show of the one, and the beggarly, though picturesque look of the other, of which I here present a view,

the immense strides which ideas of pomp, luxury, and ostentation, without any real increase of wealth, have made since the owner of the humbler dwelling, with more treasure at his command than ten times the amount of the wealthiest county bank of the present day, used to stand at his shop-door to invite customers to step in and do business with him,-as represented in the sketch.

As to the more modern structure, which serves to form the contrast (and which I do not think it necessary to represent here), its palace-like front, though showy, exhibits, in the combination of the several members of which the front elevation is composed, a violation of the laws of architectural harmony not common even in this country. The first and second floor centre windows are placed in the space between two Corinthian columns, occupying the centre of the house, and resting on the basement-story, which projects from the wall as much as the whole diameter of the said columns, and no more. But by the side, and close to each of these, is a square pillar, wide as the diameter of the columns, and projecting from the wall with its base and capital as much as they do, and consequently flush with them. Then comes

the side windows, placed between the square pillars and a pilaster of the same width, but only an ordinary appliqué pilaster of two or three inches projection, with which the outline of the elevation terminates. The effect of this strange combination in a width altogether of not more than fifty feet, is of the oddest kind imaginable. Still, as a contrast to Wood's old bank, it is, as I said before, a palace, and may by some be taken either as a proof of the progress which architectural spirit has been making in England in recent times; or only as an example of what people nowadays think of the necessity of outward show in business as compared with what they thought of it eighty years ago.

343

:

CHAPTER II.

NEWENT SPA-ROAD TO BRISTOL.

CLIFTON HOT WELLS.

NEWENT Spa and Mr. Murchison-Its Origin and Nature-PositionQuery Is it a Saline as well as a Sulphuric Spa?-ROAD TO BRISTOL -The Painswick Hills-Valley of the Severn-Via Erminia-CLIFTON -The GLOUCESTER Hotel-Preferable Apartments-CIRCLORAMA-The Streets-Prospects - ST. VINCENT'S Terrace - English InnsLung' Arno of Clifton-The Hor WELLS-Their Water and Chemical Composition-Temperature contrasted with Buxton and Bath-The SUSPENSION BRIDGE-The Zigzag Walk-Sion Hill SPRING-Topography of Clifton Hill-The Mall-CLIFTON HOTEL-The CRESCENTS -Windsor Terrace-LODGING HOUSES-Living at Clifton-Moderate Charges-Clifton hardly a Watering Place-CLIMATE—Meteorological Data Influence of Clifton on Invalids-Does the Effect answer the Expectation ?-STATISTICAL Facts-Mortality of English Women -Mr. FARR'S Opinion.

I OUGHT perhaps to introduce in this part of my narrative a short account of NEWENT Spa, another of the many mineral springs to be met with in the vale of Gloucester, situated about eight and a half miles from that city, near the Hereford and Gloucester Canal. But my personal data of information respecting it are too scanty. Mr. Murchison, in the able work previously alluded to, considers it as a highly sulphurous medicinal spring, formed by the surface-water flowing upon the inclined bed of a coal-measure (anciently worked in this place), which contains much iron pyrites, decomposing the latter so as to become impregnated with the disengaged sulphureted hydrogen gas, and then rising to its original level, through cracks in the stratum of new red sand

stone, which here, as almost everywhere, overlays the coal

measure.

Newent is seated on the new red sand-stone; and just about where the Spa is, Mr. Murchison discovered a fault in that rock, as well as in the coal-seam below it; and this break in the strata would certainly afford sufficient room for the up-coming of the sulphureted water which constitutes the Spa.

But then in such a case, according to the same able geologist's view previously mentioned, of the origin of saline springs, the Newent water, by passing through the various members of the new red sand-stone, which forms the crust of the soil here (including, I suppose, "the saliferous red marl"), would be charged in its passage with brine, in addition to the sulphur brought up from the carboniferous stratum. That is to say, the Newent Spa water ought to be a strongly saline sulphureted water. Now is it so in reality? I have no means of answering that question; but I regret this the less, as Newent Spa is hardly of that character which requires it to be described fully among the principal wateringplaces that form the subject of my present volumes; and I have only alluded to it in this place as an object of geological interest.

ROAD TO BRISTOL.-Until it reaches the little village of Newport, in the vicinity of Berkeley, the road from Gloucester to Bristol is tame and uninteresting. Grazing-fields are traversed in succession, with herds of cows wandering over them whose milk is destined to produce the "single" as well as the "double Gloucester." The only redeeming features in this flat region are the Painswick Hills, on the left, whence that useful marble is quarried which is so much employed in buildings throughout this country. It was whilst seated on the summit of one of the loftiest of this range, watching the slow progress of the siege of Gloucester, that the ill-fated British monarch descended of a lovely and a still more ill-starred queen, gave that ominous answer to one of his children who was anxious to

know when they should return home: " Alas, my son! I have no home!"

From Newport forward, however, and up to the very threshold of the "metropolis of the west," as the Bristolians are pleased to call their city, the surrounding country opens and expands into the beautiful valley of the Severn, flanked on the west by the Welsh hills, and skirted near at hand on the east by the line of limestone-hills, which, beginning at Painswick aforesaid, to the south of the famed Via Erminia of the Romans, and in continuation of the Leckhampton Hills, near Cheltenham, follows a S.S.W. course by Stroud, Dursley, Wotton, and Chipping Sodbury, as far as Bitton and Marshfield, immediately to the north of Bath. From many parts of this road (which, by the bye, is kept in most excellent order, being upon a limestone bottom, hardened by the black-rock material from Bristol,) some exquisite points of view are discerned, both in the wide expanse of the subjacent valley of the Severn, whose very tortuous windings are now and then brought into the landscape,-and among the distant grounds bordering on Monmouthshire, clothed by the magnificent forest of Dean, and watered by the Wye.

In spite of the strong temptation held out to a stranger newly arrived in Bristol, after a lapse of twenty years since a previous visit, of loitering at that most showy hotel called the Great Western (a very fine and imposing Corinthian building just erected not far from College-green), I left it, soon after my arrival, in a fly for Clifton, the ultima Thule of my wanderings in this direction,-impatient to take cognizance of a place which has acquired so much celebrity in modern times as a station for invalids.

CLIFTON,

moreover, offered another object of attraction to one engaged, as I was, in the exploration of mineral waters in England