to the rank of Vicar Apostolic, titular Bishop of some Eastern see, and to the highest influence among his English co-religionists by the united power of talent and of character. The little tinct of simplicity which he retained from his rustic origin went well with his courtly bearing. That small touch of provincial naïveté gave to his high-bred polish the finishing grace of truth. It was charming to see him surrounded by the boys

of one wing, Howards, Talbots, Fitzgeralds, O'Connells-for O'Connell was then 66 a name to conjure withal"-and the elder students of the other building, young men in college cap and gown. It was a double establishment, one a school for the purpose of secular education, the other a seminary for the priesthood; but all the inhabitants, elder or younger, without any distinction, seemed to claim Dr. Baines as the general father. He reigned in the hearts of all.

Full of taste and information, he avoided everything that approached to controversy, and addressed himself to the topics most likely to interest his hearers, as if they had been precisely those most interesting to himself. He showed me Miss Agnew's outline engravings, speaking of her "Geraldine" (then recently published) with high but discriminating praise, and regretting her retirement to a convent, a thing he rarely saw cause to recommend. He showed me a little volume of Latin hymns, the hymns Sir Walter Scott liked so well, and told me that Mr. Moore, on his last visit to Prior Park, had, at his request, taken away a copy, "I hope," said he, "that that great artist in words may give us an English version of some of the few poems, professedly religious, which have always had attractions for poets. It would be a happy close of a literary life, the prayer before going to rest."

He gave a most amusing account of Cardinal Mezzofante a man in all but his marvellous gift of tongues as simple as an infant. "The last time I was in Rome," said he, "we went together to the Propaganda, and heard speeches delivered in thirtyfive or thirty-six languages by converts of various nations. Amongst them were natives of no less than three tribes of Tartars, each talking his own. dialect. They did not understand each other, but the Cardinal understood them all, and could tell with critical nicety the points in which one jargon differed from the others. We dined together; and I entreated him, having been in the Tower of Babel all the morning, to let us stick to English for the rest of the day. Accordingly he did stick to English, which he spoke as fluently as we do, and with the same accuracy not only of grammar but of idiom. His only trip was in saying, that was before the time when I remember,' instead of before my time.' Once, too, I thought him mistaken in the pronounciation of a word. But when I returned to England," continued Dr. Baines, "I found that my way was either provincial or oldfashioned, and that I was wrong and he was right. In the course of the evening his servant brought a Welsh Bible which had been left for him. 'Ah,' said he, this is the very thing! I wanted to learn Welsh!' Then he remembered that it was in all

probability not the authorised version. 'Never mind,' he said, 'I don't think it will do me any harm.' Six weeks after, I met the Cardinal, and asked him how he got on with his Welsh. 'Oh !' replied he, 'I know it now. I have done with it.'"*

I do believe that, had Dr. Baines been spared, his wisdom, his spirit of conciliation and his thorough knowledge of the temper of England, would have prevented the disastrous feud which must grieve all who hold the great Christian tenets of charity and love.

Traces of the manner in which people lived at Bath whilst it was a small inconvenient town much resorted to by the sick and the idle, may be found scattered up and down a great variety of books. The list that crowds upon me would fill many pages. Letter-writers, dramatists, poets, biographers all, first or last, betake themselves or their heroes to "the Bath." Sheridan has made it the scene, not of his most famous, but of his most charming play; and Bob Acres with his courage

* M. Kossuth, who, though no Mezzofante, either in simplicity or the gift of tongues, has a command over our language very rare in a foreigner, says that he learnt English in a Turkish prison from three books, Shakespeare, the Bible, and an Hungarian dictionary.