tended with horror at my ungracious preference for the new-fangled vehicle of conveyance! It would be difficult to give a reason why I took this excursion. I fear it is too true that restlessness is inwoven in the temperament of Englishmen ; for where are they not to be found from Melville Island to South Shetland, from Guiana to China, and from China to Cape Verd? But surely he who is cooped in London eleven months in the year, may stand excused for wishing to get an occasional glance at the country, that he may keep up his stock of ideas respecting it, and not forget how a brown moor, a wild hedge, or a green wood, looks. To the native Londoner, who calls a day spent at a tavern at Margate, or Windsor, enjoying the country, it is of less consequence: bred like a canary bird in a cage, he has no true relish but for his prison. This, however, is not the case with a third at least of the present inhabitants of the metropolis, who have not the same locality of parentage; and it is precisely my own. Το me the country within ten miles of London never looks like the country. We are perpetually reminded of our vicinity to the great metropolis by some accident or other. There is a cockneyism about it, which he who has been bred a hundred miles off, is sure to be impressed with. Its richness and loveliness have an artificial air, and congregated man encroaches every where upon Nature, and robs her of her wilder beauties. The Oxford road, after passing through Bayswater, is the most rural in character, near to town; and the further we proceed, the more it increases in interest. At Uxbridge and its vicinity, the pellucid streams of water flowing undisturbed through the meadows, offer an additional charm to the eye, after the brooks which flow in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis, turbid as Fleet-ditch or the Regent's canal. About Bulstrode, the road winds prettily, and is charmingly diversified with hill and dale. Beaconsfield recalls the poet of Sacharissa to recollection, and his elegant fancies. Edmund Burke, too, lived near it; and the traveller, who has cultivated his mind, will find no lack of memoranda for pleasing associations. The road to Oxford, the whole way, I prefer to any fifty-mile drive about London; of that from Oxford to Cheltenham, little can be said in praise. After passing "Merrie Oxenforde,"--as it was once styled, when it was the seat of most of the learning and literature England possessed, and when men of letters were a right jovial brotherhood--when the mathematics and classics were not thought all the business of life, and literary men and the fame of the city went forth into all the world. Then wine and wit were blended in the learned and mirthful Walter de Mapes, who could not "make sermons" or "write fasting," and who penned the celebrated Latin bacchanal song. Farewell, old De Mapes! There is as much wine perhaps swallowed by thy successors in "merrie Oxenforde" as ever, as numerous rubicund countenances therein can at this moment testify; but the red potation is taken in sullen silence. There is now no candid praise of the enlivening juice, no confession and praise like thine : "A glass of wine amazingly But I am travelling egregiously out of the record.-After passing Oxford, the coachman directed the attention of his passengers to the point where Cumnor is, "that Sir Walter Scott had written about:" he might have heard of Cumnor perhaps from a passenger, though, as he could relate Amie Robsart's unhappy story, it is possible he had read it himself. It is good to hear these and similar allusions among persons of his grade in life. It speaks of the improvement going on among the humbler classes, while it shews the extraordinary hold which the novels of the Author of Waverley have taken upon every character of mind. I long to hear the songs of our best poets chanted by our coachmen, cart-drivers, and watermen; and the works of our best writers familiar to their mouths as "household words;" but it will be works of imagination alone that can become thus familiar. How heart-cheering must it have been, when the "City of the Sea" was in her glory, to hear the gondoliers chant the poetry of Tasso to the beating of their oars! Alas, withering away before the pestilent blast of Austrian tyranny, is the glory of renowned Venice; and her enslaved people are driving back by the stupid Pandour bayonets, into a dark night of ignorance and chains again. It is a consolation, at all events, that we are not getting darker in this respect; and that none who now exist, if our present national spirit prevail, will see us do so. There is something very pleasing in the first view of Cheltenham: its situation in a rich vale, its clean appearance, and the trees with which it is environed, (the cultivation of trees is too much neglected near all our towns,) combine to recommend it to the sight of the visitant; and if he have resources of his own at command, he will find it pleasant enough for a short time. If he have not, as in all similar places, he will find that nothing can be more overwhelming than the ennui which will not fail to attack him, like a maladie du pays, within forty-eight hours after his arrival. The inns at watering-places are more than usually agreeable, and in the coffee-rooms, the necessity of a slight intercourse among persons mutually strangers, sometimes generates a species of acquaintance