,
belonging to a Mr. Meehan, who is a celebrity here. He has written a
book in which Sir Lionel is much interested, called "Famous Houses of
Bath," and as it seems he knows more about the place as it was in old
days and as it is now than any other living person, he has been going
round with us, showing us those "features" I mentioned. He appears to
have architecture of all kinds at his finger tips, and not only points
out here and there what "Wood the elder and Wood the younger" did, under
patronage of Ralph Allen, but knows which architect's work was good,
which bad, which indifferent; and that really is beyond me! I suppose
one can't have a soul for Paris fashions and English architecture too? I
prefer to be a judge of the former, thanks! It's of much more use in
life.

I should think there can hardly be a street, court, or even alley of Old
Bath into which we haven't been led by our clever cicerone, to see a
"bit" which oughtn't on any account to be missed. Here, the remains of
the Roman wall, crowded in among mere, middle-aged things; there the
place where Queen Elizabeth stayed, or Queen Anne; where "Catherine
Morland" lodged, or "General Tilney"; where "Miss Elliot" and "Captain
Wentworth" met; where John Hales was born, and Terry, the actor; where
Sir Sidney Smith and De Quincey went to school; the house whence
Elizabeth Linley eloped with Sheridan; the place where the "King of
Bath," poor old Nash, died poor and neglected; and so on, ad infinitum,
all the way to Prior Park, where Pope stayed with Ralph Allen,
rancorously reviling the town and its sulphur-laden air. So now you can
imagine that my "walking and standing" muscles are becoming abnormally
developed, to the detriment of the sitting-down ones, which I fear may
be atrophied or something before we return to motor life.

Sir Lionel has remarked that Bath is a "microcosm of England," and I
hastened to say "Yes, it is." Do you happen to know what a microcosm
means? Dick says it's a conglomeration of microbes, but he is always
wrong about abstract things unconnected with Sherlock Holmes.

By this time you will be as tired of Bath as if you had pottered about
in it as much as I have, and won't care whether it had two great
periods--Roman and eighteenth century--or twenty, inextricably entangled
with the South Pole and Kamchatka. _More_ tired than I, even, for I have
got a certain amount of satisfaction to the eye from the agreeable,
classic-looking terraces