view;
but the Wye, instead of being an embellishment, is an eyesore in
the midst of such scenery: it looks like a long, slimy snake
dragging its foul length through the hills and woods which
environ its muddy stream. We dined in a moss-cottage at the foot
of Windcliffe, and then proceeded to Chepstow, a very curious and
striking ruin, and which I should have seen with much greater
interest and admiration if Tintern had not so occupied my
thoughts and filled my mind that I had not eyes to do justice to
Chepstow. I went all over the ruins, however, and examined them
very accurately; for it is one of the great merits of these
different castles, Raglan, Goodrich, and Chepstow, that they are
wholly dissimilar, and each is therefore a fresh object of
curiosity. I crossed the old passage, as it is called, in a
ferry, and came on to Clifton.

[Page Head: BATH, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]

_Bath._--After taking a cursory view of Clifton from the Roman
Camp and part of Bristol, I came to Bath, where I have not been
these thirty years and more. I walked about the town, and was
greatly struck with its handsomeness; thought of all the
vicissitudes of custom and fashion which it has seen and
undergone, and of the various characters, great and small, who
have figured here. Here the great Lord Chatham used to repair
devoured by gout, resentment, and disappointment, and leave the
Government to its fate, while his colleagues waited his pleasure
submissively or caballed against his power, according as
circumstances obliged them to do the first or enabled them to do
the second. Here my uncle, Harry Greville, the handsomest man of
his day, used to dance minuets while all the company got on
chairs and benches to look at him, and a few years since he died
in poverty at the Mauritius, where he had gone to end his days,
after many unfortunate speculations, in an office obtained from
the compassion of Lord Bathurst. _Sic transit gloria mundi_, and
thus its frivolities flourish for their brief hour, and then
decay and are forgotten. An old woman showed me the Pump-room and
the baths, all unchanged except in the habits and characters of
their frequenters; and my mind's eye peopled them with Tabitha
Bramble, Win Jenkins, and Lismahago, and with all the inimitable
family of Anstey's creation, the Ringbones, Cormorants, and
Bumfidgets--Tabby and Roger.[4]

[4] _Humphrey Clinker_ and Anstey's _Bath Guide_.

July 5th, 1839, Salisbury {p.223}