which operates as a partial remedy for the disease. It is true you pay through the nose even for this; but you expect nothing else, and have the luxury of being well waited upon for your money. I like a good inn at a watering-place for a short time; the bells ringing, the numerous lights, the splendid rooms, the pretty chambermaids, and the instant fulfilment of commands, are agreeable things, when one is determined to be easy at any price. After a journey of eleven hours, I seated myself at the Royal Hotel, in a handsome coffee-room, where eight mahogany tables with surfaces like mirrors, and a rich carpet under my feet, intimated that mine host was not wanting in attention to the truly British comforts of his guests. I now prepared to take "my ease in mine inn," dressed myself for dinner, and took my station at one of the central tables. Near me was a gentleman, whom I soon discovered to be a partner in a London banking-house ;-a solitary partridge composed his meal, to digest which he swallowed his bottle of port-only" one halfpenny worth of bread" to his "intolerable quantity of sack:" but in fairness, it must be observed, the wine probably ran fifteen to the dozen. He was communicative-had left town for relaxation-did not know whether he should remain where he was, or run over into Wales to see a friend-had a great notion of purchasing a Welsh lake, two or three miles long, with an acre of land on one side of it for a cottage had heard such a thing was to be sold cheap, and should much like to have it, as he was fond of fishing, and could spend a month or two there every year-pleaded guilty of never having read Isaac Walton, which led me to conclude that his piscatory talents were little superior to those of the indefatigable artists in that line, who meditate twelve hours on a summer Sunday over the canal in the City-road. At the table immediately opposite where I had placed myself, was one of that class of persons commonly denominated demi-genteel. Having a tolerable knack at finding out characters and professions under similar circumstances, I soon wormed from him that he was a tradesman in Bond-street, able to enjoy, if he pleased, the otium cum dignitate. He displayed a strange mixture of ignorance and consequence, with some not unsuccessful attempts at gentlemanly airs. I do not mean the word gentlemanly as my Lord Chesterfield would have understood it, but that bastard species, which the observer may constantly see at Long's or Stevens's. With these two characters the time was easily whiled away until the hour of retiring to rest. John Wesley, I think, observed, that there was no book ever published but some good might be learnt from it; and it is much the same in reading mankind—there is no character but will develope something new to him who makes man his study. It is also an agreeable way of taking lessons; for we learn without seeming to learn, and knowledge flows almost imperceptibly into the volume of the brain. The first consideration on rising in the morning at a similar place of fashionable resort is, how shall the day be spent. The journey thither has been performed for relaxation; and the idea of reading, writing, or thinking within doors, is out of the question, or why have we left London? The visitant, therefore, usually determines on a promenade, for the purpose of seeing and being seen. I therefore rambled to the Springs, which at times are sadly deficient in the quantity of water on demand; and by no means, in this respect, to be compared to the sweet, rétired, and snug Leamington, where there is enough and to spare for bathers and drinkers at all seasons, however numerous they may become. The walks in the shade of the trees at Cheltenham are delightful. The constant residents at these watering-places are made up of a large proportion of card-playing old maids, retiring widows, half-pay officers with a small fortune, and hypochondriacs. These are to be found at all times and seasons, and afford an example how vapidly some of our fellow-mortals pass their hours. Small-talk, cards, compliments, remarks upon the weather, with a sprinkling of scandal that serves to keep the appetite alive for more, perform the same round incessantly, till life's "fitful fever" is over, and one is at a loss to find any reasonable excuse for the purpose of such mere mechanical existence. I know no better sample of what may be called stagnant life, than this species of inhabitant of our spas and watering-places exhibits. Existence seems in a state of negation--they look too vacant for any residence but the shores of Lethe_" thought would destroy their paradise”—they seem a forlorn corps, exiled from the mass of the people, high or low; a condemned regiment, kept apart from the army to live and die in inglorious obscurity. The other classes consist of sick visitants, whom the healthy seem inclined to expel from their rightful abodes; and the busy and active inhabitants who draw the means of subsistence equally from all the other classes. It might naturally be supposed that towns which have grown up under the pretence of pleasure and relaxation, would abound with entertainments, calculated to relieve tedium and increase the charm of society. Such would actually be the case in any other country than ours, where the reverse is really the fact. A starving theatrical company may (if a theatre exist in the place at all) be seen playing before empty boxes, or a few strangers, unknowing and unknown. A ball now and then, where exclusion and stiffness govern every thing, and pleasure is little more than a name, and a promenade on the same given spot, constitute all the amusements to be found in them. A relentless antisocial spirit rules every thing. All look at each other with suspicion. The aristocracy, real or feigned, legitimate or illegitimate, dread coming in contact with the tradesman; and the tradesman often labours to pass for one of the aristocracy, and he often labours so well that he can scarcely be distinguished, except by sometimes overacting his part. Coteries are formed, the members of which imagine themselves the most select and high-bred circle in the realm. The horror of an amalgamation by some of the visitants, even in the streets, with those whom they pretend to despise, is only equalled by the patient's dread of water in hydrophobia. The pretty faces of the girls are taught by their mammas to assume a look of unwonted scorn at the strangers whom mixed company may throw in their way. The silly pretensions of the vain are never so strongly marked as in a fashionable spa; and all the brood of Folly may be seen tinkling its showy bells and strutting in inflated inanity of mind in a manner very different from its appearance in the general run of our cities and towns. Indeed the best entertainment for the idler is to watch their workings, from the brainless coachman-aping peer, to the soapmaker's lady of Wapping. Like fantoccini moving along in the same dance, full of self-pretension-ignorant, but fashionable-coarse in manners, but wealthy-how amusing is it to contemplate such a scene: to view it with all "its gaily-gilded trim quick glancing to the sun," and to read in it one of the bitterest lessons of reason's humiliation, of worthlessness of purpose, that the picture of man's life affords! Let me not be thought too severe; there is much mingled in such a scene that is noble, polite, generous, and affable, from the highest ranks of life to others more humble. It is the tout ensemble, the great features of such a scene to which I allude. I know no species of idleness so painful as that of a stranger lounging from post to post and from street to street, and seeming "To drag at each remove a lengthen'd chain," and that in the midst of a busy population. The perpetual recurrence of similar things fatigues him: he struggles to bear up against the pressure of the wearisome tautology of surrounding objects. The space of time between breakfast and dinner becomes insupportable. The visit projected to endure for two or three weeks is shortened to that number of days, and he returns home surfeited with lassitude, and with the unvarying uniformity of the scene where he had promised himself so much satisfaction and pleasure. Let me advise all persons who have no resources to employ time within themselves, never to visit a spa or watering-place alone, if they have no acquaintance in them, and no introduction to their society; or, if they must do so, to take the unavoidable ennui they must encounter into account before they set off. The student is always at home in such matters; the philosopher can find sermons in stones; the poet can admire nature, and compose his verses on the sea shore, or under the trees at Cheltenham; but the generality of mankind have not similar resources to fly to, and must, without them, be inevitably exposed to the inconvenience to which I advert. What adds to the evil is, that most of these fashionable places of resort are neither town nor country, but possess the evils of both without corresponding advantages. For myself, I always put up in my portmanteau-my commonplace book and drawing materials, and take care to have a horse at my command at my journey's end; with these and a lounge at a library I pass my time very comfortably any where, when I happen to have no acquaintance in the place I visit. Never did I feel more lonely than once at Buxton, where I happened to sojourn a short time without knowing a single resident. In the wilds of the Peak, while admiring nature, I passed my time well enough; but when I threw myself, as it were, on my species, entered Buxton, and found myself alone in a crowd, as an Irishman would say, I experienced the full misery of the situation. I luckily, however, fell in with a poor devil who seemed exiled from his kind as well as myself. Sympathy drew us toward each other. A coffee-room incident induced the necessity of speaking. We dined in contiguous boxes; entered into conversation; and each was, I believe, pleased with his companion, at least if an unbroken intimacy of fifteen years be any proof of such a point. Neither of us were of intrusive dispositions, and equally little inclined to make the first advances to the other, had we each been at Buxton solus for a year. It sufficed, however, that fortune brought about an event which, as often happens in life, neither of us could have foreseen; and I am indebted to that moment for the long and tried friendship of an honourable and clever man, which I shall ever hold in the highest estimation-that of my excellent friend Sir C 0. TRANSLATION OF BERNARDO TASSO'S SONNET Lo! from her kindred Heavens sweet Peace descends, Long absent from us-once again she bends But leads her flocks where crystal waters flow- Sheds her rich gifts on every smiling plain; A. S. |